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Emotional wounds from early relationships often cast long shadows over our adult lives, manifesting in unexpected ways. Whether it's feeling an inexplicable sense of burnout not tied to work, struggling with co-dependency, or recognizing recurring patterns of avoidance and anxiety in relationships, these issues are all too familiar but profoundly challenging. However, the road to healing and understanding these ingrained patterns doesn't have to be walked alone.

In this episode, we delve deep into how early family dynamics and childhood experiences shape our emotional and physical well-being as adults. You'll learn how unaddressed attachment issues can trigger stress responses and lead to health problems, the importance of setting boundaries, and the power of emotional attunement in fostering healthier relationships. Additionally, through real-life stories and professional insights, you'll discover strategies to overcome these deep-rooted challenges, nurture personal growth, and ultimately, build more resilient and fulfilling relationships.

Jen and Karden are seasoned mind-body practitioners who have experienced chronic pain and fatigue. Jen is an expert in the field of treating psychophysiological disorders and Karden specializes in somatic trauma therapies. Together, they co-founded the esteemed healing collective SOMIA where they have helped thousands of individuals regulate their nervous systems and heal.

In this episode

6:54 Exploring the impact of relational dynamics on healing and nervous system regulation.

18:54 Navigating attachment styles and emotional triggers in collaborative healing.

34:43 Embracing accountability: How self-awareness and validation promote relational healing.

43:02 The importance of setting healthy boundaries within oneself as a means of emotional regulation, particularly in the context of parenting.

49:53 How awareness with others impacts relationships and friendships.

52:49 How subtle childhood experiences can shape adult triggers and unmet needs in relationships.

58:15 The Secret Language of the Body.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Document your emotional triggers and reactions to develop a clearer understanding of how early life experiences impact current relationships.
• Clearly define and assert your personal limits to protect your emotional well-being and maintain balance in relationships.
• Hold periodic meetings with your partner or collaborator to discuss relationship dynamics and address any arising issues.
• Incorporate somatic exercises and mindfulness practices to regulate your nervous system and manage stress effectively.
• Own your behavior and its impact on your relationships, and actively work towards making reparations when necessary.
• Engage in therapy or coaching to address chronic emotional and attachment issues, leveraging expertise to facilitate deeper healing.
• Actively listen and respond to your partner’s emotions, working towards understanding and meeting subtle needs.
• Implement both compassionate support (yin) and protective, assertive boundaries (yang) to create a safe and emotionally nurturing environment.

Mentioned

The Secret Language of the Body: Regulate Your Nervous System, Heal Your Body, Free Your Mind ****(*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Relationship Map To Happy, Lasting Love

Connect with Jennifer Mann and Karden Rabin

Websites: somiainternational.com

Instagram: instagram.com/iamjenmann | instagram.com/kardenrabin

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About this Episode

Jen and Karden, thank you so much for being here! I love speaking to people that have such a rich background and experience and training in the world of somatics. What would you like to let people know who are just getting to know you here and where you're coming from, as we approach our conversation?

Thank you for welcoming us, Jessica. It's really great to be here, and Jen and I were both looking forward to this one. Because we don't get the opportunity too often, in our work, to speak directly to how relational dynamics impact the nervous system, and really how they are everything. So we're just excited to be here, to be able to bring all that out.

Yeah, so excited. Thank you so much for having us. As Karden said also, not only in our work, but also in our personal life, I think healing relational dynamics and some of those childhood wounds that we brought into our adult life, were some of the key aspects of healing our life and our health and our overall resilience. So we're very excited to have this conversation with you.

Thank you. Even just our quick chat before we started recording here, both of you speaking to how you try to really be in a practice of how you relate to one another. Just for listeners, you are not in an intimate relationship. You both have your respective spouses, and you're in partnership in this work. But yet you bring a lot of that attunement and awareness around what's happening in your nervous system, as well as the patterns relationally. I appreciate that just many people who are working together, that are a dyad, often are in relationships. So it's nice to have an expression of doing the work outside of intimacy.

By the way, they are in relationship. I don't believe we really can interact with anyone other than maybe a stranger or someone who's really perfunctory in our life, like the barista we see daily, without those relational dynamics coming online. It deepens over time too, because they get more and more enmeshed into your life. It's a two-sided thing. When you can pretend that there aren't relational dynamics going on—when you can pretend that you're not bringing your wounds, your attachment styles, your expectations into the relationship—then everything can seem explained by business, or explained by practicalities, or kept really kind of sterile. But when you really look at it, especially when there's impasses, those impasses are rarely mostly business, or mostly practical, or logistical. Those impasses are because something relational has happened.

Well, I agree with you, absolutely. I imagine, as you were speaking about just everything is relationship, and then when we add the layer of intimacy, sexuality, and that bonding of a secure attachment figure, that it typically increases the risk. Or the nervous system associates a spouse as a survival, just how we are wired. And what you're speaking to is, any type of relating where we get activated and our system gets (so-called) triggered, that likely, there are things getting evoked that are relational.

I just want to say that I'm super miffed at my own nervous system for mapping my mother onto most of my intimate female relationships. Like, if it would stop doing that, that'd be really great. That would be really nice. But it just keeps doing it.

Sorry. As we're having this conversation, it's funny, it's like Karden and I have had a lot of interviews lately, because we wrote a book and it's part of sharing our work in the world. But this one in particular is so timely, and Karden and I will expand on that. But I'm just so excited to talk about all of this work. Sometimes, the work that you have with your spouse improves or helps you heal other relationships. But in this particular case, the work that I've had to do with Karden, because of our wounds and how we show up in relationships and in this world, has helped massively increase compassion and love and understanding and everything with my husband. So it's been a super powerful experience.

Just earlier today, Karden and I had a meeting, just like our regular—Tuesday or Thursday—Thursday catch-up. Just reflecting on how far we've come and how our relationship has helped, although it was very painful at times, how it's helped our nervous systems not only build emotional capacity and resilience, but also grow. And be not just the survival self in the driver's seat, the inner child in the driver's seat, but also the observer, the higher self at times, when possible. More and more so over time.

Well, I don't know, help me if this is true, it sounds as though, Karden, you were saying that there's a deepening when we say yes and we have an agreement to looking at ourselves and our patterns, and also bringing that awareness and that understanding and showing up in relationship. In a lot of ways, it's a teacher, what gets activated is curriculum. And it sounds like what a gift, that you're speaking to, Jen, that you can really appreciate the work that you both have done and the commitment and the interest to do the work in your business partnership, that's actually translated and really had such a positive impact on your intimate relationship.

It's interesting, as we're talking, I think I had said a moment ago, coming from the lens of intimate relationship being one of the greatest teachers. But I also think business and venture, because it's our creative. Like, we're generating from ourselves, and then when we do that with another, to your point, Karden, how can it not? How can our wounding, how can our attachment styles, how can our tendencies not show up?

Creativity has sexuality to it. It does.

Yes, agreed. It is, synonymously.

Exactly, it's a period. Creativity has sexuality to it. So that's another thing that adds to the bonding, if you're in a creative and really productive business relationship, because those energies and dynamics mirror each other. 

So I'm actually going to take the gloves off here and speak a little bit more specifically to what Jen and I are talking about, kind of from the top-down. But I'll back up and say that, in our work, when people are having lots of dysregulation in their life, when they're having physical illness, when they're having chronic pain, when they're having all of these physiological symptoms, especially after basically the medical system has ruled out X, Y, and Z. We know that we're dealing with nervous system dysregulation based in stress, trauma, and attachment injuries.

So in our work, this is what Jen and I share all the time. 

I want to say, that's been our bread and butter. That's what we do. But what's gone on for Jen and I, in the last year, is that if you can look at physiological illness as messages from the body that are sending a really clarion horn to heal, then you can also look at, if you will, pathology in relationship, breakdown in relationship, pain and conflict in relationship, in the exact same way. Holy shit, there's some massive not rightness going on here! I can do the normal thing, which is to overthink, analyze, and blame, and externalize, which I did a shit ton of at Jen, FYI. And/or, it's kind of like an and, because it doesn't happen all at once. And I can use this awful relational rupture and pain that's going on in the same way as I used it to recover from chronic illness, from my internal pain, to now heal some really, really, really important relational neurophysiology, relational dynamics, and find a whole nother level of expansion.

That's largely what Jen and I have had this experience of. Last year, we got invited by Harper Collins to write our book. It was like, oh my God, amazing! But as you probably know, Jessica, the greatest bounties and gifts and opportunities come with the greatest, often, amount of crisis and need and stress and overwork. So Jen and I were in this crucible. Oh, I forgot to mention, we had a 100-day deadline. We wrote our book in a 100 days.

Oh my gosh!

Well, that was with the extension, right? Because originally it was less.

Yeah, the original was like 90.

Yeah, and we were like, we need another few days, please.

So we had this really, really, really intimate, close, highly stressful time of working. She actually came out here to the Berkshires to do this writing intensive, while also, by the way, doing a ton of stuff for our business as well, to align with the book. So it was mad, it was crazy. And then, what happened was, after this intense experience of creativity, connection, and output, Jen went back to Bali. Okay, no problem. Except, my biggest attachment wounds have everything to do with catastrophic levels of abandonment, neglect, and not existing. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, those flared up like a dragon. And I'm going to pause for a second. But that's like, it came out of nowhere. But you can see how it assembled, and then it was this opportunity—a painful opportunity—where this wound got evoked through this accidental dynamic.

One other thing, because we were talking about how this helps us in our actual relationships with our spouses. Likely, this wound that I've been working through, could not have been facilitated with my wife because of the proximity of our bond. My wife doesn't go to Bali and leave me. So that's just a little walkthrough of what we've been doing, but also, how it maps on to this internal nervous system healing work.

Thank you for sharing. As you're describing, and you mentioned a moment ago, Jen, of this being timely. Can you give us a sense of where are we in your process, if I might ask?

We're still in business together.

And you're in Greece, so you're not in Bali. So it didn't just happen. But you are recognizing, and I would love to hear more, and I also want to hear from you, Jen. Because you're saying really, Karden, that if we're willing to turn towards, that what gets profoundly activated can be a signal, a signpost, a trailhead. It got ignited in you in a very profound way. Just the contrast of that deep intensive connection, creativity, bonding around this goal of writing this book and everything that that required. Really giving to the book all the things that you are really wanting to deliver, and then to have your person leave, and what got triggered. Jen, I would love to weave your thought and your experience here.

This is so fun. I say fun because it's really nice to talk about it. Karden and I are working on this, but to talk about it like this is very refreshing. So I have a disorganized attachment style, and most of the time, I tend to lean towards the avoidant. I'm very much like, the less I am engaged with my emotions, the safer I feel. Because my mom was very up and down, very strong emotions, a lot of rage, a lot of expression. And then my dad left when I was young. So there's the abandonment, and then there's the volatility. So depending on who I'm with and how the other person is, my body, my brain, my nervous system adapts, and I'm aware of that. So I can be in that moment and be like: Wow, right now I'm feeling a little bit anxious, or right now, I really don't wanna feel my emotions. My body wants me to feel safe, and it's trying to detach me from this experience.

So with Karden, what happened, with his expression of more leaning towards the anxious attachment, what happened there for me is, it ignited that opposition of extreme avoidant. Like: Wow, this is too much for me, this is really pulling me down, dragging me down. It was sort of a remembrance, in my body, of the emotional ups and downs, and anger and rage, like how my mother was. So for me to be in those moments, and for Karden to be in those moments, in our own, was really hard.

So for context, Jessica, Karden and I are in this work for our own professional reasons, but also personal reasons. In 2019, I got diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses—chronic fatigue syndrome, pots, coincidentally at the same time, COVID. But it was sort of all amalgamated. It was all the same presentation, just various medical opinions coming up at the same time. And what triggered it, there was study. I went back to school as an adult to be a physiotherapist, and I was working before and after school. High pressures, recovering perfectionist, high-achiever, people-pleaser, just the whole thing. Then on top of that, with the pandemic arising, although my mother lives in Italy, the relationship with my mother and I became very, very aggravated. So my mother is a codependent attachment with me. So she is dependent on me, but I am sort of avoidant with her.

So during COVID, because she's alone—she doesn't have a partner, sort of romantically speaking—and her only daughter lived in another country. And I left quite young, because I was a ballet dancer. She has a lot of wounds about me not being there. So with COVID, when all of a sudden she's isolated, and the fear of what might happen in the world, who knows. And my mother is in Italy, and in Italy, they had soldiers on the street. Outside her house, there was a literal tank. So she was like: Oh my God, what is going on, we're into war? She felt very profoundly unsafe in her body. So her survival mechanism was codependency times 5 billion, calling me like 10 times a day. For me, at the beginning, my response was like, avoidance, ignoring.

But then, she's my mom, and I've done a lot of work at this point, and I'm going to start answering the calls. So that, on top of everything else, speaking of how physical symptoms can be related and are truly rooted in these chronic experiences that are born in our childhood. My body was like, no more. No more, this is too much. This is like the culmination of what you've been trying to get away from your whole life, and now it's at the tippy top. So that's when my body was like, I became completely bed bound. I had no energy. I couldn't get out of bed for over a year.

And how some of us deal with avoidance or coping mechanisms that are more or less helpful, and then how that shows up in the body as physical symptoms that some of us might think are just how we are. Like: Oh, I get headaches sometimes, or my digestion is a little funny sometimes, or I get back pain when I'm stressed. Then everything sort of adds up. So I just wanted to add that layer, because it's very relevant to this conversation specifically, personally to Karden and I. So this last year sort of reignited that flame. Although the codependency wasn't there, and Karden is not my mom and I'm not Karden's mom.

But I exhibited, for sure, when Jen originally went. So to just also back up, like I told, neglect was my thing. My mother was addicted to opioids her whole life. So she was on 12 opioids a day, minimum. She was on Xanax. She smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. She did not get out of bed before noon. And then she was either asleep or working, or with my stepdad—they owned a business together—or it was what we'd call the Samantha Raven Show. So I was basically disenfranchised the entire time. And also, she was just away all the time. Because if she wasn't asleep and inaccessible because she was asleep on drugs, she was at work.

Or she was awake and in an altered state, still.

Correct, which I never even tracked. Because when you grow up in an addicted household, you don't realize that there's anything wrong with that. Unfortunately, Samantha Raven is not going to get the benefit of your listeners hearing what was good about her. But essentially, simply, through really no fault of Jen's own. But when she basically withdrew, when she left, whoa, this really important entity in my life just withdrew. So that was one enough of like a map-on to be like: Ooh, this is triggering. And then, Jen had been through one of the most difficult years of her entire life—new baby, there was a family tragedy, there was crazy amounts of travel, there was the intensity of this. So Jen kind of went into a bit of a dip, if you will. She needed some time to recover. And although that was all valid, my attachment wounds were like: Oh, here's another sick woman that can't take care of me, and is also unreachable and non-responsive. So in that moment, I became extraordinarily anxiously attached. So I'm sure, I just want to honor this, that in that moment, I was probably exhibiting a lot of the dysregulated behaviors that were very uncomfortable for Jen. I just wanted to float that here.

Well, and just to give you a lot of credit, even if you delivered, in very diplomatic or more conscious language, the attunement and what you share together. I'll just speak for myself. My husband and I, we started our relationship in 2006. I grew up with I statements. I had an undergrad in psych, I had a master's in psych, and now I was in a PhD. So I feel very equipped to language. So I was languaging in what I felt like was a very fair, understandable way. But my nervous system was so charged. So the attunement and what you share, even if you weren't presenting in this loud, maybe more escalated way, as maybe you're describing your mother, Jen, she likely was still picking up on the cues through neuroception.

I just want to comment, if I can just pause here with you both. Because what you're sharing, just for people listening, you're sharing with us some of the backdrop, the context of this. But what I'm also hearing, and I would love to hear from you both if this resonates, that based on your training with the nervous system, the body, even psychology, what you can observe. I tell people all the time, just because I teach and I practice these things, my nervous system, I get freaked out, I get frozen, I get terrified. It's just, I believe in the process a little bit more so I'm willing to lean in, because I trust what is on the other side of taking those huge risks. But it doesn't absolve me from going through the process. 

So what I'm getting from you both is that you maybe unconsciously didn't know you were entering into this level of initiation of what has happened for you both. But the awareness that you've brought to what got activated, I'm very interested in how you resolved this or how you negotiated this. But just your willingness to share all that's here, it's immense. I just want people to know that it's a huge gift, what you're sharing. I don't know if this resonates, but it feels like you're modeling what it can look like, even in the most intense, painful, gut-wrenching. You're leveling us, what this can look like.

Thank you, Jessica.

All I'm going to say, because I know Karden has something to say, is that it was like that. Karden was like, why are you burnt out again?

So this work is very powerful, and I'm proud of us. But I know Karden had something on the tip of his tongue.

Jessica, I just want to say, thank you for presencing that for Jen and I, and for the listeners. What I want to add, before actually really just passing it back to Jen, is I'm going to use I statements here. Because this impacted the hell out of Jen, but I'm just going to speak here like, I got my ass handed to me for seven months. This was inside the humility and shame of being one of the best in the world at this work, Jessica. I just want to presence that for everyone who's listening, who doesn't feel like they're being successful or feels like this is hard. It's so hard! Jen knows this, and actually most of my close people know. I was fully witnessing my tailspin and the perpetration that I was enacting on Jen. And despite all my skills, for quite a while, I was drowning. So it was really, really, really, really bad. I'm very actually grateful for, like you said, trusting, leading into the process long enough. But also really grateful that Jen stayed around long enough, so that it could get to where it is now.

The trust and the commitment to hold some ground, even if it's not what you're wanting and needing for that reassurance.

The endurance!

Yes. So I wanted to comment, and Jen, I want to come to you after that. It's possible what you're boasting, and this is one of your large messages, is it's not just intellect, it's not just knowing. So even being one of the best teachers in the somatic, you're getting your ass handed to you, you're noticing it, and still, it is one of the hardest things. Knowing it doesn't alleviate the pain or the difficulty of going through it. Just for you, Jen, too, what you said and I picked up, and help me if this feels like it resonates. With all that you know, and your mother calling, calling, calling, calling, calling, and the crisis of that, making a decision to override the self-care or what you had learned to take care of yourself with your mother and the dynamics. Not to say you wouldn't have done it again, but the cost of that.

That sometimes, we will give or do the thing that doesn't feel great, to love and show up in relationship. But we might be getting all the body's cues that are like warning signs. Like, no, no, don't do that. There's a different way to do it, but don't do this. Yet, for the love of your mother, you did. But the cost of that. I'm surprised by just how powerful the brain is and the mind, to think we can override our body. Whether or not we have enough skill that's going to alleviate the difficulty of being in these relational dynamics, or that we're smart enough to know, or we have the body awareness that we can negotiate if we are compromising our system. That no, our body and our system is really, to your point, giving very intelligent signals, and how to befriend it really.

Yeah. I think one of the biggest things, Karden, I don't think I've told you this actually. But on the one hand, I was really hurt and just upset and shocked at how Karden was showing up, that he's explained why. The inner child and the adult self, it's not explainable sometimes, and that's just the awareness that now you're showing up as your hurt self and the inner child, and there's a totally different awareness then. There's not just one self, one part, one person. There's all these different colors and variations. 

But one thing that I really appreciate about Karden, and I think myself, and I think that's why we're both still here, and I'm such a strong advocate for this, is taking responsibility. I know that you can't take responsibility without awareness, because what responsibility can you take if you're not aware of the patterns that you're unconsciously repeating? But if you can say, I am angry at you, I am being this way, or I am behaving, feeling, thinking in this way, and I'm aware of it. That validation gives you so much repair and trust and hope that: Okay, this person understands that they're not their best self, either myself or Karden. That is huge. 

Although it keeps repeating itself and then the cycle continues—Karden and I will share more, I'm sure—now there's just that much more capacity. I feel validated, and I can understand in this moment that you know what you're doing and what's happening.

On the flip side, sort of the same thing. Karden will speak for himself, I don't want to speak for him. But my experience of like, when I feel a pattern that is so hurtful, so triggering, to the point of physical symptoms, which I'm familiar with because of my history with that connection, something very special happens when the other person takes responsibility of their patterns and validates what you're feeling. You're like: Oh okay, then I guess we can work with this. I think that's one thing that I never had with my mom. There's been so much growth and repair and so much. But we're different. So I will never expect the other person to change for me. But because of the level of awareness when that can happen, it's so powerful. Very special.

Yeah. Like, with your mother, even with all the growth, the limitation of not being able to own and create safety to help organize, like: I'm yelling because I'm really upset, and it's not you. Or whatever the language is, but just the ability to name and start to organize, that you felt that with Karden.

Organize is like the perfect word. It just maps on, that's exactly the word! That's it.

Typically, for some, I can speak for myself, if somebody is owning it, it's not just flying around and then I'm like: Did I do something? Is it me? Am I supposed to pick this up? But if they own it, I'm like: Okay, it's intense, but I can tolerate because they've got it, and I can start to feel safer. Karden?

All right, I'm going to grab the mic here in a few ways, for a moment. It goes around to ownership. So this is my narrative of what happened, and I've shared this with Jen a little bit. So Jen went into her, more or less entirely reasonable dip, where she accidentally basically became Samantha for a while. Then, that experience for me was so scary, so hurtful, and not just relationally, but it's also the scaffold of my life. Like, we have a business together, now I can't rely on you. There were so many things that got piled on top, and it lasted a while. Then what happened is, Jen came back online. She came back online, and she got herself back, and then she was also back in communication. She was back into fulfilling a lot of the requests I had made about maintaining some kind of contact and regularity despite the gap. And it did nothing to shift me.

So this is a big part. Even though Jen essentially started to do all the things that I had asked her to do, my relationship to her did not shift. I was still incredibly angry, and still basically making her feel that anger and trapping her in this. Like, now she's getting trapped. Now it's like, I'm trying to do what he asked, and it's doing nothing. This guy is just enraged. Sorry, I'm kind of speaking for Jen. But over here, maybe what I'm saying to the listeners, male or female, is that someone can start performing the way you've wanted. But when they've got trapped by your inner child or by your attachment wounds, they can't get you to forgive. They can't get you to let go. They can't get your wound to subside by themselves.

So it took five or six months. I was actually talking to a very, very good friend of mine about this dynamic that was going on, that I couldn't control, and I said to him. I'm like, she's not doing anything wrong anymore. Not that you were, Jen, but just stick with me. She's not doing anything wrong anymore, and still, this deep, deep anger is there. Again, I knew why, I had been inside of it. But still, like I said, it was owning me. My friend Ryan was like: You've got to stop, Karden. And I said to him: I know, but I can't. Then I paused, and this voice came up from inside, and I looked him right in the eye. And what came out of me was, I will never forgive a woman who was supposed to love me that hurt me. That was the statement that came up. It was like, holy shit! Moby Dick style. I will sink this ship and kill everything. That's the amount of hurt and pain in this boy from Samantha. That's how much is there. I joke that I've touched my inner mass shooter. I get a sense of where that level of awfulness can come from. Once that came out of my mouth, I was like, oh!

Then something else showed up, and I really want to speak to this from the masculine pole of relationship right now, guys. Gender aside, masculine pole of relationship. I still had love and empathy for that voice that came up. But I was like, I have to restrain you actively. I have to actively restrain you.

The model I give to this is like, I have two daughters, a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. My older one, when she's frustrated, will sometimes hit her younger sister. Or vice versa, but let's dig with the older one. And like a good attachment parent, the first thing I'll do is, come over. I'll try to regulate, soothe. I'll say like, why don't we punch this pillow instead? But you go through that cycle three or four times, and then she hits her sister again. At this point, what's needed is what I call force or boundary without malice. That looks like holding Leia's wrist for a moment and being like: Leia, I know you're feeling so many feelings right now, but you cannot hurt her. I'll hold her wrist. She won't like it. There's no anger in me. There's just this firmness that says, I'm helping you restrain yourself because you can't restrain yourself, and this is an important thing for me to help you with.

I turned that on this piece of myself. I'm like, whoa! This loathing, this hurt, you're not Moby Dicking us. You're not allowed to hurt this person anymore. You're not allowed to burn the house down. It was this internal experience of boundary against my own part. This is what it took to turn this understanding of seeing what I'm doing to Jen, taking responsibility for it. But the actual stopping of the cycle took that. It's something I'm still developing. But I wanted to just say, it had to come from me, and it took a strength of will to almost internally parent in a forceful, boundary way.

Yeah, thank you for speaking into that. Because I think when people are listening, when the rubber meets the road, and there is so much activation and righteousness.

Oh exactly, so much righteousness. That's the thing. It's like, in one minute, I would validate what Jen was feeling, and then a minute or a day later, it'd be like, fuck her! You know what I mean? But that is the voice of the wound. That is always the voice of the wound, unrestrained.

Well, I appreciate how you're describing the parenting. I have a follow-up question. This is obviously part-projection, because I'm listening and as I'm hearing, so please help me. That you were able to recognize the strength of that voice, and you had insight and awareness around where it got developed. Likely as a young one, or at some point in life, really for protection, saying: This will not happen again! Hell or high water, this will not happen again, that I will let someone into the most inner places in me, and have them leave or have them abandon. So the protection around that, even though she re-engaged the distrust or the bond that felt severed. So for you to recognize the impulse and the protection there, to not make it wrong or bad, but to say this is no longer an option. And a follow-up question is, were you also able to, metaphorically as we talk about reparenting, hold the hand of that young one?

Your question is so, so important, Jessica. Because actually, rewind, I had been spending seven months doing what I call yin repair, yin parenting, or what we can call the maternal or the feminine pole of inner child healing. By the way, I'm going to say it again, I'm very good at it. We'd have these kind of kumbaya moments of like: Oh, I do feel loved, I see how she hasn't done that. It would happen. But it wouldn't last. So this is super important, guys. 

So basically, my child had rebuffed seven months. Or it accepted it was important, so let me not say rebuffed. Seven months of yin work had been so beautiful, but it hadn't resulted in me not hurting Jen. Then it finally stopped when I was like: I love you and I feel for your pain, but I am going to stop you from hurting. That's the no, that was the boundary. So I really want to say that for all your listeners. It's not just this matter of discipline or will, or stop that mean part. I was able to stop that mean part, with that boundary, largely because of the amount of loving yin work that had already taken place. But the loving yin work was insufficient in and of itself.

Oh my goodness, I feel like we need like two or three episodes with the two of you. So the strength of the boundary, you're saying, to recognize previous tendencies or the protective strategy, to really have some strength to say no. I imagine, I don't know, but the younger part of you, that injury or the wounding trauma there still needs protection, but maybe there's a different way.

No, he's relieved now. He feels really relieved. It's kind of like, thank you for protecting me from myself. That's all I'm going to say. Thank you for protecting me from myself. He knows I'm here to take care of him.

That's it, the trust that you were able to do that work. I don't want to speak on top of it, because there's so much here we're not getting to, and I recognize that.

Yeah. I also feel like, I'm sorry, Jen has been sitting patiently on the sidelines here. I don't know how she's interpreting all of this.

No, I think that it's important, that's the experience for the listener. I think the biggest awareness is sort of like, when you're with a partner, whether it's romantic or you're triggered by them at work, or they're a friend and they're doing this thing and you're profoundly angry and upset or like, I wanna cut them out of my life. I had a friend recently that when we moved to Bali, there were so many like-minded families from all over the world. I was like: Wow, this is so many new people. I'm 32, which is a lovely age to make new friends, and my husband and I are now parents. But it was like, wow. There's 27 families, our age, our background, our same interests. How do we manage this?

I became friends with someone quite soon, and it was lovely. And then, I think, different dynamics about myself, that I was a working mom, and I had my own business, and successful, and somehow also balanced, and just happy with my husband. I don't know, it was really triggering, and she decided to cut me just point blank. It was like, I just don't think I can be friends with you anymore. I've never had anyone say that to me in my life. That was a big lesson for me to start with, and moving to a new place and having someone. I had lots of other friends too, but this one. One of my wounds is like, I'm not enough, low self-worth, because of my father side leaving, and my inner child feeling like I had to prove myself as a human being to be loved by him. So my natural people-pleasing tendency, anxious side of this disorganized attachment is like, what have I done? I'm just showing up as myself, being so catering to all of your needs, and you cut me out. What have I done? So that was like sort of a lesson. 

So what I want to say for all the listeners is that, Karden was sharing earlier, the experience of Samantha Raven, of his mom, and her experience that was so difficult for Karden, and I'm sure the opioids and just her life. I wasn't on opioids, and I wasn't like that with Karden for years. It was just a month or so that there was this rupture, where I was like, I need space. Like, I need space now, this is too much for me.

So people might think: Well, no, that has nothing to do with my mom, or that has nothing to do with my dad, or that has nothing to do with my childhood. But actually, it's the small things that map on in such a subtle way, that our brain is like, boom!

So with my friend, just being vague about the experience here on this interview now, I think some of my ways of just being balanced and having other friends and having a business and being a mom, were sort of triggering, because of their needs, and maybe their primary caregiver and their experience, which was shared in small amounts. It was this whole other experience. Maybe it's not this specific case, but maybe there's abuse or alcohol or drugs. Then maybe in the present relationship, there's no abuse or alcohol or drugs or violence. But there's just a subtle movement of: Oh, my need is not quite being met. Then all of a sudden, it's just super glued to that attachment, and then your trigger is just so loud and it's just so strong. And it comes out, in a way, as Karden said, to keep him safe, and us all, however we show up.

So for anyone listening, because we often get in our work, like: But I had the best childhood, I don't know what you're talking about. My people-pleasing or my anxiety started when I was 37. I'm like: Okay, that's interesting, I'd love to hear more. Then when you go into the body, it's like, no. Actually, what's showing up now is really a mirror, in subtle ways, of certain needs that are not being perfectly met, in a way that they needed to be met when you were a child and your prefrontal cortex wasn't fully developed. And your nervous system was like, shall I lean in or shall I not lean in? Do I mirror this behavior or do I not? Is someone standing up for me right now? I am confused. When we don't have that adult to help us navigate emotions, just in general. I'm not even talking about trauma. I'm just talking about emotions. It can be really hard.

Yeah, emotional attunement. To your point, it doesn't have to be something that was, as we might say, big T. But the real relating and how one is responding to needs, and this learning in relationship. I know in research, it's very categorized, this style or that style. I think it's much more fluid, and as you said, we can have different attachment styles with different parents, if we're having two parents in life growing up. So, Jen, I know you're trying to speak to some of the bigger topics as we're winding down here. Also, is it easy to talk about, when Karden was experiencing all this, were you in a place of more solidness or were you pretty regulated?

No. In those moments, I felt like a victim. I've already told Karden this, but I had Googled. When Dr. Google comes out, like, I wonder what Google is going to tell me that I don't already know. Now there's ChatGPT as well. Tell me ChatGPT, what's going on here? Like, is this emotional abuse, what's going on? Am I a victim of something? But to hold the space for what Karden and I experienced, and for people listening, if you are in a situation where you feel that or you think, it's usually coming from a place where the person is hurt and it's coming out as a defense mechanism. Myself in my own patterns, and Karden in his, and whoever in their own, we have labels or ways to explain things. And psychology, which is I know your field, and medicine, because it helps. Let's go down this route, let's help solve the issue. But it's just kind of more complex than that.

Thank you, yes! Because that's what I was hearing you just speak to a moment ago, just the layers and the dimensions. It's quite a lot, like in a big constellation that can feel really complex. So it's not as though it's just linear, or this one thing and it's like an equation. You spoke about resilience, and there's many factors around what helps us feel more stable and grounded and regulated. I can just appreciate that we could go, I would love more interviews and learn more about you. But I am sure people listening want to know more as well. Where would you direct people towards, as far as your work, your course, your book?

I guess what I'll say is, our book is called The Secret Language of the Body: How to Regulate Your Nervous System, Heal Your Body, and Free Your Mind. Just reflecting on everything we've talked about today. Because of the work we do, I was fully present to the embodied pain and hurt and anger and confusion that was underlying these relational dynamics. But like everyone else listening, I would go into my head and I would spend hours up there talking about how this is Jen's fault, and looking at what she is doing and what she isn't doing and how it impacts. I could have spent the entire time in thought land, which is what everyone does, because almost everyone is disembodied.

And what would've eventually happened, by the way, if that's all I did, is I would've perfected my argument that it's all Jen's fault. Because it is, by the way, Jen. Obviously. And then, like Jen's friend, if you can't heal your own wound, you have to pull the dagger out that you think is causing it, which in this case, Jen's friend fired her because she can't handle her own wound. So she had to pull out the thing that she thought was causing it. Which, by the way, was stimulating it, but it's not causing it. So even that ability at the end where I finally saw that statement: I will never forgive a woman that was supposed to love me, that hurt me. But I could feel the anger and the loathing and the viciousness behind it. It wasn't just intellectual. I mean, it was Gollum level. Then it was also that somatic resource of my own strength, the somatic resource of my own resilience, the somatic resource of where I had been able to restrain behavior that hurt people before in the past, that allowed me, and Jen actually will say this, to shift rather quickly.

So what we're out in the world to teach is to put people into that embodied conversation, which is often called unconscious so that people think they need hypno for it, and I'm fine with hypno. 

So that's what The Secret Language of the Body teaches you. It teaches you how to regulate your nervous system, but by speaking that non-verbal, embodied language.

Then to learn more, we're all over Instagram. That's our home. Our business is Somia International, @SomiaInternational. Jen is @IAmJenMann, and I am @KardenRabin. And we're always giving out the goods on there.

And spell the name of your business, so people know.

SomiaInternational.com, which somia is a play on soma: the body. Then also, we didn't touch on it much. Jen spoke to it a bit. But what we specialize in, more than anything, is help people healing the chronic illnesses and symptoms. We talked all about relational behavior here. But the chronic illness and symptoms that derive from these things, that's what our online course and program leads people through. It's called The Heal Program.

Wonderful. Jen, any comment here?

I was going to say, and the next episode is going to be all about how all of this has mapped onto our spouses, and how that helped map on additional layers in our romantic and sexual relationships. At least in my experience, it's been profoundly eye-opening. When I'm in another room, I tell Karden, my husband is a day trader, and he has a circle. Since my work, he's been really interested in especially neuro-linguistic programming and how language really affects thinking and feeling and emotions. I'll hear him from another room, and he's asking these guys who are trading. They're interested in making money, and they're like, tell us the strategy. And I'll hear it from the other room and he's like: You know, when you feel an emotion that is related to stress. And I'm like, yes! Karden, I don't know if I told you, but he's been doing some perceptual positioning from the course that he did, which is like a form of brain retraining, with these guys—men and women, but mainly men—that he mentors in trading. I think it's so cool.

That awareness, and Karden will speak for himself, but that awareness in our romantic relationship has so helped our awareness match a little bit more. Because I was a little bit advantaged, because I had more traumas, more crazy stuff happen in my life. And my husband had a bit more of a balanced experience. So he was like, I don't know what you're talking about. I was like, but you're angry right now. So that kind of relational, how Karden and my experience is. So for anyone listening, your relationships—friends, business, family, romantic—it really can map onto your original attachment styles and wounds and how you deal with stress. It's so fascinating and so amazing when you can tune into that awareness, and how much can change in your life and those of others around you.

Well, I want to just acknowledge what you're describing, and you both have said that relationship is so much. There's this interconnectedness, and that when we heal, we have a healing impact on a bigger collective, I believe, we heal all. Also, as we do healing work in one relationship, that it elevates and it helps us evolve, I think, in our consciousness all around, as a collective.

Jessica, energetically and practically. If Jen and I did not heal this, then our work in the world might wither.

Yes, okay. Well, stay tuned! I'll make sure to have all the links you mentioned on today's show notes. I just hope and trust that people who are resonating really just turn to your guidance, in navigating all that gets activated in the system, and what cues or signals the body is sending, and how to utilize so much of this as an opportunity for growth and healing.

Thank you, Jessica.

Thank you, Jessica.

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