Understand The Biology Of Connection & Apply The 5% Rule

How else might you know if you have a chronic freeze response and live disconnected from your body? You push your body. You don’t like to feel certain ways. You don’t like to feel tired. You don’t like to feel lonely or feel discouraged. You don’t like to feel that you’re not good enough. And so you do things in order to not feel. You reach for the caffeine, you reach for the exercise, you reach for anything that will not have you actually feeling your body but allow you to push your body. You may wake up not wanting to get up. You want to stay in bed, you don’t want to start this day. You already feel overwhelmed by your day. You’re already overwhelmed by the problems that you’re going to face in your day. And you go through your day from one task to another, multitasking without even thinking about it. And when you do stop to rest, you feel exhausted. Resting, in fact, is not comfortable because you start to feel the exhaustion underneath it. You may even have diseases that are associated with a chronic freeze state, specifically autoimmunity, chronic pain, fatigue, GI symptoms, chronic constipation, chronic IBS, chronic diarrhea, metabolic syndrome, and any inflammation based chronic diseases. These are all diseases associated with a chronic freeze response, including addictions. Disconnect is at the root of all of these conditions, and addiction is one of those. Now, whether you identify with having an addiction or not, you will be able to get so much out of this interview because you will relate to just living disconnected at the end of this interview. 

Joe Polish breaks it down in a way that I love. Where to start to build connection when you have been living disconnected? How to build that connection? He talks about 5% that I found very helpful and shows you where to start to apply that 5% in your life. Because when it hasn’t felt safe to connect, we can’t just connect. We actually have to make it safe to connect first. And while you may think that means telling yourself that you are safe, we are back in our heads already. We actually have to create a felt sense of safety for ourselves. There is a three step essential sequence to connecting, to addressing stored trauma in the body, and safety is step number one. Support is step number two, and expansion is step number three. You cannot do those out of order and expect to be successful connection. We create a felt sense of safety and we do that through connection, but we do it in a safe way that keeps things manageable because then when we really get to that place where we are able to make ourselves feel safe, feel supported, we can then go into expansion. And that’s really where connection can take off because I can only connect with you as much as I am connected with myself. I can only be present for you to the degree that I am present for myself. The biology of connection is a biology of safety. It is the opposite of this disconnect. It is the opposite of stored trauma. It is the opposite of feeling lost, alone and unsafe. We cannot be in a chronic free state and be connected. 

They are complete opposites. Later on, I’ll be teaching you the three states of the nervous system. Disconnect only happens in this chronic free state, not in the other two. So if you are looking to build your connection, you will enjoy this interview. My guest speaker for this topic of connection is none other than Joe Polish. Now, let me tell you about Joe Polish. He is the founder of Genius Network, one of the highest level groups in the world for entrepreneurs. He also curates the Annual Genius Network event and the 100 K Group, $100,000 Genius Network and 100 kids home to some of the most successful entrepreneurs alive. Joe has also helped build thousands of businesses and generated hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients. He has been featured in a number of places, but what I want to bring home to you is that he started out living life very disconnected. He has learned how to become and live connected. He has a whole documentary called Connected, and as a result of that, this is what he’s been able to do. And he’s able to bring the science of connection to the work that he does. And that’s why he’s been so successful then in business and networking and then helping other people learn how to connect in order to have more successful businesses as well. I’m so anxious to get started with this interview, so let’s dove in with Joe Polish. Joe, I want to thank you so much for coming on. And one of the things that you’ve said, it was in relationship to the documentary on Connected and you said, if I don’t get the hell out of this place, I’m going to die.

Joe Polish

Yeah.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

And that is a statement that so many people can relate to. And they’ve been in that place, whether it’s with their physical health or a job or a family, not just childhood, but certainly that can be a big part of it. This idea that if I don’t get the hell out of here, I’m going to die.

Joe Polish

Yeah.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

And you related it to having lived disconnected for so long and knowing that that was no longer an option for you. If you wanted to have a life.

Joe Polish

Yeah I do.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

Yeah. What made you change that?

Joe Polish

Well, I wish I could say I was deeply inspired. Most of it’s just flat out desperation. Like it’s a survival instinct, right? Sometimes we’re pursuing aspiration and pleasure and achievement and dreams in a good way. Other times we’re trying to escape a nightmare. You know, we’re often trying to enhance a great life. Other times, we’re just trying to survive a miserable one and get into a place to where the hopelessness is not so, quote unquote hopeless, where you feel there are no other options except to either completely numb out or to no longer exist and no longer existing can come, you know, in the worst places, hurting others and then hurting yourself, killing others, killing yourself or, you know, doing something about it. And so there’s and oftentimes, if you don’t know what to do, what do you do? Right. So being in a place where you’re just lost the human spirit and the human drive is very interesting. You know, I often wonder, even with the, you know, two or three decades now that I’ve been in recovery and many years of my life being a functional addict, it often makes me wonder, what is it about some people where they actually make it through and others that do not? Because, you know, I mean, I’ve definitely had my struggle and I’m happy to share anything you want to talk about. 

And I also want to preface it by saying every single person listening or watching into this has gone through pain. I mean, the human experience is a lot of pain and a lot of suffering. And almost everyone has had a betrayal or some sort of physical, mental sexual abuse or some sort of abandonment. And all of those things disconnect people from themselves and from others. And if you stay disconnected for a long period of time, you either don’t recover and you’re in, you know, some dark place mentally or physically. Some people use it as resilience as others use it to resent and hate the world and feel hopeless and feel that they can never overcome stuff. But, you know, why do some people have that sort of pilot light inside them that no matter how low it gets, they can somehow be a Phoenix rising from the ashes and others just self-destruct and oftentimes hurt others around them. So, you know, for me, what I want to preface to is that none of this is about getting caught up in wound. I’m happy to talk about trauma. I believe addiction is a response to trauma. You know, like my friend Dr. Gabor Marty, who you’ve had as part of this summit, you know, his question is not why the addiction, but why the pain? Everybody has pain in a certain way.

Some people deal with their pain in different ways. Addiction is one of those. And trauma is really the cause of so much of it. And then, of course, biochemical dopamine, serotonin, things like that. I have a friend named Dr. Ana Lemke who wrote a book called Dopamine Nation that explains a lot of the biochemical aspects of of craving and why people seek things out. So I believe, you know, the chemistry, the hormones and trauma are the causes of addiction. And saying all that, there’s a lot of people that use trauma as their excuse for not healing, their excuse for not taking responsibility. So when I was in active addiction and very disconnected, I would react to life when I was in recovery and I’m doing well. I respond to life, which means responding with ability, being responsible. So what I hope everyone gets out of anything I say or anyone that you have had as a guest and throughout this whole summit is to not minimize the painful things that have happened to them. Pick up solutions on what to do about it, but also be responsible. Don’t use it as a cop out. Don’t use your traumas and your pains that you know you can’t do something about it because we have to be able to resource ourselves and confidence feels good when we’re confident about something. It feels really good. Courage rarely feels good, and when you’re in a bad place in life, you oftentimes have to just you have to operate with courage, encourages and feel good. 

You know, like my friend Dan Sullivan says, you know, fear is wetting your pants. Courage is doing what you need to do with weapons. And so, you know, we’re all going to PR pants. It’s something metaphorically speaking, sometimes we’re actually really PR pants. But the thing is, is what you do about it. So muster up that courage, be responsible and the weird ways that you often get there or counterintuitive. Sometimes if you feel like your life sucks and it feels hopeless. And I say this when I say you want to talk talking about me, right? Because everything that the only thing that I can speak to is my own perception, to my own reflection. The world is, you know, if I felt like my life is terrible and I get into places where, oh, god, you know, one of the ways is the best to help me out is to help someone else. And that doesn’t mean because you can’t fix the world with broken hands. That doesn’t mean if you’re really hurt, go out and help a really hurt person. But don’t hurt yourself. I’m not talking about being a martyr and, you know, I’m just talking about having an attitude of giving and caring and compassion. 

Because if you’re sitting next to someone that’s on their deathbed and you’re taking care of someone that is there ain’t no coming back. There died. They’re hurt, you know? I mean, I’ve been the caretaker to one of my parents. Both my parents died. But one of my father, you know, my mother died when I was four years old. My father died when he was 73. And that was looking back, you know, over 20 years ago now. And when you’re sitting with someone that they’re not going to get better in terms of living, sometimes the best thing you can do is just be a companion for them and people that are really hurt and really in pain and they feel they have nothing left to give. If you’ve got love and compassion and empathy in your heart, you got so much to give. And sometimes the person you need to give it to is yourself. So that’s a hard thing to do. But anyway, that, that’s what real in order to be connected with others, you have to get connected with yourself in you know, as the saying goes, the opposite of addiction is connection. And so addiction is a connection disorder.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

You know, as I listen to you talk, I realize how much I have brought in the principles of recovery, 12 step recovery into trauma work that I do. And one of the agreements that I have, I have five agreements for my entry level course and one of those agreements is personal responsibility Joe.

Joe Polish

Yeah.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

Let’s start with that. You are responsible for your reactions. You are responsible for your problems, your moods don’t put that on me because I’m not here to blame you for my stuff and I’m not here to save you from your stuff. And yet that’s such a turnaround from a trauma place that many people get where they’re looking for that someone else to come and save them. They’re looking for that someone else to do things for them. And they do. They get stuck. And one of the things that you’ve said here is that ability to connect with yourself. And what I’d love for you to speak to is how do people even feel safe, get to that place where they can feel safe to start that connection? Because looking at your life experiences, those led you to be disconnected in order to survive that period of your life. Yeah. And so how was that process of reconnecting and starting to feel safe, creating that safety for you to start to feel and build that connection with yourself?

Joe Polish

Yeah. Okay. So it could be oftentimes complex. So let me take a complex subject and try to add as much, at least simplicity and ease to it so that someone is listening. This can actually really kind of understand it because so much of this is happening on the unconscious level. I mean, you know, we the smarter the person is that I have found in recovery, the harder it is for them to recover because they think they can think their way out of it. Right. So everyone that’s listening to these conversations you’re having is probably going to learn some perspective and learn some methodologies and learn some things. What I’ve learned in recovery, though, is unlearning is more important than learning. So if you feel unsafe in the world, do you feel messed up? It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are because feelings are not facts. I could feel like I’m having a really bad day, but if I really take my mood and you know, maybe lack of sleep or overwhelm or whatever is going on, I could be doing amazing or I could be doing amazing feeling like I’m doing amazing in my life could be in shambles. So for one, feelings are not facts, right? So just because you feel crappy doesn’t mean your life is crappy. You may feel crappy in the moment, so knowing that this is not a forever sentence whenever you’re in a hopeless or difficult sort of situation. Okay, that’s the first thing. 

The other in terms of feeling safe is what self esteem is domain dependent. As an example, we feel higher self esteem in different domains. When I was a drug addict and my worst stages being a drug addict, I was 18 years old. I weighed 105 pounds  one week because I was freebasing cocaine literally every day for almost three and a half months straight. And during one of those periods, I had hardly anything. Now, during that time, I weighed about 120 pounds, but there was one week where I got down to 105 pounds. I weighed myself on a scale. And when you’re a male in your five, ten and you weigh 105 pounds, that is I was a rail. I was I was just so I looked like, you know, I just looked horrible. Right. And I was I mean, my look, I remember looking in the mirror and I felt like I’m looking at a skeleton with skin and eyeballs bulging out. And it’s also interesting when I think about it, because it seemed like a whole nother life, like it wasn’t even me, but it was me. It was a part of me and it was part of my conscious. And since there was a really dark place and you know, so during that period of time I was really messed up and I ended up getting a job selling gym membership, gym memberships a few months later. And I added a little bit of weight because I escaped where I was at in Arizona by moving to New Mexico. All of my friends that did drugs, everyone that was around that was doing drugs, I was dealing drugs in order to, you know, be a drug addict. 

That’s how, you know, people like how do you afford the drugs? Well, when you’re a drug addict, everyone you know is probably doing drugs, right? Your whole life is built around the addiction. And so I went to New Mexico and I ended up getting a job, eventually selling gym memberships to the health club. And I would see these big bodybuilders or people that were, you know, we would call them meat heads and different things like that. And I became friends with a lot of them. They were just the king of the king or the queen of the gym. Right? The ones that were really good physical shape. But I was also going to college, never got a degree in anything. I was just you know, I went to New Mexico State University for a couple of years in Las Cruces, New Mexico. And I used to sell gym memberships at this place called Tom Young’s Health and Fitness. And that was years ago in the eighties. And these people that were lifting weights, they ruled the gym. But you put those same people in the nightclub and they seemed so out of place. There were so awkward and weird that they, you know, it’s like, this is not my place. But you take the same people with partiers in the nightclub or at the bars, and I’d see once in a while they would show up at the gym and they they’d like felt so out of place. 

And I realize there are certain environments where we have esteem. So when someone feels connected, there’s environments that we feel connected to disconnected based on the Rat Park studies that Dr. Bruce Alexander did, you know, Rat Park and you probably have had someone on the summit maybe that’s talked about that. If you have, I’m happy to talk about it. It’s like you put a rat in a cage and it’s just a cage in isolation. They’re going to do drugs over food, over sex, over sleep until they die. You put them in another environment, you know, where they have red balls and blue balls and they have other rats where they can have companionship and they can have sex. And you have things where they can physically do. Given the choice of regular water, drug water, they don’t drink the drug water. Right. And so the question is, is it the you know, is it the drugs or is it the cage? Is it the behaviors of the cage? And so the so when someone’s feeling disconnected, go to nature, go to your body, go to something, anything that you can, any sort of domain where you can esteem yourself, where you can resource yourself. That’s why 12 steps or any sort of healthy communities for recovery are important because you’re seeking your secrets for one. And silent battles is the hardest battles to fight. So if you’re in a silent battle, you need to go and talk to somebody or find resources. And that’s especially hard and I understand that when someone feels really like the last thing you want to do when you’re isolating is to go talk to someone. 

That’s why it’s called isolation. You know, however, you got to be aware of the fact that you’re in a pattern, you’re in some sort of escape thing because you’re feeling unsafe. And I’ll say, you know, I was a sex addict. I was one of my core addictions and a work addict and a drug addict because there’s probably no such thing as just a pure alcoholic. I mean, that just happens to be the way that they’re scratching the itch. And when you say sex addict, that conjures up, oh, you know, pervert or porn or whatever, having affairs or whatever. There is many different forms of sexual addiction. I mean, one of the top doctors, you know, in sex addiction is my friend Pat Cards, and he’s identified 240 different ways that you can sexually act out. I believe me, I can think of about 50, but I don’t know where the other words come from. But there’s a lot. And so sex addiction, though, like all addictions, there’s binging in there’s purging. A big form of sex addiction for some people is the inability to have sexual pleasure. It’s deprivation. So all forms of addiction have either excess or deprivation. Right. And where people can’t allow themselves to feel love, to feel pleasure, and that’s where they’ll get into thing that cause pain or they’ll get in different ways. 

But my favorite definition of intimacy, and this applies to everything with connection, it was given to me by an 80 year old gay man that I never met in person, just talked to him over the phone because a person that I was working with in recovery said really met this really smart guy. I love for you to talk with him. And I, I’d spoken with him this is years ago and he said to me, intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place in addictions or what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don’t have a safe place. So intimacy is a mutual exploration of a safe place. So you safety comes from an intimacy comes from feeling okay together with someone in that house. All says do it yourself if you get abused or any sort of deprivation or abandonment or hurt, sometimes abuse could be very hardcore physical violence. Other times it could just be being belittled. It could be witnessing something that a child or, you know, people should not witness. There’s that same that often goes around in 12 step groups. You know, God never gives us more than we can handle. Well, you know, rehab centers and treatment centers and hospitals are filled with people who’ve got more than they can handle. Humans get more than they can handle and they break down. That’s why people that show up and can just be there, that are the givers, that are the compassionate ones, are so critically important. 

And what I always try to get people to see is you have that in you. You have that in you. Of course you do. You wouldn’t be alive if you didn’t have that in you. So can you resource it? And so going back to the definition of, you know, intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place in addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don’t have a safe place. So the question is, before you start going down that path, what else can you do to feel safe and okay? And if you make that other choice when you’re in a place where you can make a choice because I don’t believe addiction is a choice. There is a moment, though, where you can pause and you can say, okay, can I even tap into the consequences of this decision? Can I do something else? How can I connect with anything? An animal, a pet, a person, a spiritual practice, breathing, meditation, yoga, productive activity. You know something? And that’s where we find connection. And, you know, it’s I’m not going to pretend it’s easy when you’re in a dark place because it’s not. However, what’s the alternative? You know, it ain’t easy being in a dark place in ain’t easy being depressed. And if you’re depressed, you’ve got to generate something else because you are generating your body. Your being is generating the negative feelings like winners find ways to win and losers find ways to lose. 

What are the winning formulas that you know? What are the things that you could employ? And if you’re at a loss for that, that’s when it’s time to go talk to someone else. That’s when it’s time to show up at a 12 step meeting. And all the people that bash 12 step meetings or meetings don’t work and all that stuff. I’ve had that conversation a thousand times. I wrote a book, one of the book I’ve written two books on addiction recovery. One of them is The Miracle Morning for Addiction Recovery. I did with Hal Elrod and Andy David. The other one is understanding addiction and recovery. And I talk about four things you need to get sober and stay sober. The first is community. That’s where 12 steps come in. The second is it’s bio, it’s biochemical, it’s nutrition. It’s things that you know a lot about, you know, dopamine, supplementation, good foods. The third is it’s doing the trauma work. That’s where breathing, meditation, the proper use of of plant medicine, somatic therapy, anything that gets you into a flow state flow is the ultimate form of connection. And the fourth is the environment. So 12 steps is just one part. You don’t hear a lot about eating well in 12 steps unless you talk to someone. You don’t hear a lot about trauma, but they do a really good job with community. It’s free, it’s available everywhere. So people that bash 12 steps, I usually say, you know, you went to 12 steps and they didn’t work. Did you do the steps? 

Many will say no. So you just sat in the meetings? Yeah, I went to meetings. I didn’t like it. Why? I go that’s like going to a gym, sitting on a bench and then saying gyms don’t work. You would never say Jim’s don’t work, but they will work if you lift the weights, the work, if you go to the class, you’ll get better physically. But, you know, it’s it only works if you work it. And that’s with anything. And the hardest thing, like if I could just sum up all the advice and suggestions and recommendations and methodologies of all the different people you’re going to talk to during the summit. Is this compliance? Pick one thing, anything and just do it and don’t give up it in your mind before you’ve even tried it. And don’t just do it one or two times you. That’s why they have things in 12 steps, you know, 90 meetings in 90 days. Go to the first six meetings and make no judgments. You may hate them all, but you know what? You probably won’t hate them. You’ll actually find people that in feel that, Wow, I’m not alone in this because that which is most private or seems most private is actually most public. The things that most people think they’re the, only one that they’re struggling with, you’d be surprised, is probably a millions of people on the planet that are going through something very similar to in your mind. No one would understand I’ve done or what’s done to me and I can’t talk about it. You got to get over that. That’s just that part of you that wants to hold on to the pain.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

Though, Joe, when addictions are what we do to feel good, when we’ve lost our safe space and with the world that we have where we don’t have community, our biochemistry is often imbalanced all over the place. We’re not doing our trauma work and our environment is so rushed and always constantly giving us the feedback that, Hey, there’s danger all around. We are creating a society of functional addicts.

Joe Polish

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, there’s I mean, believe me, with even the last three years in the world, with the pandemic and the fear porn that shoved out at people and the propaganda and the leaders that are lying to people and the terrible role models that many young people have and the focus on status and social media and the illusions of someone’s life is somehow better than yours. We’re becoming a very disconnected generational trauma. There’s a lot of work cut out for people that know how to help people with addiction. I mean, as you know, and it’s unfortunate. I mean, I wish I could eradicate it. You know, I have a foundation called Genius Recovery. And the goal of genius recovery is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and in share with the world. Just, you know, whatever I discover that’s helpful. Try to share with people and to get people to quit looking at people that are in pain as these moral degenerates. But look at people with compassion and empathy. And I hope people can do that with themselves first and see that man, you know, witness your own pain and be a companion to other people that that have it. 

But yeah, there’s a lot of it out there and it is unfortunately in this there’s always bad in the world and there’s always bad that’s happening in different places. And there’s also amazing, wonderful things. We just happen to be in a place where there’s a psychic war and there is a forces that are really at work to disconnect people from themselves and others and, you know, be a connection warrior as best one can and to yeah. Because it’s the world needs it right now. It’s pretty dark in some places. And I say that not to be negative because there’s an amazing recovery. And the beauty of it I never thought I would look back in my life when I used to literally pay for sex because when I was raped and molested as a kid, I was paid money not to say anything. And it wired in my head that sex is shameful and dirty unless you pay for it to be that shamed, that the ability to even be with another person intimately would just evoke guilt, shame, resentment, low self-worth, self-hatred, kid. And then to one day get to a place where it’s like, you know, I understand how I can use that to do something better with my life and to help other people that are going through that same stuff. Not that I would wish that on my that younger version of me, because there’s not a day that’s gone by in my life that I don’t get reminded of the scar tissue of that. And I’m still a work in progress and I’m still working through it. And even, you know, it took years for me to get to a place where I even had any real sense of appreciation for myself. I could say the words, but deep down inside I never was like, you know, God, I’m really like me. You know, I feel tainted. I feel like just messed up. 

And now I would not want to trade places with any other human on the planet than me, you know, even with a lot of my dysfunctions and stuff, because I do my best to wake up every day and just try to live a good life and care about people and do good in the world. And I do. And there was a time where I didn’t feel that way and there was a time where I was not very productive. And, you know, I don’t think I hurt many people. And I say that with a sense of how do I know that? Right. Because, you know, and I’m not saying it from a codependent place. I mean, I anyone that I’m aware of that I’ve heard and there’s a lot of people I hurt, but I’ve made amends to those people. And none of it, though, was like, let me figure out how to mess this person over. I mean, in some people, they are in that place. I mean, they get a real they get a real joy out of causing pain to other people and in those people need unfortunately, they need love and care like anyone else does. It doesn’t mean you should be, you know, the one that has to do that. Because I want to make sure that everyone here hears this with boundaries. It’s this. I have a friend named Dr. Don Wood, and he says, If you understood the atmosphere, conditions of somebody’s life, it would make sense why they do what it is they do. And so I believe that makes doesn’t excuse bad behavior, doesn’t excuse hurting people. It just gives you an awareness that when I look back at the atmospheric conditions in my life, it used to be a storm. And the beauty is with the work and with the connectivity, you can change your atmospheric conditions. You can not only change the atmospheric conditions of your own life, so you can go from maybe a complete tsunami to a calm, peaceful place at times. You can also change the atmospheric conditions of the community of the world around you. And I think everyone has way more power and impact than they could even possibly imagine.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

And that’s what I’d love for you to tap into next, is with what you’ve done with your own work. I see that you’ve continued to do layers of it and it’s come in layers. And with each layer I’ve seen you grow into a new level of connection. And my guess is that when you were first starting, you didn’t even know the level of connection that was possible to have because you’d never experienced it before. And so looking back on your life, could you share with people what were the different levels of connection that you grew into along your journey and what is possible like what is the possibility for connection even when the beginnings of our life were extremely disconnected because of our environment?

Joe Polish

Yeah, well, I heard a scene early on when I was in my twenties, which was be nice to the people that you meet on the way up because they’re the same people you meet on the way down, right? So part of it is what I would recommend for people is make a list of every person project thing. It could be an animal, any sort of been in any sort of activity or any sort of belief or cause that you that makes your heart sink. Like think of who are the people that you want to be a hero to? Who are the people that are already heroes to you that you already have a relationship with? And if you were to say, how can I become 5% more connected to John or Julie or my mom or my pet Chihuahua? Like, what would I need to do? And if you just start utilizing all of the people so you don’t use people, utilize people, don’t let people use you, let them utilize you. And if there are people that you can’t get out of your life, that they’re a pain in the ass, just remember that everyone has a purpose in life, even if it’s a service, a bad example. So use all of the pain in the ass people in your life just as a practice to teach you resilience, patience, resourcefulness, ingenuity. You’re going to run a car across narcissistic, sociopathic, psychopathic people do your best to put barriers up. 

If some of them are family members or you’re married to them or they happen to be, your children do the best you can. I know that’s tough. I know there’s a lot of people that are in situations that are very hard to escape from. So I know, like, it’s real easy for someone to say, Oh, you should just leave this sort of thing. And people have, well, here’s 101 reasons why I can’t well, there’s also probably one or two things that you can do to improve your situation and protect yourself. Right. So part of it is look at everyone. You’re already connected with and you already appreciate. And how can you make yourself 5% more connected? Not like 100, not double, just a little bit. Because that gives your brain the ability to come up with solutions and also think about how do you solve one problem that will solve ten other problems? And oftentimes, people, you know, my world is helping with addictions and helping entrepreneurs. And I you know, I work with a lot of very successful people and they’ll often come up with they’ll be spending money and time because I say, Tammy, your Tammy, your time, attention, money, effort and energy, that’s what you can spend. And if you don’t have a lot of money, if you don’t have any money, you got time, you got attention, you got effort, you got energy. And effort is your responsibility. So you need to put the effort into the right sort of things. And a lot of people, they may have a tremendous amount of money and they’re trying to buy their way out of all these problems and they have all these challenges and are overwhelmed. 

You’re like, Well, how’s your sleep? It sucks, you know, because I say that because I have bad sleep at times, right? It’s like, but if I solve sleep for if I’m having a bunch of problems out today and I’m tired, I guarantee you if I better sleep the next night, ten of those problems are going to go away. So think of the problems that actually you get high leverage from. What are the relationships you get high leverage from? And part of being connected and caring about yourself is not letting the life that you have be squandered by nonsense, you know? And so think of what are the problems that that you could solve that are solvable that you can make progress an improvement on. And who are the people that give you the highest leverage instead of saying, I need to go out and do all these really challenging things? Actually, no, you don’t. You can. It’s oftentimes what are the little hinges that swing big doors, you know, what are the little things that you can do? And the other thing I’ll tell people is like once you made a list of all those people, give them appreciation. Just say, hey, I made a tell them what you did. I was sitting there making a list of everyone that I feel really connected to, and I want to deepen that. And I’m just reaching out to you because I’m just trying an exercise right now. I heard this weird guy on a, you know, a trauma summit, you know, talk about, you know, making a list of people that you’re connected to. And I just wanted to I thought of you because you’re important to me, and I just want to say thank you. And you don’t need I don’t need you to. This is not like you need to say I love you back or I think that’s really great. I just want to express it to you. And then as a matter of fact, you don’t need to say anything because I’m practicing right now on being more assertive with my ability to connect. 

And you be surprised if you blow people away because hardly anyone does stuff like that. You know, I’ll tell young people that want to have a bigger network in business, do you know five handwritten notes, postcards a day? And if you can’t do that, do audio or video text and send it to people that you know and people you don’t know. And if you did that every day, five days a week, not even seven days a week, and you do that for like a year, your life will be completely different. Now, if you take that to recovery and you reach out to people that are struggling with recovery, or you say, okay, you know who needs my help, you go to a meeting and you really, you know, they would call it before the Internet existed, but the 500 pounds, you know, phone receiver to pick up that phone, oh, my God, I have to make a phone call and talk to someone. Yeah. Yeah. That’s why you’re feeling all messed up and scared about it, because you don’t do it. But like with anything else, if you, you know, why don’t more people get in better physical shape? 

They don’t want to work through the burn. When you first start lifting weights or you go running for the first time in a long time, or you do a yoga class for the first time, you’re going to feel painful. It’s going to hurt a little bit, you’re going to be sore. But if you do that for a couple of weeks and you work through the burn, that’s what you got to do. You got to work through the burn. So don’t expect the first beginning steps, you know, to do it. But the issues are in the tissues. It can’t just be an intellectual exercise. You got to get out in nature. You got to get into the body. Connection happens, not just in the mind and in the thinking process. It happens in the heart, it happens in the gut. I mean, you can, you know, be more connected, improve your diet 5% more, drink 5% more water, get 5% a little bit sleep, put up with 5% less bull. So someone’s like, Well, I don’t have time. Okay, look at all of the things you’re spending your time on that are wasted and just, you know, even if you gave yourself 5 minutes to it, see, I’m not telling anyone to do something that they don’t have the time to do. Part of it is like, if you’re totally strapped, you just swap it out. It’s one thought process for another. So, you know, go to the people that you already have some semblance of relationships with. And in my new book, I wrote a book called What’s In It For Them? That’s the latest book I wrote. I have a chapter called Be the type of person you would always answer the phone for. And people are like, Well, how do I, you know, how do I connect with people? It’s like, well, for one, you want to be the type of person people want to connect with.

So for the next 5 to 10 phone calls you get and if you don’t, because a lot of young people never use the phone for phone calls, they use it for text messages and stuff. It could be a social media post, it could be a text, it could be whatever form of communication. Even if you’re like using A.I. in order to send a message to someone like the next 5 to 10 messages you get feel. Do you feel woo or do you feel are because people want more woo and less ah and if you’re getting woohoo from this person, woo from this person, why? What is it about that person? And what I say is it’s usually because they’re they show up with a give that’s equal to or greater than their want. We all want something, but if you want something, show up with a give in. Sometimes the give is you don’t have anything to give, but you can give courtesy, you can give appreciation, you can connect with anyone. Someone opens a door for you, say thank you. If you go somewhere, someone looks like they’re stressed out saying, hey, you know a server. Yeah, you know, thank you for just doing what you’re doing because you probably a lot on your plate right now. You don’t need to you don’t need to be sophisticated. You just need to connect. And if you start doing that, you will see that the world is craving connection. You know, there’s so many wilting plants, metaphorically speaking, that just need a little bit of water and sunshine. And if you’re a wilted plant, metaphorically speaking, where can you find some water? Where can you find some sunshine? Where can you find some nourishment? And you can give it to yourself, but you can also go out into the world and get it from others. And one of the ways you get it from others is you give it to them first, and if you give it to them first, it will come back to you. Because life gives to the giver and takes from the taker.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

Healing is a self journey, yet that is done within community. In my 21 day journey, I start every class with this idea that we are each on a journey into our nervous system. This is not a journey about our nervous system not going to stay in our heads. This is not a journey into someone else’s nervous system. This is a journey into our nervous system. And yet we have people around us who are also on their own journey. That’s the beautiful thing. We get to create community when we connect. Now the journey itself involves the integration of three elements the somatic work, which is connecting with our body parts work, which is working with the belief systems, the stories that we’ve told about ourselves, about our limitations, and then the biology work which Joe is referencing the biochemistry a couple of times now. He mentioned an important study in reference to the environment that we create for ourselves. Rat Park was a series of studies into drug addiction conducted in the late 1970s and published between 1978 and 1981 by Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander. 

At the time of the studies, research was exploring the self-administration of morphine or heroin or narcotics in animals often used in small, solitary metal cages. Alexander hypothesized that these conditions may be partly responsible for their drug use to test this, Alexander and his colleagues built Rat Park, a large housing colony, 200 times the floor area of a standard laboratory cage. There were 16 to 20 rats of both sexes and residents, food balls and wheels for playing up space for mating and the results of the experiment supported this idea that the environment actually affects our behaviors, our environment affects our behaviors. So what, walking away from this interview, what area in your life do you want to be 5% more connected? What small change? Small change. What small change can you make? But that will start to swing a big door. Thank you for joining me for this interview on the Biology of Trauma Summit, The Trauma Disease Connection. I’m your host, Dr. Aimie. Don’t forget that you do have a number of resources available to you and you don’t have to continue to feel lost and disconnected. Purchased the recordings, the transcripts and the resources. Equip yourself with knowledge and tools. Be empowered and I will see you on the next interview.