3 Proven Methods to Heal Trauma and Rewire Your Nervous System

you have tuned in to something incredible today I've been thinking about the topic that we're going to talk about today for a long time and that topic is repairing your nervous system and healing Trauma from your past now there are three reasons why this topic matters and why I'm so glad that you and I are going to talk about this today reason number one hey it's Mel and welcome to what might be one of the most important episodes of the Mel Robbins podcast that I've ever done let's do this I am so glad that you're

here with me today and whether you've been a longtime listener or this is your first time tuning into the Mel Robbins podcast you have tuned in to something incredible today and so I just want to welcome you my name is Mel Robbins I'm a New York Times bestselling author and I am one of the world's most respected experts on change and motivation and I've been thinking about the topic that we're going to talk about today for a long time it is something that I've been wanting to talk to you about because it has had the

single biggest difference in changing the quality of my day-to-day life and that topic is repairing your nervous system and healing Trauma from your past now there are three reasons why this topic matters and why I'm so glad that you and I are going to talk about this today reason number one there is so much confusion and misinformation out there about trauma especially with Tik Tock and reals and YouTube shorts all that bite-size snack worthy content some of it's awesome but when you sprinkle the word trauma or the phrase nervous system repair around like it's candy

it overwhelms you and it makes people unsure about what trauma is how you process it how you identify it how you even begin the process of healing it I am getting so many questions from listeners like this one from Benny hey Mo my name is Benny so I hear all this stuff about healing your nervous system on Tik Tok and social media and it's kind of overwhelming how do you know where to start how can you even begin to acknowledge something that needs to be healed Benny thank you so much for your question and I

want you to know you are not alone we get a version of that question over a dozen times a day and so today's episode is dedicated to answering it here's what we're going to do first of all we are going to simplify this topic so that you can understand it and so that this episode serves as a resource for you so you can forward this episode to people who you think may be dealing with the issues we're discussing today because without understanding what trauma is and how we all have Trauma from our past and how

that trauma impacts your nervous system you can't acknowledge the reality of what's going on in your body and how and why you need to repair it but by the end of this episode you will have a very clear idea of what it is and what to do and why all of this stuff around nervous system repair is going to benefit you now the second reason why I wanted to talk about this topic is because trauma that's a heavy topic but addressing it it doesn't have to be when you repair your nervous system holy smokes it

will expand your capacity to feel joy happiness and it's going to allow you to let more love into your life that's exactly what happened to me it's what happened to my husband and it is what is happening with people around the world who are applying the simple knowledge and the tools that you're about to learn today the third reason why you and I are talking about nervous system repair is because it's one of those topics that creates a paradigm shift in the way that you approach your life from this moment forward that's how powerful our

conversation today is so I'm just thrilled that you're here now before we get started I want to remind you especially if you're brand new to the Mel Robbins podcast I'm not a medical doctor I'm not a licens therapist I am not a psychologist or a trained certified trauma specialist this topic is so big I am going to have an Ivy League educated holistic psychologist and Trauma specialist who is going to even dig deeper into this topic with us in the next episode I wanted the seol episode that we do on these topics to be personal

because I'm going to tell you this is a very personal topic for me discovering that I struggled with trauma that my nervous system was in a state of disregulation and needed repair and applying absolutely everything that I'm about to share with you today to my life and seeing the result ad s it's kind of hard to describe in words the change that it has made in my thinking in my relationships in the level of success that I've achieved my ability to enjoy it my friendships it's not only a paradigm shift I'm living a completely different

life because my nervous system is repaired so today my goal is Crystal Clear I'm going to help you understand the topic of trauma and nervous system repair so that you can experience this life-changing paradigm shift for yourself and keep in mind this is all relatively new to me I mean I didn't even know until a few years ago that I had experienced past trauma and that's very common I get a lot of questions like that one from Benny Mel I see this word a lot I see these Concepts how do I even know if this

applies to me well for starters I'm just going to go out on Lim you and I are friends and so I'm going to tell it to you friend to friend you have past trauma period there's not a single human being on the planet that gets to adulthood and doesn't experience some form of trauma every single human being that you know including you has experienced traumatic situations and those past experiences are still recorded in your nervous system and they are playing out right now in your day-to-day life and when you start to recognize that and you

go to work in repairing it that's the paradigm shift now I first started researching the topic of trauma and nervous system repair just a few years ago um let's see let me do the math it was 2019 so almost four is that five five years four years ago okay I'm actually really good at math but I'm not that great at simple subtraction so four years ago in 2019 we did a project for Audible and by we I mean my Production Studios 143 Studios we do a ton of work with audible creating original Audi books for

them and this particular one was an Audi book called take control of your life and it's a project I am so proud of actually my team is wait what you're kidding they're they're telling me right now that take control of your life is the number one selling audible original audiobook that they've ever done I mean that's pretty cool because it was a project that we produced where it was a series of coaching sessions that we did on trauma and nervous system regulation and it was a really life-changing project for me because it was in researching

the issue and topics of trauma and anxiety and how trauma and anxiety get trapped and stored in your nervous system and in your body it was during that project that it occurred to me for the very first time holy [ __ ] I have trauma and that may happen to you today as you listen to this episode this is why I know that you're going to want to share this with a lot of people because this is a complex topic and when I start to just really peel back the layers on this and I explain

it very simply you have an Awakening for the purposes of our conversation today you and I are going to Define trauma as this it's just the lasting emotional response that comes from living through a stressful distressing scary or life-threatening event I'm going to say that again it is the lasting emotional response that comes from you living through a stressful distressing scary or life-threatening event that's why I say we all have trauma because every last one of us has lived through many stressful distressing scary or life-threatening events and what I learned during that project and all

of the extensive research that we did on trauma is that trauma can present in Endless ways for example researchers describe these fairly common feelings and reactions as signs that past trauma may be triggering your nervous system to go on edge so as I list these off I want you to just consider do any of these feel familiar to you are you on edge all the time do you have trouble managing your emotions you feel overwhelmed by life you s SN easily you get super frustrated about stupid things or you're constantly taking things too personally or

maybe it's the opposite you don't explode you shut down you feel unseen unacknowledged you feel taken advantage of or left out that your needs just don't matter and you have real big problem asking for what you need do you have trouble focusing or making decisions because somewhere in the back of your mind you feel like there's something you forgot or there's some shoe that's about to drop other signs that trauma may be at play addiction or feeling disconnected from others or the tendency to just go up into your mind and leave the room that you're

in now you might recognize yourself in this list check check check check and then go yeah I have trouble focusing yeah I feel like the other sho's about to drop yeah I'm easily triggered but I don't have trama Mel I mean it's not like I was a veteran and I saw combat that was my reaction too just four years ago and then we dug into the research and it was really hard but it was a turning point for me to have the courage to admit to myself wow there were past experiences in my life that

had a lasting impact on me and it's impacted my ability to tolerate difficult situations it's impacted my ability to manage my emotions I'm in the category of snapping at people and getting super frustrated or feeling on edge all the time and it also makes it difficult for me to manage uncomfortable emotional Sensations I started to think to myself you know that sexual abuse that you survive Mel that's trauma and it was hard and confronting to admit that to myself to realize that oh my God there's a reason why your nervous system feels like you're a

car whose engine is revving but you're sitting at a stoplight there's a reason why you're always on the go go go always busy busy busy Mel and in researching all of this stuff for this project all of these behaviors and this feeling on edge and the snapping at the kids it made me track it all right back to trauma and it also pointed a spotlight on the fact that the solution was repairing my nervous system it became undeniable to me that there was a profound connection between my nervous system always feeling like something was wrong

or that I was about to get in trouble and the anxiety that I experienced the control issues that I had the toxic behavior and relationships that I engaged in these were all coping mechanisms that I had developed out of traumatic situations and I had to come to Jesus with myself Mel you are dealing with unhealed trauma you are not a freak you are not a bad person in fact you're a really good person that has experienced some traumatic things and that trauma is trapped in your body and it's been there since you were in the

fourth grade and you know I'll tell you what happened without getting into the details and we'll put a we'll put a warning on this but basically my family was at a um like a you know like when you go away with a bunch of families so a bunch of families went away together and we were all skiing together and we were in this house that somebody rented and all the kids were in this massive bunk room and I woke up in the middle of the night as a fourth grader on the bottom bunk and an

older kid was on top of me that's what happened and this is going to sound like a weird thing to say but it's not even like it was a scary thing it was more that it was like confusing I here I am like this little fourth grader I don't know what the hell's going on I wake up somebody's on top of me and I immediately have this flood of adrenaline this alarm went off in my body something's wrong something's wrong something's wrong and I rolled over on my right and I did what experts call puming

left my body I don't even know how it ended like I wasn't even in my body that was my response to this situation and so the next morning I woke up and I hid underneath the sheets and you know in my little fourth grade brain I couldn't like really process what had happened because it was really confusing it was like was that like a like I don't know what happened I just know that it was bad but like I like that that you know and and immediately when something like that happens when you're little you

do not have the ability to go that person's screwed up you basically aim it back at you and go I must have screwed up and so I hide under the sheets and I wait for all the kids to you know clmp CLM clmp downstairs and I think everybody is left to head off to ski and I can hear some of the moms downstairs so I'm like okay coast is clear and I throw the blankets off and I go scampering downstairs and I immediately see my mom and and she was standing there cooking pancakes and she

had a spatula in her hand I'll never forget this and she goes how'd you sleep and I was about to tell her I was literally about to blurt it out and out of the corner of my eye I saw the older kid who did it and keep in mind I didn't even really know what it was because I had so blocked it out and I felt another wave of anxiety and alarm and panic hit me and I left my body again like I just peace out out of the body I'm not going to be here

when this because I I knew what my mother would do my mom is awesome and she's a farm gal she would have taken that spatula and hit that kid in next week I mean there would have been some major you know what that went down but I didn't know what the kid was going to do and so as I feel the alarm in my body go off standing there in that kitchen I am desperate to tell my mom what happened but my nervous system fired up and I froze and I lied I just said I

said fine and in that moment nothing bad happened see that's the thing about our responses to trauma I was just trying to protect myself from something bad happening the alarm alarm goes off I don't know what's going to happen and so I just did the first thing that I felt like doing which was lying keeping the peace but at that point forward that's when I got locked into a trauma pattern right there that's when the wiring inside of me started to flicker that moment see trauma as you now know is any single experience that triggers

the emotional alarm system to go off inside your body so let me unpack this for example when I woke up as a fourth grader and found the older kid on top of me of course the alarm system rang in my body that right there is a trauma experience I also experienced trauma a second time standing in the kitchen because when my mom turned around and asked me how'd you sleep honey that wasn't traumatic it was when I saw the kid in the room woo the alarm sounded inside my body again danger danger danger and that's

what trauma is it is any single experience that you live through in life big small whatever that creates a lasting emotional experience inside of your nervous system I didn't realize until I was 49 years old and doing this project for audible that one of the reasons why I have woken up every single morning since that morning in fourth grade when this happened every single morning I have woken up with this feeling that something's wrong I have lived with this that is because of the trauma it has had a lasting impact one incident a lasting impact

emotionally in my experience in life I didn't realize that it was due to the trauma I just thought that there was something weird about me that I always woke up and felt like something was wrong no this is an example of my nervous system remembering a situation and reliving it over and over and over again and the example that I just gave you I mean it is a pretty big situation but it wasn't until four years ago that I understood that that is an example of trauma and I think it's really important for you to

hear that because trauma could be anything you could have Trauma from being bit by a dog or being left home alone after school as a kid it could be something that happened to you once like the incident that happened to me in fourth grade or it could be something that happens hundreds of times it's in your daytoday life it's the Discrimination that you're facing it's the poverty that you're facing it's the silent treatment in your house see trauma is very personal it's a personal experience because it's not about what's happening outside of you it's about

how you and your body experience what happened I have another example that I want to share with you before we go further because it will really highlight how even simple experiences that you think that you've gotten over can last with you forever when I was growing up in western Michigan we would often drive up to um the P the patasi area of M of Michigan to ski at BO Highlands or Bo mountain and I remember there was this one night where we were driving on a Friday night it was like three and a half hours

from esan up to paski and and my dad and my brother were in the car ahead of us and I was driving in uh remember those Old Wagon ear ears with the wood paneling down the side we were in one of those suckers and my mom and I were in that and we had our dog spreckles in it and I'll never forget this we were listening to the radio as we were driving and we were coming into calasa and calasa I always remember because that's where the McDonald's was we would stop there to go to

the bathroom and to get a burger that was like sort of two two hours in to the drive and so the radio comes on and the person on the radio warned about the fact that due to the weather conditions you needed to be very careful because it was icy out there and there was a lot of black ice on the road and at that moment somebody came up the left hand side on a two lane road to try to pass us and as they tried to pass us all of a sudden this truck comes up

over the hill and this person swerves in front of us and cuts us off and we go careening off the side of the road and it was a wild experience what happened in that moment is the car rolled several times I remember it like it was yesterday the car rolls several times and the experience was like it felt like I was sitting still in the car and I was inside like a dryer and everything was tumbling around me like you know paper went somewhere the McDonald's cup went somewhere our dog went from the front all

the way to the back but I felt like I was sitting still I can't even imagine what it was like for my father and my brother because my dad saw this whole thing play out in the rearview mirror so he's watching his wife and his daughter roll off the side of the road down a hill now now luckily we were fine little shaken up but we were fine we had our seat bels on the dog was freaked out cuz freckles got thrown all the way into the back but let me tell you something if I

am ever in a situation where I'm walking across crunchy snow you know the sound of crunchy snow the kind of wet snow where it's like it kind of squeaks if I walk to my mailbox after a wet crunchy snow and I hear that crunching snow sound I immediately feel the sensation of being in that car my brain immediately pulls forward one of the photographs of everything spinning around me I can immediately sense my mom cuz the car ended up with me down and her strapped up high cuz we were on the side and her making

you know like are you okay I I'm back there why because my body just absorbed every aspect of that situation and it happened to attach the sound of crunching snow to that car rolling now it's interesting and this gets back to the point of trauma being personal my mom was in the same car she can walk across crunchy snow she doesn't think about anything but if somebody says the words it's icy or black ice she immediately goes on edge that's her trigger that's what her body remembered and so it's important for you to understand that

trauma is an experience stored in your body and it's stored in a way that is designed for your body to recall it and the problem with trauma is that it jumps out at you in your adult life when you least expect it because all of a sudden you're you know going through life and you're walking to the mailbox and now you're all like on edge because the sound of crunching snow puts you on edge your body remembers the alarm goes off somebody says black ice your body remembers the alarm goes off now I wanted to

give you this example because you'll hear the experts talk about capital T trauma which are big events like natural dis disasters diseases physical and sexual abuse witnessing somebody die witnessing abuse experiencing neglect veterans and combat experience this kind of PTSD but I think every one of us has what the experts call small te trauma and these are the experiences that I've just described from you that you might not remember but your nervous system sure does let me give you a few examples of these if you've ever been the only person of a particular race or

religion in your classroom that can cause trauma CU it puts you on edge if you're called worthless if you have to be quiet cuz Dad's coming home or you have people constantly commenting on what your body looks like or how tall you are or the freckles on your face feeling like you don't belong now we're going to dig into the psychology of this and in particular the small tea traumas that make you feel unseen and unworthy in the next episode with our expert but I'm telling you something happened to you that made you feel unsafe

unseen or unloved and that situation that you lived through it was real it happened hold on a minute guys uh you know we don't normally do this but Jesse's kind of waving her hand over here and she's uh she's one of The Producers on the show and she also manages video production so if you're watching this on YouTube thank you Jesse um but you had a you had a question Jesse Mel I have a question for you yeah I've never been to therapy but I get what you're saying I just don't know how to connect

it like I feel the emotions and I see what you're saying about the little tea trauma the big tea trauma but I don't remember it do I have to know what that little tea trauma is to recognize it or can I just keep it generic and say nope that's little tea trauma excellent question yeah I know exactly what you mean um you do not need to know what the original incident was and you may never know because it may be something very very subtle that caused this surge of emotion in your little baby body and

what happens with a response like this in your nervous system is because your nervous system is designed to remember situations that feel overwhelming or threatening or scary anytime you are in a similar situation your nervous system will fire up the alarm and you will repeat the exact same emotional response so I just want to ask you a couple questions if that's okay so in listening to this episode and in our team doing all this research are you saying that this is a moment for you where you're going oh my God I'm dealing with trauma in

my body yeah I mean I grew up in a very happy healthy home and I never Associated myself with having trauma I again I've never I never thought of myself as needing to talk to anybody about therapy or or trauma period because I was like I don't have any everything was fine I was healthy happy but hearing all this the little T traum absolutely but I don't have a memory of a specific day a specific time specific person that might have caused that so can I just leave it as all these emotions come from a

little tea trauma yeah and so when you talk about emotion how would you describe sort of that repeated response that you're experiencing as an adult that you're now like oh that's probably little te trauma what is it what is your emotional response I think there's a lot um it just instantly makes me want to cry get emotional um I also resort to shutting down MH um but again I don't know where that's coming from why am I so emotional about certain things I don't have a bad memory associated with it well here's what I want

you to understand and this is really good news you don't have to you don't have to know when it began because this is a very familiar thing that happens to you and all you have to know is that now here you are in your adult life you don't want this to be the automatic reaction to situations that are overwhelming you just don't and so that's all you need to know and here's what's really cool about this if you start to identify all those moments during your day where you get either emotionally overwhelmed or you feel

emotionally triggered that's your map to healing and you can begin the work of repairing your nervous system response to situations where you think you're in trouble or you think you're overwhelmed you think you're going to screw up without knowing where this all started and as you start to do that and your nervous system starts to repair itself and you start to feel more steady and you start to be able to tolerate waves of uncomfortable emotion and you're able to scoot through difficult situations at home at work with friends whatever like a boss you will start

to remember your past differently because I also believe that a lot of this stuff happened before we were 5 years old and we could describe it for ourselves and so the only narrative that we have about our childhood is the ones that we've been told and that doesn't mean that your childhood was bad it just means that there were moments when you're really little that somebody's tone of voice scared you and that was it and your nervous system remembers that and you got really emotional because nobody comforted you that's it and it doesn't mean your

parents are bad it doesn't mean like anything about the adults around you because remember it's personal it's not about what the adults were doing it's about how your little baby body experienced what was happening and so it's a great question and I just want to make sure you listen and get this you don't have to remember any originating incident and it's not required that you do that in order to start the process of repairing your nervous system which is basically repairing the way you respond to difficult emotion and to situations that are triggering that's what

this is so that's number one and number two this works beautifully with talk therapy or without it so I love talk therapy because I love having somebody objective and trained to help me think through situations and get strategic and framework out conversations and it's been invaluable for my marriage uh with Chris to help us really understand one another but the interesting thing about nervous system repair is you can talk till you're blue in the face about what happened to you and about what you want to do moving forward but I find often times I can

talk through it but if I get into a situation that's emotionally triggering I still have the same freaking emotional response which for me is not shutting down it's lashing out and it wasn't until I realized that this is not something that's happening from your neck up in your thoughts this is something that happens in your body as a feeling first and because it is Remembered in the nervous system you your response to these situations Jesse is to get really like welled up with emotion mine is to get welled up with anger and I don't even

know where it comes from CU like you I don't remember anything but the positive stuff so you can also go and do this kind of work everybody and not feel like you got to blame your parents because it's not really about all the things outside it's about your body's reaction to it and now the opportunity to reprogram your nervous system and your wiring so that you have different responses now as an adult does that make sense awesome my husband didn't think he had trauma either and in our marriage counseling one of the things that we've

talked a lot about is that Chris does not express his needs and you can tie the fact that he does not express his needs he shuts down like you do because of small te I don't even like the small or large tea because I think trauma is trauma and it's personal how big it feels to you and I think when you call it littlet te it makes you feel like you're deficient if it seems like an insignificant thing but it's had a residual effect on you and that was that way for Chris he was basically

a latchy kid his dad was always working his mom also was working and he was the youngest of three and he came home every single day to an empty house and he woke up and got himself to school and walked to school two miles and you know I'm not trying to tell some Saab stor but there was nobody there there was nobody at his baseball game and so he was trained as a kid to feel like his needs didn't matter because even when he asked somebody to be there often times they couldn't be or they

wouldn't be and so that feeling of shutdown that surge of emotion that you feel walking into the house and again nobody's there walking and to the walking onto the baseball field and everybody's parents are there but yours that surge of emotion that you feel that you don't matter that's his lived experience it doesn't mean his parents are horrible people it just is what happened and it's how he experienced it and now as a 53y old man here we are in coup's counseling talking about the fact that I lash out and I'm addicted to being busy

when I get emotionally overwhelmed and he shuts down and these are all things that have been markedly improved because we both take the steps to take care of our nervous system so what is the nervous system I used to think that the nervous system meant the nerves in your body well I was wrong your nervous system is so much more than the nerves in your body your nervous system is a huge Network and live system that includes your brain spinal cord your gut and the network of nerves that connects and operates and communicates it all

so whenever you're listening to an expert talk about your neurology or your Chemistry or biology or physiology or the way that synapses or neurons or all these fancy words fire and wire together what they're describing is how your nervous system operates and it operates in a way to keep you alive and to keep your body functioning and most importantly your nervous system is also designed to remember things that are threatening and that's where trauma comes in because my goal here is to make this simple and to make this feel like something that is good news

because when you spot it holy smokes you can take the steps to repair this and experience more joy and so you know I love my metaphors so let's use one here on this topic of trauma and nervous system repair because that's going to keep this very Visual and it also makes this less heavy okay because we're in the repair Zone we're not in the live in the trauma Zone okay when I think about my nervous system from this point forward whenever somebody says nervous system I want you to think about electricity and the wiring in

your home whether you live in an apartment or you live in a house there is wires in those walls and there is power and electricity coursing through them and it all connects to the light bulbs and the fire alarms and the smoke detectors and it connects everything those wires it Powers it and when the wiring in the building works properly you know what happens easy breezy you flip a switch it's like magic the lights come on things are smooth they're predictable you can even dim them up and down whenever you want to you're in control

they're steady they're bright they glow isn't it wonderful electricity and the smoke alarms we love our smoke alarms alarms are important because when they're working properly when the batteries are charged they're silent which means we can sit in our beautiful bright wonderful glowy apartment and we can enjoy our lives and they stay silent unless there's a real emergency and they need to sound the alarm your nervous system is the wiring in your house that's what it is it's powering you it's connecting everything and it is designed to be reliable it's designed to be consistent it

is designed to dim up and dim down it is designed to come on and to come off trauma and these experiences that you and I have lived through it's just any experience that puts a Nick in the wiring that's it like a little mouse that has chewed through the wire oops the light went out or maybe uh you uh have something big happen and uh I don't know you're doing some demo and you Ro you you knocked down the wrong wall somebody knocks down the the wrong wall and next thing you know Boom the whole

thing is BL or maybe it's a circuit breaker that gets overwhelmed and it just flips off and it's no longer working or when the batteries run low in your uh fire alarms and in the middle of the night it's like beep beep beep even though there's nothing wrong it's going off it's so annoying that's what it's like to live with a nervous system that needs repair when your nervous system needs repair it's because the wiring inside inside you has damage to it that's it that's all that it is and it's like the lights are blinking

or they don't turn on when you need them to turn on or the fire alarm is going off and nothing is wrong and what I'm here to tell you is when you recognize that trauma is what caused this issue but you have within you the power to find the little break and to repair it so that the energy inside of you flows freely and is steady and is bright and is reliable holy cow your whole life changes because you don't feel on edge anymore you can relax you can be at peace you can let love

in because you're not having the energy in you like not work right I love this metaphor so much because when I visually see the Simplicity of how you repair things and how you get the lights back on and working again we can apply that to the tools you're about to learn and I'm not trying to downplay the trauma you may have experienced I'm trying to lift up and highlight the power that you have inside you to heal this and so let me give you an example in the last house that we lived in outside of

Boston from the very day 15 years ago that we had bought our fridge the person that installed it nicked the water line and the ice maker never worked and because the fridge was jammed into a cabinet we couldn't pull it out to fix it and so for the last 15 years I have had a refrigerator that does not make ice I personally love ice I love ice in my drinks so this has always been a big pet peeve of mine and so when we move to Vermont the number one thing on my wish list was

an ice maker like not just the ice maker in the fridge but a real true ice maker with a scoop like this was the thing I really wanted and so here's what's happened I don't know what's wrong with our ice maker but our ice maker constantly overwhelms the electrical circuit in this house honest to goodness three to four times a week I go to open the thing up and it's either drained of all the ice or the light is off and it's because the circuit could not handle the Surge and so what did it do

it just shut down that is the exact same thing that happens to you in some situations there's a situation that triggers something and you have this surge of emotion that you can't handle and you shut down and so several times a week I have to go down in the basement I got to open up the circuit breaker panel and every time I go down there I'm like why have we labeled this thing in pencil that I can barely even read I need to get a Sharpie and I have to line up the label with where

the breaker is and find the breaker that is flipped off and count the numbers down the left hand side and then count to where I think the thing is and then I finally find the little switch and I flip it back on and boom electricity is flowing again and I'm using that example because I do this three or four times a week that ice maker it is overwhelming the circuits it is a fact at some point we might have to replace the actual I don't know wiring or the the the the the I don't know

the thing it plugs into not sure what's going on there but I can find the switch and I can flip it and it works again and in doing that I'm repairing the connection so that everything runs smoothly and so when people talk about nervous system repair it's the exact same thing that there are deliberate things that you can do to basically notice when the lights go out or they're blinking or there's an alarm going off or there's a surge of emotion that overwhelms you and when that happens you find the fuse box you find the

switch that got flipped and you simply flip it back and things will run smoothly and the more that you do this the faster you will repair your nervous system and what happens when you repair your nervous system is that situations that typically trigger you to feel a flood of emotion and either shut down or snap at people or get frustrated or whatever your version of that is when that alarm comes on the anxiety that you feel that when you start to practice the tools and it begins with awareness honestly you are doing the work to

repair your nervous system and the more that you do this the less triggered you get the less overwhelmed you become when you're in difficult situations the more you can tolerate and handle emotions that are uncomfortable and that means you feel more capable able you feel more in control you feel proud of yourself so let me give you a few examples of how this plays out in terms of having a nervous system that was disregulated because of trauma and that is in need of repair right now so let's just say a lot of you write in

about this that you grew up with a really verbally abusive parent I guarantee you as soon as you heard the front door open or their car pull up in the driveway at the end of a workday it's almost like my ice maker there was a surge of emotion it got overwhelming and something either shut down or the alarm went off inside you that's what happened now you didn't manually turn on the alarm or shut down the switch it's your dad's presence it just triggered the alarm and you were smart you were really smart to get

overwhelmed and to be triggered because he was unpredict predictable and so being on high alert sounding the alarm feeling that surge of emotion that was a good thing in that situation because it kept you safe now here's the problem the problem is now 30 years later it's 6 o' you're fine you don't live with your father you're safe you've been in therapy but it's 6 o' and you can't explain why do you feel on edge at the end of the work day why do you feel on edge when somebody pulls into the driveway why do

you feel on edge Edge when the Sun starts to go down I'll tell you why you feel on edge you don't remember this not consciously but your nervous system sure does so that's why you can't put your finger on I want you to consider this is an example of trauma this is an example of why repairing your nervous system that's how you change your experience of life when six o'l rolls around because just like I didn't want to continue to wake up every morning and feel like something was wrong repairing my nervous system is how

I am now able to wake up every morning and feel okay I don't I don't even feel nervous or anxious about it I feel perfectly fine because I have repaired the trauma that I experienced in fourth grade or here's another example maybe you weren't the greatest student when you were younger so walking into a classroom or being asked to read something out loud when you were 7 years old felt like a lifethreatening situation to your little brain because you stuttered or you couldn't read very well and your friends laughed and so now let's fast forward

20 years and you're wondering why do I keep getting passed over for a promotion at this consulting firm that I work at I work hard I put in long hours my clients all love me I'll tell you why it's because you're not vocal or visible at work and you can blame trauma for that because every time you walk into a meeting or you've got to advocate for yourself or you've got to present something to your boss guess what happens your nervous system remembers what it was like to be called on when you were seven years

old and you feel this wave of emotions just like my ice maker sends this wave of energy at the breaker and then you shut down you don't speak up as much you don't advocate for yourself you're not as aggressive as you need to be and that's why you're getting passed over you have the same respons as an adult like you did as a kid now you know what to do and here's where it gets interesting this is not about what's in your head it's what's Remembered in your body this is all about the surge of

emotion and feeling now I know that this is a lot but I want to underscore that there's really good news there's really good news because when you spot this you can fix this you can repair your nervous system and when you do you will be able to feel more relaxed you'll be more in control you'll be more confident more capable you'll put yourself out there more you'll take more risks and you will experience more joy and I want to remind you one more thing that I think is really encouraging I didn't know any of this

four years ago four years ago I was still waking up feeling like something was wrong and I was still running around like a lunatic super busy you want to know why also trauma because if you think about what happened to me I was sound asleep when I woke up and found that kid on top of me I had been in a safe sound asleep situation so of course I don't feel comfortable being still if I'm busy nobody can catch me nobody can hurt me and I didn't Trace that addiction to busyness back to that fourth

grade incident until literally a couple years ago and so I'm telling you all this because that's a relatively short amount of time and it's a relatively short amount of time for me to completely transform what it's like to live in my body and in my mind and how I'm showing up in relationships my old friends will tell you I a completely different person today and it has to do with repairing my nervous system if you lean into what I'm talking about this is liberating because I realize there's nothing wrong with me and there's nothing wrong

with you you and I we just have a nervous system that needs a little attention maybe you need to tighten some screws maybe you need to replace some wiring maybe you need to flip a switch and check the circuit breaker no problem you can do all that and so my goal today is to make you think differently completely differently about your own power and to really see your nervous system as a source of your power and as a source of peace and of confidence that you can tap into and so for me what happened when

we did this project back in 2019 is I started to get really ser curious about the connection between past trauma and traumatic experiences and situations where my nervous system is like ding ding ding ding ding and healing it and in the past four years boy I've done just about everything I've been in therapy Chris and I have been in therapy I have um done this EMDR which we'll talk about more in other episodes which is this kind of eye movement therapy again a trauma uh modality I have uh Incorporated cold exposure ice baths that kind

of stuff as a way to train my nervous system I've done several guided psychedelic uh therapy things with psychiatrists that have been profoundly moving and helpful and I am here to tell you that it is possible to heal the dis disruption that you feel in your body even if you're sitting here listening and you're saying to yourself I I really don't think I have any trauma Mel that may be true I doubt it but here's what you do have you have a nervous system and if you're tired of getting irritated when somebody cuts you off

in traffic and then you can't shake how rattled you feel if you get completely worked up about the dumbest things or you just cannot stop worrying all the time I want to tell you something this all comes back to your nervous system too if you want to be successful in business get your nervous system in repair I have had more success now that I have a nervous system that is working with me and that keeps me confident and calm and cool-headed than ever before and so this impacts every everything and I'm going to talk about

this because I'm getting a lot of questions about those of you that can't focus that you're having trouble like prioritizing the business that you want to launch and I want you to truly consider that the nervous system repair is a really critical piece to you being able to operate on all cylinders to do your best thinking and to achieve the results that you want check out this question from a listener named usuke hello Mel so the biggest thing I'm struggling with is my new mindset I want to keep up with I want my mindset be

out of survival mode because right now I feel like I'm standing in my own way which sucks a lot thanks a lot for your hard work I'm sending lots of love from Germany I don't mean to laugh but that part at the end which sucks a lot I mean that was just so cute anytime anybody says survival mode that to me is code for past trauma if you are in survival mode if you cannot focus if you're triggered all the time and highly emotional and you're taking things personally please focus on nervous system repair because

your lights are blinking right now and somewhere back in the subconscious there is an alarm whose battery is dying and it is going beep beep beep beep and I am here to tell you and this comes from research at UCLA one of the reasons why nervous system repair is so critical this is research from Dr Judith Willis is that when your nervous system is disregulated and you are in this state where the lights are blinking or the alarm is going off which you know the way we talk about is you kind of feel on edge

everything that usge is talking about I can't focus I can't do this I'm getting getting triggered every day the reason why you can't focus is because when your nervous system is triggered like that it overrides the prefrontal cortex and the cognitive region of your brain you can't focus because your nervous system is in control and repairing your nervous system so you're not going through your day-to-day life in survival mode feeling triggered feeling untethered feeling like something is about to happen repairing your nervous system is is what will improve your focus because you can't focus if

your nervous system is in control this isn't just common sense it's science it is possible to go from being a person who feels on edge waiting for the next shoe to drop like everything is wrong triggered to being calm cool and centered and I have come to believe based on my own experience my husband's experience the research that we've been doing the research that's out there that all mental health issues do not begin in the mind they begin in your nervous system because the truth is that you feel a sensation in your body first and

that sensation in your body then triggers your mind to try to to make sense of it if you're still listening to this and you're like this isn't me I got 55 people I'm going to forward this to because they need to hear this just stop absolutely everybody particularly after the past three years just think about what you just lived through there's not a single human being that can sit on 50 hours of Zoom calls a week and work for home while your kids are underfoot and the dog is there and nobody knows what going on

and masks and all of this and we're not built for this of course the lights are blinking of course you cannot focus of course you're having trouble with procrastinating and stress and anxiety and it's not just documented in the research this is freaking Common Sense we have lived in a state of uncertainty sustained for 3 years the alarm system in your body has gone off and it's not just you I've given over 150 presentations in the last year about the research related to productivity to stress to mindset whether I've been talking to Microsoft or Starbucks

or JP Morgan or Biogen or Compass real estate absolutely everybody including you is having trouble focusing and being productive and it's because of our nervous system we have not gone into our fuse box and found the switch and flipped ourselves back into normal operating mode and and it's time we do it this is not a conversation for losers this is a conversation for winners I don't want to operate with blinking lights I am sick of this crap so I am going to show you that there is a treasure inside of you in your body that

you have within you the ability to heal your nervous system you have within you this incredible switch it is literally like a circuit breaker fuse that you can locate and you can flip on and off in moments where just just like my ice maker there is that surge or just like those situations where you don't know why but you just suddenly feel overwhelmed or triggered or on edge and what you're about to learn this is it if you want to achieve your goals if you want to knock it out of the park this year if

you'd like to make more money than you ever thought possible and also enjoy it while you do it are you interested in being more confident more present happier content well then take this next part of the conversation seriously because when we come back I am going to bring you back home into your body I'm going to show you simple ways that you can settle your mind your body and spirit when life triggers you and I want you to get serious about this so now that you understand what the nervous system is we got to go

a layer deeper because we are not going to be screwing around with the wiring unless you really understand what's going on I don't know if you've ever had a situation where uh somebody in your family's like oh I'll just just repair the light you're like no we better make sure that don't you dare got to turn off the breaker make sure you're safe and so let's go a layer deeper here when you start to do nervous system repair I want you to understand that nervous system repair is your ability to switch between the two nervous

systems that you have that's right you have two nervous systems you have a parasympathetic nervous system and you have a sympathetic nervous system and when you're happy safe when the lights are flowing the way they need to when the dimmers work when the alarms off that is your parasympathetic nervous system that's the one we want to flip on okay that's the nervous system that allows you to relax it allows you to tap into your confidence it allows you to focus it allows you to do your best work it allows you to let in love and

experience joy I love love love the parasympathetic nervous system now the other nervous system is the one that we need to deal with and that's the sympathetic nervous system which is a really weird name because sympathetic is what researchers call the fight ORF flight nervous system sympathetic is the alarm Bell it's the part of the nervous system that got turned on during traumatic situations it got turned on as you were experiencing discrimination or poverty or teasing or abandonment or any of the various things that we've talked about that could trigger a traumatic experience and here's

the thing if that sympathetic nervous system gets flipped on it can get stuck there and what you have to repair is you've got to repair it by turning it off when you get triggered I am telling you that part of the reason why we're having a hard time Rec claiming our confidence and our focus and our presence and our contentment in this world today is because we are all in a state where our fight or flight or Fawn or freeze nervous system is still on and we're going to turn it off today and here's how

we're going to do it because you've got this wiring right running through your body just like electricity runs through the walls of a house and the electricity is always there nervous system and wiring is always there but in order to turn the lights on and off you flip a switch and there is a switch inside you this is so cool I wish they taught this to kids in school this should be human being 101 when they hand a baby in a car seat to parents they should also give them a little pamphlet about the Vegas

nerve because we all need to know this this is a GameChanger the Vegas nerve is a treasure in your body and for free you can learn how to use it to soothe yourself to gain your confidence to flip between being on edge and being calm and you want to be calm because when you're calm you can make better decisions when you're calm you're present in your life when you're calm and confident and and safe and secure in your body you're a better leader you're better with with your family like this is the heart of everything

because if you're running around like I used to run around feeling on edge and disregulated and easily triggered this is a nervous system issue that's what this is this is your nervous system revved up this is you living on edge as if something's wrong this is like you know when you get a text and you immediately feel like you've done something wrong and then you rewrite the text 15 times and you throw an emoji so nobody's mad at you you want to know why you do that you're nervous system you're on edge everything's a threat

everything makes you triggered and so when I got serious about this I discovered the Vegas nerve and the Vegas nerve is our secret to changing this it is a light switch that helps you turn the light on or off and I I believe that in some way your life or the last 3 years or the uncertainty that you have come through or the issues in your life that you have survived have left the light switch on your nervous system is in a state of alert that annoying light bulb is blinking in the background and it's

time to turn it off and so we're going to turn it off using the Vegas nerve the vegus nerve runs from your seat all the way through your body through every major organ through your vocal cords and all the way up to the top of your head and the technical term when you flip the switch is you're quote toning the vegus nerve that's what researchers and neuroscientists say I just say let's just flip the switch let's just use the vegus nerve and there's lots of ways that you can do this so the Vegas nerve when

you hum when you sing I think one of the reasons why so many of us love singing whether you're singing in a religious ceremony or you're singing with friends or you're singing in the car as you're driving you don't realize this but in addition just music's awesome is that when you are singing you are flipping the switch on the Vegas nerve in your vocal cords another way that you can uh flip the switch is high-fiving your heart so we wrote about this in the high five habit you you just take your hands and let's do

this together right now we're going to put our hands right in the center of our chest put one hand right on top of the other okay and then we're going to take a breath together here we go and I want you to just push in because I really want your Vagas nerve to know okay we're going to turn you on and we're going to take another breath in and then you're going to repeat three sentences with me I'm okay I'm safe I'm loved and I bet even just in those 15 seconds you felt yourself come

back home into your body and if you can hear yourself even thinking those three things I'm okay I'm safe I'm loved it's true in this moment and it's a way for you to signal to the Vagas nerve that you've just pressed on that you're okay right now it's okay we can flip the switch off we can come back into our body and one of the cool things about this high-fiving your heart is we uh did a study with 164,000 people in 91 countries so a study with 164,000 data points and this worked for absolutely everybody

that tried it as a caling tool tool that a lot of kids started using it in school like you know you get picked on you go into the bathroom high-five your heart you can come back to your Center you can flip off the alarm that got triggered by some kid picking on you and you can flip the switch and come back into your confidence people at work you do a presentation and everybody stares at you like you got four heads and nobody says good job and you get triggered of course you get triggered put your

hands on the heart come back into your body flip the switch off regain your calm confident self this is available to you and I want you to use it because I don't think you realize how much your nervous system getting triggered when somebody cuts you off and traffic there it goes see everybody's out to get me no they're not hands on the heart come back into your body turn the lights off flip the switch get your power back another way you can do this take a warm bath just go soak in a tub it's amazing

I love doing that absolutely love doing that and another way that you can do this you see this all over the Internet cold exposure therapy now I have a tub that I climb into I hate it absolutely hate it but this has been transformational because when you put yourself in a situation whether you're jump jumping into a lake or you're sitting in a cold bathtub or whatever standing in a cold shower just end your shower with 30 seconds of cold water it sucks and what you're doing is you're exposing your body to a situation where

your nervous system turns on the lights go on baby when you climb into 34 degree water and it freaks out and then you calm yourself down by breathing and you are train ing yourself that even in situations where I get triggered even in situations that are awful like 34° water that I'm sitting in I have the power to flip this switch and calm my ass down breathe through it and know that I'm going to be okay that's a freaking superpower and I know what you're thinking you're like are you [ __ ] me Mel Robins

you're telling me to deal with trauma by taking a freaking bath you're telling me that I can handle abuse from childhood and poverty and all this crap that I've had to like deal with my losing my spous by taking a cold sh what is wrong with you woman yeah I am telling you that because this is not about the shower this is not about the bath this is about you and your nervous system this is about you training yourself that that you have the power to be okay no matter what's going on around you that

you are bigger than the things that you survived that yeah by standing in a shower you're training yourself for confidence for the capacity to dis to feel something and get triggered and not let it hijack your life that's what this is about and when you do that you take that new you into your life you take a person who has the capacity to have [ __ ] go sideways in your life and not get hijacked by it you become the kind of person that could have survived horrendous trauma and be able to heal yourself over

time you become someone like there is this incredible power in you I've spent my whole life feeling rattled and on edge and I'm telling you I got serious about healing my nervous system and understanding the role that it plays in my day-to-day life and understanding how when I'm easily triggered and on edge I'm a shitty mom and don't even get me started about what a nightmare spouse I am when I'm nervous and on edge like I make the people that work for me nervous and on edge I am a better leader a better parent a

better wife and I am a way better Mel in terms of what I'm experiencing and so I've already explained the therapy EMDR the guided psychedelic therapy that we have done both as a couple as individuals we've recently done something Guided by therapists as a family which was extraordinary and high-fiving your heart humming chanting all of these things that tone your Vagas nerve but there are two other things that you can do that are free that will help you dip a toe in the water of exploration one is audit your day just keep a notebook this

is free and just notice when the wave of emotion comes up and all you have to do is just kind of write down just what what happened and what triggered it was it a particular thing somebody said was it a look on their face was it just a feeling that you got and just become curious about it not like oh something's wrong but just like oh interesting hm I wonder where that faulty switch is I wonder where that little Nick is where's that little mouse that chewed on something that's making that that's a blinking light

that's all that is so get curious about it and then start to ask yourself when you get home tonight and you sit down it's kind of quiet go when else have I felt like this when else in my life or who else have I felt this around what situations were did I have a similar thing and you'll start to be able to trace back and that is a pattern of responding to a certain type type of situation a certain way and so you can do this free audit and that will help you become more self-aware

and that then helps you to apply the tools you just learned in those moments when you feel the surge coming it also helps you avoid those situations it helps you talk to somebody about those situations and one other thing that you can do is journaling is an incredible way to either start or end your day and start to forge not only new neural Pathways but new stories and new awareness around these things and so one prompt that you can use that we've talked about is how can I make this easy another thing that you could

do if what you're seeking is peace is you could write how can I make today peaceful how could I make myself feel safe today those are all prompts that you can use to cue your mind body and spirit and your nervous system that this is something that matters matters to you and to really just gain awareness around it because you are able to be in control of your emotions you are able to repair your nervous system and you can take control and not let this response that has been with you for a very long time

continue to control you and that's the opportunity here that's really exciting if you feel like there's big big things that you can't access that there's this missing piece that happiness is evading you that you just can't quite put your finger on why you're in this cycle of relationships I'm telling you please take your nervous system seriously please start to investigate more about the Vegas nerve and you know this is one of those topics where I was going to pull out studies and do all this stuff but there's so many studies on this like it's sort

of like meditation which meditation study do you site there's so many the Vegas nerve is incredible the new research coming out about um the therapeutic modalities that are helping trauma and depression all going back to nervous system regulation incredible and your kids are experiencing situations that make their nervous systems sound the alarm and so you can teach them these tools too and when you do what you're training yourself to do is you're training yourself to locate this power source inside you because we all know there are going to be things in life that trigger you

period they are going to be moments where I walk on snow and I go right back to that car crash but I don't have to let that memory or that trauma experience then ruin the rest of the the day I can come back into my center and turn the light switch off I can find my power there are going to be plenty of people that tell me no in business and I get bummed and I get rattled and I go down the rabbit hole I'm not good enough and I can soak in my misery and

wallow for a little bit and then I can locate the switch inside me and I can turn the alarm off and so can you and when you do you will discover that not only is there a whole different world world out there waiting for you but there's a whole different you waiting inside of you that will allow you to experience happiness and Presence at a capacity that you don't you can't imagine like if you've ever gotten a puppy or a kitten or you've ever had a baby or you've ever fallen in love these experiences make

you realize you have a capacity for love that's great than you realized and doing the work to locate the veg nerve and flip the switch on and off and settle my nervous system from disruption and disregulation and on edness to calm cool ESS it's been the single biggest change I've ever made in terms of the impact that it's had on the quality of my day-to-day life and so we're going to do a shitload of shows on this and I'm going to introduce you to all kinds of things you can do over time we are just

getting started on this but I think that particularly this time of year whenever it is that you're listening to this as you're thinking about ways to be happier and healthier this is a huge component of it and so please please locate that switch and start flipping it off and you'll be shocked I mean it's just awesome all right and um I'm telling you all this because I love you and I'm going to tell you that in case nobody else tells you that today I love you I believe in you I know that switch is in

there I know you can locate it I know you can calm your nervous system and when you do holy [ __ ] will you experience a better life and I so want that for you all righty I'll talk to you in a few days I got to go take a bath oh one more thing it's the legal language this podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes it is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician professional coach psychotherapist or other qualified [Music] [Music] professional hey it's Mel thank you so much

for being here if you enjoyed that video by God please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing thank you so much for being here we've got so much amazing stuff coming thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family I love you we create these videos for you so make sure you subscribe m