The Biology of Trauma® With Dr. Aimie

Most trauma has a place you can avoid. Medical trauma lives inside your body, so there is nowhere to go.

Dr. Aimie sits down with Dr. James Jackson for the second half of their conversation on medical trauma. What will surprise you is how much recovery is available while the symptoms are still present.

This is Part 2 of a two part conversation. Part 1 is here.

➡ Full show notes + resources: https://bit.ly/BOT190

Dr. Jackson works with people recovering after critical illness, and he is direct about something most clinicians avoid saying. Patients have been taught that recovery means every symptom is erased. That standard fails most bodies. He offers a different measure, along with the markers that actually move.

Dr. Aimie also shares why she left general surgery residency after four years, and the one question she started asking her patients that changed everything about how she practiced.

 

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

02:55 — Why do you carry the source of a medical trauma with you?

05:35 — What is acceptance and commitment therapy?

06:37 — How can you be fine right now?

07:09 — Why did Dr. Aimie leave general surgery residency?

08:17 — What happens when you ask a patient what their diagnosis means to them?

11:40 — Why should no one else decide what counts as a big trauma?

13:33 — Why is overselling recovery a problem?

14:46 — What does a rich recovery actually look like?

15:32 — What are the objective markers that recovery is happening?

17:02 — How should we talk about post-traumatic growth?

20:22 — Why can no one recover from medical trauma alone?

 

"If the trauma happened in your body, you're carrying that around. You're carrying it around, and you can't avoid it. It's always there." — Dr. James Jackson

 

If you have quietly decided you are not recovering because something still hurts, this episode is for you.

 

RESOURCES:

Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Discovering Your Pattern of Stored Trauma. You cannot change a pattern you cannot see. Find your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much, then see how the other four show up.

Get The Biology of Trauma. Avoidance and the pattern of disconnection are on page 117, chapter nine, The Patterns of Pain: Recognizing Stored Trauma in the Body.

Reclaiming Your Life from Medical Trauma by Dr. James C. Jackson, PsyD.

This episode is educational and is not medical advice. Please work with your own qualified healthcare provider for decisions about your care.

A hospital saved your life, and now you plan your route so you do not drive past it. That has a name, and the name is medical trauma. 

Medical trauma is a trauma response that comes from a medical experience. It can follow an ICU stay, a hard surgery, or an emergency C-section. Post-intensive care syndrome, or PICS, describes new or worsened problems in thinking, mood, and physical function after critical illness. 

Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-i-avoid-the-doctor-now-medical-trauma-and-post-intensive-care-syndrome-with-dr-james-jacks

Dr. James Jackson of Vanderbilt co-founded one of the first clinics in the country for survivors of critical illness. He sat on front porches across the South asking people what their life was like after the ICU, and he heard the same story hundreds of times. In this Part 1 conversation with Dr. Aimie, he names the one sign he watches for above all others, why so many doctors have never heard of PICS, and how long recovery actually takes. 

This is Part 1 of two. Part 2 is here: 

Take the free 2-minute assessment for stored trauma at biologyoftrauma.com/quiz. Find your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much. You cannot change a pattern you cannot see. 

The Biology of Trauma book: biologyoftrauma.com/book 

Reclaiming Your Life from Medical Trauma, by Dr. James C. Jackson, PsyD. 

Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-i-avoid-the-doctor-now-medical-trauma-and-post-intensive-care-syndrome-with-dr-james-jacks

This content is educational and is not medical advice. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition. Always consult your own qualified health provider.

A new mom was losing weight without trying. Her heart raced. Waves of panic arrived without warning. Her doctor congratulated her on the weight and offered her something for the anxiety.

Her anxiety had been doing its job the whole time. It was a message from her thyroid.

In Part 2, Dr. Aimie and Dr. Nicole Cain, author of Panic Proof, walk through the last six of the nine body systems that can produce anxiety. Nervous system, endocrine, immune system, depressive, anger, and trauma anxiety. Each one leaves a different signature, and each one asks for something different.

You will hear why anger rises as you come out of chronic functional freeze, and how trauma work shifted one woman's biology down to what showed up on objective testing.

 

In This Episode You'll Learn:

01:00 — What is nervous system anxiety? 

02:53 — Which herb supports a nervous system worn down by stress? 

03:42 — What blood work should I ask for? 

04:37 — How did Charlotte's anxiety turn out to be her thyroid? 

07:17 — What is immune system anxiety? 

08:35 — Why does an antihistamine sometimes settle anxiety? 

09:07 — How does inflammation in the brain create anxiety? 

11:33 — Can my gums be affecting my anxiety? 

13:01 — What is depressive anxiety, and what can an SSRI set off? 

17:07 — What is anger anxiety, and how do I cool it down? 

18:57 — Why am I angrier as I come out of freeze? 

20:36 — Can trauma work change a condition like PCOS?

 

Resources/Guides:

Get the free guide, Is It Stress or Trauma? Discover your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much.

Read Panic Proof by Dr. Nicole Cain. All nine types, with quizzes and checklists.

The Biology of Trauma book. The biology underneath these anxiety types.

Part 1 of this conversation covers cardiac, gut, and thought anxiety.

 

This episode includes a description of a child being physically hurt by a parent, and discusses SSRIs, benzodiazepines, and herbs. This podcast is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. Always consult your own qualified health provider before changing any medication, supplement, or herb.

 

➡️ Full show notes with links and resources:

You feel anxious. Nothing has happened. Nothing is wrong on paper.

Dr. Aimie learned in the emergency room that anxiety is never one thing. Someone would come in and say the word, and her job was to work out why. It could be a hard week. It could be a heart attack. Same word, two entirely different bodies.

She still runs that checklist on herself. Then she read Dr. Nicole Cain's book Panic Proof and found the same approach mapped into nine types, each one named for the body system driving it.

In this Part 1 conversation, they cover the first three. Cardiac, gut, and thought anxiety. You will learn how to tell fear from anxiety from panic, why the first place you feel it is your best clue, and why the same word describes both high energy activation and shutdown.

This is Part 1 of two. 

 

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

03:15 Why anxiety gets treated as one condition

06:33 Fear, anxiety, and panic as three different states

08:07 The green, yellow, and red zones

09:31 How your body measures how much danger you are in

11:08 Your canary, and why the first signal matters

12:25 High energy anxiety or shutdown

13:27 Flop, fawn, fracture, and perimenopause

15:24 The therapeutic order

17:09 Cardiac anxiety, and when to see a cardiologist

19:28 Gut anxiety and the gut-brain axis

21:11 What a food and mood journal revealed

22:34 Thought anxiety and looping thoughts

25:07 Parts work, and the moment it landed for Miguel

RESOURCES:

Get the free guide, Is It Stress or Trauma? For working out whether what you carry is ordinary stress, or something past that line.

Get The Biology of Trauma book. Read Chapter 3, on our critical line and our capacity. It covers how the body reads danger.

Panic Proof by Dr. Nicole Cain

Dr. Nicole Cain's website

Full show notes

This episode includes a personal disclosure about thoughts of suicide connected to a food reaction. Content here is educational and is not medical advice.

You know the thing that would help. You have known for a while. You still have not done it.

Dr. Aimie recognized herself in the research on learned helplessness. For a long stretch of her life she expected everything to be hard, expected to fail, and quietly stopped trying without ever deciding to. It is not laziness. It is a body that learned effort did not matter and powered the effort down.

In this Part 2 conversation, recorded in Josh Trent's Austin studio, they talk about what separates resting from escaping, why the drive built on your own wound eventually stops working, and how a little safety is enough to take the next step.

This is Part 2 of two. Part 1 is here: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-do-we-escape-instead-of-rest-josh-trent-on-emotional-epigenetics

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

02:04 How to tell resting from escaping

04:25 The three questions behind your purpose

06:48 Why the fuel of your own wound stops working

07:58 Grieving the old identity

10:05 Why showing up takes borrowed energy

13:24 Conditioned happiness and the opposite he found

17:18 The Seabiscuit story and learned helplessness

21:45 Recognizing the pattern in someone else

26:49 What most people misunderstand about a leader

30:20 Freedom fuels flow, fear fuels force

31:27 Why curiosity needs safety first

 

RESOURCES:

Take the free 2-Minute Assessment for Stored Trauma. Discover your primary pattern of responding when life becomes too much, then see how the other four show up.

Get The Biology of Trauma book. Read Chapter 13, on why the body will not rest until it feels safe, and how to start building that safety.

Josh Trent hosts the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast

 

Full show notes: https://www.biologyoftrauma.com/post/why-is-not-trying-a-survival-response-not-a-weakness-with-josh-trent-part-2