Hope & Healing Part 1: How substance use becomes trauma with Brenda Zane

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Transcript


Brenda Zane  0:03  

As a mom, you put everybody else first. And so, even though I was physically falling apart like literally falling apart. I just kept saying I'll deal with that later. I'll deal with that later. I've got to get my, I've got to save my son and so, which is part of why I do what I do now is to say, that is not a good strategy, I would not recommend zero stars for that strategy. So, I really do want people to learn from my experience and that I could have been better for him, and I could have been more, more of a resource for him if I had been healthier. 

Ericka Thomas  0:43  

Welcome to The Work IN your guide to natural ways out of stress, tension and trauma. I'm your host Ericka Thomas, and I believe that true health and healing begins and ends with the nervous system. And that means for most of us, we need to reintroduce some of those friendly connections between the mind, the body and the spirit. The great news is, we can, and that's what the work in is all about. I am a certified trauma release exercise provider, health coach, and yoga instructor, and I'm fusing my 20 plus years of experience to bring you new perspectives on health and wellness.

Throughout this podcast, you'll find tools, resources practices, people, and perspectives that will help you add to your own resilience arsenal and shake off the effects of all sources of chronic physical, mental, and emotional stress. My intention is solely to bring you information, and empower you with permission to stop working out and start working in.

The Work IN is brought to you by Kinetic Grace Resilience. Kinetic Grace is an online program designed to teach safe, self regulation of the stress response through the body using trauma release exercise, guided body awareness, yoga philosophy, and of course, the breath. The program includes private instruction, exclusive access to certified providers and 30 days of group classes. Kinetic Grace is available anywhere you are, and enrollment is open now, so visit elementalkinetics.com to learn more.

Welcome back to The Work IN everyone and we are in the middle of our series on regulating the stress response and regulating our internal states. And we spent the first couple of episodes in this series, talking about what safe self regulation is why it's so important to the body, and then we got into this idea of external regulation, and the different kinds of external regulation that we can apply, whether that's healthy, or maybe less so to affect our internal state when we start to feel overwhelmed by the stress response in our own body, overwhelmed and uncomfortable in our own skin and I wanted to go deeper into that idea of external regulation and how sometimes that can go awry without our conscious effort without our intention behind it, where we are always seeking something outside of ourselves, to make ourselves feel better inside, and how that can sometimes lead to addictive behavior. 

And so, today's episode is part one of a two part interview series with a very dear friend of mine, Brenda Zane is a family advocate, a parent coach, host of the podcast, Hope stream, and founder of an online community called the stream for moms of kids with substance abuse and use disorder, Brenda is the mother of four sons, the oldest of whom struggled with an addiction to a high risk lifestyle, and illicit opioids and benzodiazepines, for over five years. After nearly losing her son to multiple fentanyl overdoses. Brenda left corporate America to serve other families dealing with the fear, confusion and helplessness. Parents usually feel when they have a child who's misusing drugs or alcohol. Brenda is a Mayo Clinic Certified Health and Wellness Coach parent coach and board member of sky's the limit Fund, which is a nonprofit, transforming the lives of youth in crisis, and their families by providing access to wilderness therapy programs and post treatment coaching services.

I know Brenda as a health coach and an entrepreneur, and I'm proud to serve as an advisor member in this stream community and have seen firsthand what a compassionate, heartfelt Safe Space she's created for the moms who have joined her there. The stigma, shame and guilt that surrounds addiction, substance abuse, and use is something that is only compounded by secrecy, uncertainty and isolation. Brenda's mission is to give parents a place where they can let down their guard eye space without fear of judgment, where they can lay down some of that burden and know that they're loved and supported. Make no mistake, this story is not unique. I'm betting that you know someone, or you have someone in your family struggling with these same things, addiction comes in many different flavors and it touches every single one of us in some way, substance use, that leads to abuse, stripped down is simply external regulation of the nervous system.

Many times, these kids, young adults, and really anyone is just searching for a way to feel better. And because of that every single one of us is susceptible to it in some way.

In today's episode, again this is just part one of a two part interview, we're going to pull back the curtain a little bit on this family disease of addiction. And I do want to warn you that parts of the story might be kind of hard to hear. I know they were for me. Brenda shares the story of her son's struggle with substance abuse from years that led up to the fentanyl overdose, that should have taken his life to the hope that comes from their recovery. I will share some of my own family history with substance abuse, and we talk about how years of stress can become trauma and what those health effects can start to look like, how the accumulation of those little T traumas can lead to big T triggers, how long it can take to really learn healthy resilience patterns, and more.

I know it's cliche, but I truly believe that the universe never gives you any more than you can handle and it puts you exactly where you need to be when you need to be there. And nowhere does it say that you will know how to automatically handle it well or that it won't be painful and overwhelming that maybe, just maybe, in that experience there's a seed of purpose and I think Brenda's story is a perfect example of that. Please enjoy my interview with Brenda Zane.

Welcome to The Work IN Brenda, I'm so happy to have you here. I just want to give you the opportunity to introduce yourself to our, our listeners, but before I do that I just wanted to let you know that in preparation for this interview, I went back to your first episode of Hope stream, and listen to your story again I'd heard it before, but I listened to it again. And I was really just taken right back into my own past experience viscerally put back in those moments, it was really surreal for me, just listening to your story, and all of the situations that you shared in that first podcast that are just heart wrenching. It was a flashback that I didn't realize that I could still have an experience. And so I want to give you an experience to maybe share a little bit about that story today just to get us started, for those who are not familiar with Hopestream, and with your community, The Stream, and just kind of give them an overview of what that world looks like for you.

Brenda Zane  9:39  

Yes, well thank you first of all for having me and giving me some, some space to share our story and hopefully some, some hope and some information with people that need it and yeah after listening you probably needed your your TRE. 

Ericka Thomas  9:57  

You know it's okay I'm not gonna lie I went upstairs and I just shook it off. It's good though it's good to let that out, you know you don't want to sit with it for too long for

Brenda Zane  10:10  

Sure it is, yes, well, you know my story is, sadly, I think not. It's unique in the way I think that it has evolved but it's not unique at all to what's going on in our country, which is, you know finding myself with a teenager addicted to drugs, and a very high risk lifestyle.

My son was 16, when we had been through a couple of years of really challenging times.With him being just a risk taker, experimenting with drugs. And then, at the age of 16 finally having to make a decision to have him, transported to a wilderness therapy program because his lifestyle had gotten to the point where it was just too dangerous to leave him where he was. And we've exhausted all of our local resources so all of the therapists and the counselors and the truancy system in the school. 

And you know, once you've gone through all of those resources, and you have a kiddo who is putting themselves in danger, every single day. You have to kind of go to that next level. And so we did that, and, you know, went through four or five years of just really, really difficult decisions and experiences with him. 

And he wasn't just addicted to chemicals. So his sort of drug of choice was Xanax, which people kind of are surprised by. But if you know if you, if you have a child is a teenager right now, or a young adult child who is addicted to Xanax, you will know what I'm talking about. It is brutal, and it is incredibly difficult to get off of, when they're taking it at the volumes that they are. And so he also used marijuana and alcohol and opioids and you name it, but if he could, you know, if you had his choice, it would have been Xanax.

But he was also addicted to a very high risk lifestyle so he is that typical, you know, teenage boy who just couldn't get enough of danger and risk and, you know. I had the police in my living room on multiple occasions at three o'clock in the morning saying your son is going to be dead or in jail if you don't do something. And that's a very scary place to be as a parent, when you don't know what to do because you can't find resources. 

Nobody talks about this so you know we live in a very nice middle class neighborhood in outside of Seattle, and everything is fine, right, like, all the kids are doing amazing things in sports and in academics and in arts and they're all going off to amazing colleges and then your kid is missing for a week. Right. So, it's, it's a very kind of surreal world to live in as a parent when you look around at everybody, all the other kids, it looks like and I will qualify that to say, with a big asterisk on the outside it looks like everybody else's kids are doing great. And yours isn't, it's really, really challenging. So cliff notes version of our story, he went to multiple different treatment programs, wilderness therapy, residential treatment. You know the detoxes, the 30 day programs, sober living. We did it all and he eventually ended up still in active use, and ended up overdosing twice in 2017 on fentanyl. 

Which we could have a whole episode about that now that it almost took his life. So he was on life support for three days. Well, the doctors told us to get our family together and to come to the hospital because, you know, they always lose him at that point. And, you know, I, it's still, I think almost the further away we get from that. So that was 2017, the more shocking it is to me and kind of the more real it becomes to me of how close we were to losing him. 

He was found in the backseat of a car, no pulse, foaming at the mouth. He'd been there for three hours. Nobody knows, kind of how long he'd been in what state of consciousness. And then the paramedics did CPR for 30 minutes which people have told me that's really unusual. Usually they'll go for about 15 minutes and then they call it.

God bless the paramedics that kept going for those additional 15 minutes. They still didn't get a pulse but they intubated and then put him in an ambulance and got into the hospital. And he is one of the few people that made it through that, and he made it through with a functioning brain, which none of the doctors can figure out how that happened. 

The neurologist, you know, just kept coming into his room saying this can't be possible, that he is alive and that he's functioning and his ECGs are coming back normal. So, I consider myself the luckiest mom in the world. So I, I just feel like I need to use that experience to help other parents who are going through that whether you've just found a little bit of marijuana in your kids backpack or a bottle, an empty bottle of vodka in their room, too, you know I've got a kid on the streets, who's doing heroin. So, that is, that is our story in a nutshell, and so I just now work to help other families. 

Ericka Thomas  16:11  

There is so much stigma and isolation that surrounds drug use and addiction, in general, but especially for young people for exactly the reasons you talked about. Everyone wants to have the perfect family and, and especially with social media. I mean people only post things that are happy on social media, happy perfect, great things. All the shiny happy people on social media, and it really is misleading for the world to think, Oh, if everybody else looks like this how come my family doesn't look like this. What was your support system like when you were going through all of this. And what was it that felt like it was, or if there was anything that you felt was missing to that support system that you were wishing for in that time.

Brenda Zane  17:11  

Well I would say there was basically not a support system. I had a fabulous family, and they were very supportive so they weren't the family that was, you know like, oh you should kick him out of the house. So my family was very supportive. And we eventually ended up getting connected with a therapeutic educational consultant but that was further down the road. That was when we were in absolute crisis mode and had to get him removed from our home. But in the earlier days when he was just experimenting and getting into trouble at school and, you know, doing a little bit of running away and shoplifting.

Brenda Zane  17:56  

I didn't have anybody I just thought I was the only one who had a kid that was doing this, along with some of the quote unquote friends that he was doing that with. But I didn't know their families. It was kind of a new friend group to him. He switched from a very close knit group of friends in our neighborhood to a group of guys that I didn't know that he had met through the high school. And so I was just going it alone. 

I mean, I didn't know another mom in our community who was going through this. And you sort of feel like the black sheep of the neighborhood you know, when the police are in front of your house several times a month, and you know everybody is looking like why is Why are the police at their house again. Why hasn't he been in school for the last week? 

All those things. So I didn't really have a support system outside of my family who was trying to support me but had no clue what was going on or how to help. They'd never had that experience and so, you know, finally getting connected with the educational consultant was great. She really helped us process what was going on, and then eventually I went to Al Anon, for a couple of months. Maybe wasn't exactly what I was looking for but it was better than nothing. And, at least there were other people there who had kids in similar situations, or worse, which was also interesting to see, because I thought mine was the worst. But it was, it was a lot, and it was incredibly isolating.

And yeah you do you look at all of the, you know, I think a lot of parents in this high school age had that where people start posting the college logos of you know where their kids are going to be going to college and they post the picture with the sweatshirt when they, you know, make their announcement. And you're happy for them. But you're also just dying inside because you're like why is this not happening for us and what did I do wrong, where did I go wrong as a parent to see my kid, you know, going the complete opposite direction.

Like your kids going to Yale and my kids going to jail. It's just like what, what did I do wrong, so there's a huge amount of blame, self blame, guilt, regret and questioning about why, why is this happening. 

Ericka Thomas

Right, right. And I think, you know, from the minute, a child is conceived. There's already an escalated or elevated level of alertness for parents, for a mom. For dad’s too, but moms especially. And you know as they grow older as they grow up and they start to separate from us, it's really hard to untangle our identity from that. And so, then instead of calming us down because here this child is becoming more independent, it kind of goes the opposite way. Yeah.

It's so hard. 

Ericka Thomas  21:09  

Yeah, yeah. So tell me a little bit more about your family during this time, and how they were handling, what was happening with your son, because, you know, as we know, like when one person is struggling with an addiction, of course, that affects that person, but it sort of creates this ripple effect out in the family. And when we talk about intergenerational trauma or kind of the contagiousness of addiction and and post traumatic stress, that is kind of where that may come from because, you know, everyone is affected in some way. So, how did this affect you personally, physically, mentally, emotionally, and then for your other kids because I know you have another son and stepchildren as well. Yes. So, talk a little bit about that, about that kind of ripple effect throughout the household.

Brenda Zane  22:12  

It definitely is a family affair. It definitely is a family disease, and I never understood that when people would say that oh addiction, it's a family disease. It really, I truly didn't understand what that meant until it happened to us. And everybody finds their own way to cope. And so, my, my son who is having the struggles, the oldest he has a brother who's two years younger and then I have two other step sons who are considerably younger so, you know, seven, eight years younger.

And so, we were also going through this with my son's dad, my ex husband and I was remarried, so there's a lot of family dynamics going on there. I did have a really good relationship with my ex which is probably one of the things that I credit for our eventual ability to work through things because we, we weren't always on the same page. He initially thought that this was a phase that our son was going through.

So as I'm trying to hold down a full time job also manage another you know child in the home, very active in sports and all the school and all that. You know, my health just was deteriorating pretty quickly. So I'm a stress non-eater so when you don't eat, that's very challenging on your body, very hard to function. Your brain doesn't really work well. So you kind of have that brain fog, all the time. So just from a physical standpoint I was starting to really experience a lot of aches and pains getting sick a lot.

Towards the end I had just massive pain in my legs to the point where I could not even walk around the block. I remember my husband saying let's, let's just get out of the house and just walk around just the block let's just walk around the block, and I couldn't, I could get like down one street and then it would be so much pain I had to stop. And so it just really, and I thought I was, I thought I'd maybe I had MS or ALS or something. Like I couldn't imagine what was going on with me. And doctor after doctor just kept saying, oh, you're super healthy, you're like, good to go. 

Wow, thinking, Well, I'm pretty sure I'm not healthy because I can’t walk, and I've lost 10 15-20 pounds, and, you know, my hair's falling out.

Ericka Thomas

You are not a very big person to begin with Brenda. So for the listeners out there, she's like a tiny tiny person,

Brenda Zane

It just doesn't work when you don't eat and so that's when I really started to learn about the mind gut connection, about what trauma does to the body. Because in my mind trauma was something that happened to soldiers and, and, you know, sexual assault victims and things like that and so it wasn't until I finally saw a neurologist who was very kind and said ”You're perfectly healthy, only you're not”. And so you need to do some work, you know, emotionally. This is, you know all this pain is real. It's not imagined pain, it's real pain but it is not caused by a disease, or any sort of, you know, thing that you've got, it's, it's stuff that you need to work through.

And so that was where I started really down this journey of learning about how your mind really can so critically impact your body physically. And so yeah that's what was going on with me.

I think the rest of the family was finding their own ways to cope with what was going on but that was my, my body's response.

Ericka Thomas

So, so when you look back at that time, can you find a moment in time where, where your body started to hold on to that or, when did you start to really notice those that kind of physical reaction to this escalating level of stress that was coming at you. 

Brenda Zane

I think the first thing I really noticed was the weight loss and you know I just literally couldn't eat. I didn't have, I had zero appetite, I would just sit and look at food. And it just wouldn't, there was just zero connection like I couldn't eat, and then from there, right, would you don't have much food in your body, things start to fall apart but then it was really the physical pain in my legs.

And I am normally a very active person. I grew up doing gymnastics. I've been into, you know, doing Barre Method and all kinds of, you know, really staying active, and I couldn't do anything. And I thought, gosh that's really weird I wonder if I'm just getting old, because, you know, it's like okay you're getting towards your 50s And maybe, maybe this is just what happens like you can't do these things anymore. But then I will look around and see other people my age doing very active things and so that for me was like, kind of the, the alarm started going off that my body was saying, we're not doing this, this is not working. And I'm gonna shut you down basically until you figure this out, and it took a long time to figure out.

Brenda Zane  27:42  

It actually wasn't until my son was out of the hospital after his overdoses and in more. In, he was in it starting to get into a better place that I finally said okay, now I got to do something about me. Because you just as a mom, you put everybody else first. And so, even though I was physically falling apart like literally falling apart. I just kept saying, I'll deal with that later. I'll deal with that later. I've got to get my, I've got to save my son and so, which is part of why I do what I do now is to say, that is not a good strategy, I would not recommend. Zero stars for that strategy. 

So, I really do want people to learn from my experience and that I could have been better for him, and I could have been more, more of a resource for him if I had been healthier,

 but, but that was really, I think for me and I don't know why it showed up in my legs, I have no idea why that was. You probably do. We could talk about that but I don't know why it showed up there for me. But that's where it was and, and I just, I couldn't walk. I couldn't move I couldn't stand.

I you know I was working a corporate job where I was in meetings all day, or I'd be sitting on an airplane flying six hours to go to meetings and I would have to sit there in the airplane. I remember so many flights just shaped like trying to shake my legs trying to stretch my legs, rubbing lotion on them. I bought every CBD cream known to man and tried to just get through a six hour flight so that I could, you know, do my job, I mean it was, it was horrible. 

Ericka Thomas  29:25  

It sounds excruciating. And more and more so because there wasn't anything that you could put a name to it for 

Brenda Zane

right I was perfectly healthy. That's what every doctor was telling me, yes. You don't have anything wrong with you, so yeah it's very confusing.

Ericka Thomas

Well let's, let's talk a little bit about that idea of trauma, right. So, and we've discussed this before, about the difference between a big T trauma and little T trauma. And I picture this in my head, and it's gonna sound ridiculous but, you know, I think it was Sesame Street or something they used to have this big capital T cartoon like you can delete the capital T in a single bound. That's what I think of when I think of the big T trauma, It’s the one big event that you can attach a lot of symptoms to, this one thing started it. But when we, when we are working with families who are in the thick of it, of addiction. That isn't a big T, trauma, although one might say, your, your son's overdose, might be like that one. That might be, but there was a lot of history that led up to that point for you and your family right, those little T's that add up right those tiny little T's and then all of a sudden we have this mountain of little T's, that is equal to or beyond the big T trauma in the body's explanation in the way the body sees it. 

So it's just our body is going to react to whatever challenge comes at us. We rise to the challenge and we either come back to our normal baseline or calm, or we come down but not all the way. So now we have this new baseline that's higher and now the next thing happens, and we get kicked up even higher and then we don't quite come down even to that we stay escalated beyond that. And, and so on and so on until all of a sudden we are just sitting on top of all of those little T kind of traumas. So can you talk a little bit about what some of those little T traumas were for you and your family and maybe some that you have heard from your community in the Stream, things that pop up for them.

Brenda Zane  31:57  

 Right. Yeah, I like how you describe that the sort of the mountain of little “t’s” because it is for a family like ours and so many that are going through this, this usually doesn't just hit you all in one day. It's just this accumulation of at first it's kind of like weird things like I found this or I heard that or I saw this picture so there's just this kind of growing steady flow of of little incidences that aren't sitting right with you. And I think that's what starts that chain of stress in your body as you know something's not right but you don't know what's not right, which is actually more stressful than if you did know what was wrong. So you don't know what's wrong but you know something's wrong. 

And I think for me personally all the little T's were the nights when I had no idea where my son was. I knew he was not home, you know, and when you have a 16 year old who isn't coming home, and you know that they're hanging out with people who are selling drugs and carrying guns, and you know that that's incredibly stressful, the phone calls from the police, the phone calls from the hospital, all of those little things.

Just like you said, they just kind of build and build and build and I did not have any tools to help me regulate and try to like bring that back down, I didn't meditate. I didn't do yoga, I didn't do anything other than just sit in worry and just make myself more sick and more sick. So when you're talking about five years of these experiences, you know, and even when they're in treatment, so you know you have these little periods where they'll maybe you know, If we did we had these little like brief spurts where he would get into a treatment program. And you would think that your body would just like, you know let down but at that time, then you're thinking about what what's going to happen when they get out, and where they go and what if he relapses. And so unless you have a very intentional practice or guide to help you bring that stress down, it just keeps building, it's like the death by 1000 paper cuts, it's just right. It just keeps going and going.

And so I think it's all of those little incidences where, you know, you're having these crazy situations happen in your home where you're the kid that you've known your whole life, that's fun and cuddly and happy is all of a sudden, throwing things and hiding things and not coming home for a week at a time and you're just so shocked like how could this be happening, that your stress level is just... I mean, I see you know moms and their shoulders are just up around their ears and, you know, they're either they've gained 100 pounds or they've lost 100 pounds like there's, there's all of this stuff that just manifests in your body and it's, it's so so toxic. 

Ericka Thomas  35:19  

Yeah, and there isn't really a straightforward explanation for why an individual reacts the way they do. There's, there's no straight line diagnosis to treatment, when it comes to the nervous system and the stress response. Because everyone is so different and a lot of it depends on our own past. Like how we were raised to handle challenges and threats that came at us as young people, and if that was less than perfect, which most of us are, all of us are less than perfect right, less than perfect. Then, you know, really all the body's trying to do is adapt to your environment and when the environment is so unstable if for whatever reason, doesn't get, you know that they're there, it doesn't have a chance it's just doesn't have a chance you're just kind of holding on by the skin of your teeth by your fingernails, just to make it through the day. Yeah, and, and the thing that stood out for me, what you just said was, when you were talking about the phone calls for me, the phone calls of phone was where I actually noticed the change, like the physical change that happened in my body, and then I realized why, like I, because it becomes a normal, it becomes your new normal your, your baseline is different than than anybody else that someone who's not in that situation. 

Okay, so for you it's normal to feel like this, you know for moms to feel like their shoulders are up they think that's like where they live. This is where we live. And this is just where I am. But actually, no, we don't need shoulders for earrings. We can drop them a little bit, and relax but for me the phone, like I would hear and it wasn't even a phone ring, it was like the buzz of a text and that was it. That was all it took. And I actually was, I found myself holding my breath and then I, I thought about it, I'm like, how many times a day do I hold my breath and for how long. It was a long time like you have to breathe. Yes, breathe, so every time you hold your breath you're actually like jacking up your heart rate and everything so yeah, it doesn't matter how physically fit you are you can't take that for very long, and right, yes.

Brenda Zane  37:53  

 Yeah, and I, I hear you on the phone thing. My son still he's in a good place now but when I see a text from him that says hey can you talk, you know I just my body goes into this stress response. Or the other day, I walked, I was out somewhere and a guy walked by me with the cologne on that my son wore during those years.

And I just froze, because that smell just brought me instantly back to all of the horrific things that happened during those years. And the same thing will happen when I see these kids walking around with the Super, you know, they're super skinny and they have their jeans down around their butt and the belt and, you know the baggy t shirt, and there, there is at least here in Seattle, I don't know what it is like anywhere else but there is a look like you can tell, I know when I see that kid I know exactly what's going on with him, because I saw it for years and years and so when I see that or I smell that cologne or yeah the phone, you do your body just immediately like flares up and it's like well protect, protect, protect, protect. 

Ericka Thomas  39:08  

Yeah, there is no in between. It's not like a little bit, I mean, it doesn't matter, it's all or nothing. And,you know, at some point in our history that was probably a good thing but, you know...Yeah, and it's, it's interesting too, as we, as you come out of a period of time when you were on that high alert for that many years so you said five years living in this, right, and then there's kind of a slow slow recovery period. So even if you wake up one day and your, your kid is in recovery by magic, instantaneously recovered. That doesn't mean that your body stops, living in that high alert. It takes... I don't know how long it takes, I mean everybody's going to be different. For me it took as many years to come out of that state, as it did to get into that state. That's a long time, can be a long time because you have to replace all of those things.

Because for every phone call that I got that was bad. I need to replace it with something that is not bad. So, so that's going to take a long time and I still to this day I still brace for whatever, that's the first reaction now. Even though my daughter is in a much better place now and that's wonderful, I still feel that residual, those ripples that are still echoing in my body.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Next Time on the Work IN we’ll continue our discussion with Brenda  and you’ll hear her story of hope and recovery. We’ll discuss the benefits of therapy, Alanon, the CRAFT system and how her community The Stream is helping moms of teens in and out of active substance abuse. I hope you’ll join me.

If you’d like to learn more about Brenda’s work with The Stream, or listen to her podcast Hopestream you can visit her website Brenda Zane.com or check our show notes at elementalkinetics.com/the-work-in

Thanks for listening, now go work IN.


 
 

I’m Ericka

I teach a  powerfully effective modality called trauma release exercise that works through the body without the need to relive the story.  (You might have heard me talk about it on The Work IN)

Whether your fight is on the frontline or the home front, past or present, personal or professional... chronic stress & stress injury can be a debilitating enemy. 

You can step off the battlefield.

I offer online, on demand private  sessions, courses & memberships for individuals, small groups and corporate clients looking to build resilience and recover from stress injury.

Copyright© 2021 Elemental Kinetics LLC

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Hope & Healing part 2: A mother’s road to recovery

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External Regulation: From the outside in