Transcription
[Music] hello again and welcome back. i'm dr. kate truett, and in this video, i'm going to introduce you to a protocol that i've created to help calm our little friend amy in a moment of disturbance or distress, so that she has spaciousness and doesn't feel compelled to keep sending up warning signs, bringing in more fear-based grenades, or even hijacking our mind and our body.
this protocol is called cpr for the amygdala. cpr stands for creating personal resiliency. and what we're doing when we're doing cpr for the amygdala is basically showing our mind and our body that we have the opportunity for healing in our own hands and within that agency, so that we are once again always showing our brain and our body that, hey, we're in charge. i see you. thank you for the data, and let's learn and grow through this that phoenix process.
cpr for the amygdala is composed of a series of steps and is designed to be utilized in a moment where amy sends up a yellow flag of warning. usually, as humans, we will typically go, "hey, yellow flag, i don't have time for you," and we will try to shush amy or get her to step out of the way so we can keep doing what we're doing. or else, we will buy into that yellow flag and go, "you're right, amy, this is a fear-based experience," and that gossip cycle of the working memory and the amygdala will begin.
so, in any moment of perceived distress, what we want to do instead is go, "hi, amy." we want to attune to the yellow flag that our amygdala is giving us, whether that be a thought, a felt sense, or even just a noticing of your muscles tensing. that's your amygdala going, "hey, there's something off here." once we've attuned to that, then we're going to take a ranking of basically an emotional pain scale and say, on a scale of zero to ten, where would i rank myself in this moment? the reason we're doing that is we're not only telling amy, "hey, i see you," we're also learning about our brain and our body and guiding ourselves into deeper relationship with that part of the brain i mentioned earlier, the insula. that's the part of the brain that supports communication through between our brain and our body, and the more in relationship we are with our brain and our body, the better we are at developing resiliency as well as healing skills.
once we have that zero to ten scale, we apply the self-havening touch, and i'll introduce what that is in just a moment. and then we're going to give our thinking brain a different job. just like we've talked about, we're going to say, "hey, let's play a brain game or sing a song," and we're going to do three different brain activities. and then we'll check back in on that stress or disturbance that's coming up and get another ranking. and then, if we're still at a higher level than maybe a one or two on the pain scale, we'll repeat the process until our amygdala feels calm.
when we're doing this, we're not only supporting our system and saying, "hey, i see you," we're actually proactively depotentiating or turning off encoded experiences that the amygdala is utilizing in our day-to-day life to influence the way our brain is functioning.
so, let's revisit our little brain here and imagine that you're walking through your day-to-day life and a stimulus trigger shows up. now, i mentioned before, it could be something like a text message that comes through, but it can also be something as small as the cork of an eyebrow on somebody's face where your amygdala goes, "oof, i know what that cork means. that means i'm in trouble or somebody's upset with me." tightening in a jaw, a tone of voice. our amygdala, again, is really, really sensitive to the five senses, and what she's seeing, smelling, tasting, hearing, touching. and those five senses become her core truth in any perceived experience of threat, whether it be threat real-time right now or threat tied to the past.
once she's noticed that threat, if we don't pay attention to that yellow flag and go, "hey, amy, i see you," and do some cpr for the amygdala like we've talked about, she can then move into a state of hijacking our system, whether it be through gossiping with other anti-receptors or feeling compelled to throw more and more grenades at your thinking brain until finally she takes over, and we're in a state of rumination, or we're in a state of amygdala hijack, that emotional truth where our thinking brain, everything we know, isn't available to our brain and our body. we don't want that. we want to be operating the world through a self-space. and every moment a yellow flag comes up is an opportunity. we're turning challenges into opportunities on a day-to-day basis, and cpr for the amygdala is one of the core ways in which we do that.
so, what is the self-havening touch? what do we do when we're upset? we might hug ourselves or hug a friend, perhaps put our hand on somebody's shoulder, go, "hey, are you okay?" running your hand down their arm, well, hold hands with somebody. or if somebody's sick or unwell, we might hold their hand gently and say, "hey, i see you. what's going on?" all of these experiences actually shift our brain and our body into what's known as a delta wave state. that's a very slow, sleepy brain wave state. in fact, it's a state we go into when we are in deep sleep, and our brain is reconsolidating memories. this slow brainwave state releases different neural chemicals such as serotonin, that happy neuromodulator, gaba neurotransmitter that calms us down. if you've ever heard of gabapentin, that's why that medication exists. it's to calm the system down. and it also releases oxytocin, which is a very feel-good connection hormone. so, these are all very good experiences that we're giving our brain when we are participating in the self-havening touch.
the self-havening touch is four different distinct touches, and we have brain wave research to indicate that these four areas release the system into this delta wave state at a much greater level than any other touches that we know of. the first one is part of me, i just noticed what my photo shows is the first one. it's as though we're just giving ourselves a nice gentle hug, like we've been talking about or you've seen me model multiple times already. the second is called palm havening. now, if you saw those memes come out on facebook and social media at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, you might have noticed that that's exactly what those memes were doing. we're going to palm haven. yes, sing songs, give our brain a different job. now, was that intentional by the world health organization or cdc? no. and were we all quite delighted to see those memes going around and knowing that everybody was regulating their nervous system in a time of fear? you betcha.
the final two touches are right across the brow. now, they're very similar to what we might do if we have a tension headache or we're wiping tears. these are soothing touches that are built into our organism to create calm, to create relaxation, and to create connection. now, as you continue to learn about your mind and body and relationship with the self-havening touch, you might find over the course of time that one of the touches appeals to you more than the others. we call that the sweet spot. for me, it's definitely my arms. so, as you continue to practice cpr for the amygdala, notice if you have a sweet spot. if you do, when you come in and start doing your work with your clinician, or as you start to move into relationship with yourself through the course of your work, let your team member that you're working with know, "hey, i found my sweet spot." and that will be an area that will be prioritized when you're doing deeper level work in terms of trauma reprocessing, as well as enhancing your neuroplasticity and doing that, what should have been but wasn't, building the neural pathways work. the sweet spot is a way of saying, "yes, amy, i know that that's a really special spot for you," and really honoring her.
now, let's unpack why we use distractions and what type of distractions we're looking for. so, we already know that we want to give that working memory a different job. and working memory, in addition to just holding what five to seven plus or minus two bits of data at any given time, has a couple of different components. and as you see this slide, what i want you to pay attention to is here, this phonological loop, which is an auditory component. remember the senses of the amygdala? those five senses. our working memory has sensory components too. so, the phonological loop. we have our episodic buffer, which is a timekeeper. remember, i talked about amy doesn't keep time? well, we can utilize the working memory to give her a sense of time. it's a beautiful hack. and we also have the visuospatial sketchpad. that's what we see. that's how our brain is making sense of our vision components.
as the amygdala and the working memory are participating in their gossip cycle or having healthy communication, so as we're building our distraction inventory, we want to have safe distractions that aren't going to give our amygdala any diff any additional information to be worried about. we don't want to give her more things to send up flags about. and we also want to bring as much as we can into our distraction inventory that includes both audio components and visual components, as well as time components. now, we don't have to do all three, and you know, it's just a little bit deeper of a cognitive load if we're able to identify safe distractions for ourselves that do bring all three into our processing experience. most importantly, and more so than anything else, is to build a personalized inventory that is specific to experiences that are meaningful to you, or at minimally neutral.
and when you start practicing this, we do recommend going in a sequence of three different brain games at any diff at any given time. an easy structure to start is, as you can see written here, one movement. you might imagine you're bouncing a basketball 20 times, and if you can't count out loud while you bounce the basketball, or go a to z and find a band for every letter of the alphabet, or perhaps a place in the world for every letter of the alphabet. and then you might do it counting intervals. we have some engineers that we work with who love starting at great big numbers such as 24,362 and counting backwards by 27, and they'll use that as a distraction. all the while that you're doing your brain games, you're going to be applying the self-havening touch because we're always soothing our amygdala and giving our working memory a different job at the same time.
now, i did mention that we want to be mindful to pay attention to and rank where we are at any given moment. and so that is the suds that we talked about, subjective units of distress. where is my brain and my body in relationship to this distress that i'm feeling right now? and if a zero is completely zen, and then a ten is the most activation i've ever felt my entire life, we're just going to note that. and we can write note it mentally, or even write it down. and then once we've noted that, we'll go into our distractions and our self-havening touch. you'll see that i've created a little scale here, and so zero is like, yeah, we're good. and a ten is, "oof, no, we're this is awful for me." sometimes that's what it feels like if i'm having an adult temper tantrum and i just want to flail my arms and kick my heels and pound on the floor, going, "this is a terrible world. why is this happening?" and in those moments, i do cpr for the amygdala and tell them like, and then i'm like, "okay, world, i understand why this is happening, and thank you for amy for letting me know what's going on."
the more that you do cpr for the amygdala, you'll notice that you will end up at the ten with significantly less frequency because you're proactively healing amy every time you do cpr for the amygdala.
in our next video, i will unpack the second component of our at-home brain care process. that's called the creating possibilities protocol, which utilizes neuroplasticity to build those experiences that we want the thalamus to access on a regular basis. i look forward to seeing you there.
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