Why Trauma Is Your Biology and Not Psychology

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Thank you, Laura. Can I just say like, how much this is needed? Like, this topic is huge. It’s huge for stress and trauma. So I’m glad that you’re bringing that on, but just in general, like thank you for all the work that you’re putting into this.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Absolutely. And thank you for your expertise here. You are an absolute authority in your space, the biology of trauma. I’m gonna explain what that is. This really applies to mitochondria health and restoring your health at the cellular level. If you don’t handle this piece, it is unlikely that you’re going to ever restore your health. So that said, your interview here could be the most critical interview for people to hear. So I’m so glad you took time to do this. I know you’re super busy with everything you have going on, but let me introduce why you’re such an authority in this space. You’re actually a leading medical expert on how life experiences get stored in our body and cause health problems. And you help people restore their body to this optimal best state of health through your model and methodology. 

It’s called the biology of trauma. So you basically reverse engineer the chronic effects of trauma on the nervous system and your body at the cellular level. That’s why it’s like, ah, we have to have Aimie here. It’s cellular. It’s all about cellular health. So a little bit more about you. You’re double board certified. You’re a medical physician in preventive medicine and addiction medicine. And in addition to your medical training, you are over the top qualified in so many ways. You’re a functional medicine physician and you have certifications and training specifically in neuro autoimmunity, nutrition, genetics, addiction, mental health, mood, behavior disorders. And you have certifications in various trauma therapies, including instinctual trauma response, somatic experiencing, and neuro effective touch. There’s nobody more qualified to be here.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

That does sound like a lot. That sounds like a lot of stress actually.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, you are, I know you well, and you’re a bit of a, you know, perfectionist and overachiever. Like you’re not gonna mess around. If you’re gonna learn something, you’re gonna learn everything there is to know about it. That’s my experience of you.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

This is true. And I’ve actually worked on that, Laura, so that I no longer am a perfectionist, but I am an excellentist.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

An excellentist, that’s good. So let’s have an excellent talk today about the biology of trauma. So can you start off by telling us, what is stored trauma in the body and its effects? And when you’re talking about its effects specifically, I mean, we’re a bunch of people here listening to a summit about mitochondria health. So what does it have to do with cellular health?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

So I’m gonna tell you that exactly what you said, like this topic of mitochondria is actually the central piece of the trauma response. And I’ve got the certification course that I track, and this is what I teach them in that, is that trauma is an energy problem. And so I have a whole energy module where we dive deep into the mitochondria, because if we had more energy, we actually would not have had trauma.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

So all trauma, all trauma, all trauma, every, everything that ends up being a trauma for us in our life comes down to it having been an energy problem in that moment. 

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, wait, wait. So I know people’s heads are spinning right now. You gotta unpack this. So you’re telling me that if I was abused, if I was, if I had some trauma where I was verbally abused, physically abused, sexually abused, that has to do with energy.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Has everything to do with energy.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, tell us how.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

So I wanna walk you through the trauma response so that I can show you then how energy is at that crucial moment, the defining moment of what was a stress and what is now gonna become a trauma. And then we’ll have it really clear for how this is actually the first step that we take to reverse engineering trauma. So in a stress and I, and I’d almost like, you know, like Laura, what, what stress would you like to pick today, right? Like say, we’re walking in a park, Laura, right? We’re walking in a park and all of a sudden this dog that’s off leash is running towards us. That that will be our stress for today. And in that moment, our nervous system is designed to keep us alive and it’s going to initiate the stress response. The first step is always startle, and you’ve seen that, right? 

You’ll see pictures even of a deer, if you’ve never seen a deer do this in the moment yourself, live, where they’ll, their ears will perk up, they’ll stop what they’re doing and they’ll freeze, and they’ll be like, you know, you can see their ears picking up everything. Their eyes are scanning the environment, that’s the startle. And that’s always the first step in a stress or trauma response. And then the moment that we decide, like, no, like this dog running towards us in the park right now, Laura, is actually a real threat. Like this dog does not look like it’s coming to say hi to us and wag it’s tail and love on us. Like, it looks like it could be coming to bite us. So what do we do in that moment? Well, let’s say we decide to run, right? Because that’s one of the stress responses you have, fight or flight. Those are your two options for the stress response. And so either way, right? Like maybe you decide to stay and to fight the dog, and I decide to run away from the dog, whatever we decide, we have this surge of energy that comes through in that moment.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm hmm.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And that energy comes from adrenaline. So when we think of a stress hormone, it’s actually adrenaline that plays a bigger role, and actually vasopressin than cortisol, cortisol is not gonna kick in until another 20 minutes. All you’ve got in that moment is adrenaline and vasopressin, and so we we’re given this surge of energy. And what is the purpose of that energy? The purpose of that energy is to be able to move, to mobilize, to take action. What happens if whatever, I’m running away from the dog and the dog catches up with me and the dog is faster than me, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm hmm.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

If then we go into what would be a trauma response where we realize that even with all of the energy that we have in that moment, it’s not enough, Laura.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

It’s not enough.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m tracking you now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And this is the same thing that happens with the deer or the impala or the zebra or whatever it is out there on that plain, right? When it sees the danger and it starts running, running, the amount of energy that it has determines how fast and how far it can run. The minute that it realizes that it doesn’t have enough energy to outrun the stress.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm hmm.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

It actually goes into the trauma response.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Right.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And when we watch the camera rolls really carefully, we actually see that they go into that trauma response before the pounce actually happens, before the claws actually touch them, they’ve already realized I’m giving up, I’m giving in because I don’t have as much energy as this threat requires. And so the trauma response happens when we have a threat and it matters how much energy we have to face that threat. If our energy level does not match the level of threat, we experience trauma from that event. Say we have enough energy and maybe we have more energy than what the threat actually requires us to give. It only stays a stress, Laura. We can stay present because we’ve got the energy to address that threat in our life, in that moment.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And so it’s only when we reach the end of our energy to fight, to stand up for ourselves, to say no, to push them away, whatever it was in the moment.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm hmm.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Then that’s when something becomes a trauma and we feel the collapse. There’s actually an exhaustion, a fatigue, a collapse metabolically that happens in the moment that a stress response changes to a trauma response because of energy.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. Now you’ve got this trauma that’s occurred and now it’s in your body. It’s stored inside of you. You’ve experienced this trauma. So, you know, a lot of your work is working with adults who have had traumatic experiences as children and younger adults. And this trauma doesn’t leave them. So now what are the effects on the body of this stored trauma and all the way down to the cellular level?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Yeah. So what happens is that this pattern of going into the trauma response actually becomes our default. And so now what happens is that what usually what was a stress before, now we just see that stress and we immediately go into that overwhelmed place. We immediately give up. We immediately say, ugh, like it’s, it’s a learned helplessness, if you wanna look at it that way, where these are default patterns that just play out. And we see the email come through from that person. We see the phone call, we see the text message, and just because of who the name that’s associated with it, like we already feel like, nope, I don’t have the energy for that. I don’t have the energy for that. I don’t have the energy for that. And so it actually becomes this pattern of going into that metabolic state of energy conservation.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm hmm.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And whenever we go into that state of energy conservation, it actually shuts a lot of things down in our body. For those in your audience who may know of Dr. Stephen Porges and the dorsal vagal, poly vagal theory that he has written about now for many years, we understand the physiology effects that this is going to have because that dorsal vagal response is this break, is this switch that happens that will take us from a very active stress response, which is a high metabolic state, talk about burning calories, right? Like we’re going through a lot of not only calories, but nutrients, magnesium zinc, the B vitamins. We’re using them up because we are in a very high metabolic state in order to meet the threat. But the moment that our body’s like, ugh, we don’t have enough energy to meet this threat, it goes into that energy conservation state. And if your body goes into the energy conservation state, what’s gonna happen to your gut?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It shuts down.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

It shuts down. That is not the biggest priority. What’s gonna happen to your brain? You’re gonna start experiencing decision fatigue. You’re gonna start experiencing sensory overwhelm where lights bother you, sounds bother you, textures start to bother you more than what they did before, because your body just does not have the energy to deal with all of the sensory. You start to get, you know, irritable with your kids and your family, because you just don’t have the energy. Can you just be quiet? Can you just do what I told you to do? I don’t have the energy to talk about it. I don’t have the energy. And so we start to see all of these things play out in our body, in our relationships, in our life, in our career, right? Because if we don’t feel like we have the energy, we’re not gonna be putting ourselves out there. We’re not gonna be looking. We’re not gonna be showing up at our best. There were many times in my life before I got to this state where I was able to work with my nervous system, that I would be showing up for meetings and walking out, being like, I really wasn’t there the whole time, right? Like my mind was somewhere else.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. So what I’m hearing is that this response, it starts to leak all over your whole life. Everything gets affected.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

It leaks all over. Mm hmm.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so now we’re talking, you’re talking about the biology of this, the biology that gets people stuck on their healing journey from trauma. What is that?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Yeah, so this is one of the most fascinating things that I’ve come across in my work, where I started noticing in myself that as I was doing these trauma therapies, ’cause that’s what I was told to do, right? I’m doing these trauma therapies and I’m reaching this level where it’s like, I feel like I’m hitting a wall and I can’t seem to get past this and I’m doing the work and I can get up to this point, but I can’t seem to go beyond, I had really worked with this, what we call the freeze response, that collapse, that giving in, that, giving up, that energy conservation state. 

I had worked really hard on that, on the trauma therapy side of things and gotten it down to where it would only last, you know, maybe about four days where I would, you know, have a hard emotional impact of something, and then I would just go into that collapse. And I couldn’t move the dial on that, Laura, and I was like, what is going on? Like this really cannot be the best that I’m capable of. There’s gotta be another level, but how do I even tap into that level? And what I started realizing as I was working on my health was that, wait a second, like there are actually these biology factors and some of them are even biochemical imbalances that we can have that actually will be preventing our nervous system from even being able to do positive neuro-plastic activities.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh wow.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And so even if we’re doing the best of therapies, if we’re not bringing in that biology piece, our nervous system will literally stay stuck. And so that’s when I started combining the biology pieces with the trauma therapies and it’s like magic happened because they feed off of each other and the biology piece allowed my nervous system to actually have more capacity for the healing work, for the emotional work, for the trauma therapies, because my nervous system was now able to actually integrate it and be able to implement that into this healthy neuroplasticity that we need to have if we’re gonna change the way we’ve always done things.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So are you saying that people who have tried and tried and tried to heal who feel like a failure because they haven’t been able to, truly aren’t a failure? That there’s actually a biological reason that there’re stuck.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

There are always reasons, yes. And for me, like all of this comes down to biology because even what people would consider their psychology or their emotions, that’s actually just their physiology of their nervous system. And we can figure out what are those things holding you back? What are those things that are keeping your nervous system stuck in a survival state? And some of these are things that we were actually born with. So I’m thinking of like the methylation imbalance, that’s an epigenetic condition that influences even how available your system is for the attachment and bonding process.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

For example, under methylators usually have a low activity of serotonin and dopamine. Well, dopamine is necessary for healthy attachment. And so if, as a baby you already have low dopamine, you already kind of have the cards stacked against you for coming out of childhood with insecurities, simply because you were an under methylator and that was your biochemistry.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow. I think people are having light bulbs go off right now. People are thinking that’s me, that’s me. There’s hope, there’s hope. So, any other biological reasons you wanna share that people get stuck, and they’re not able to heal from trauma?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Yeah. I can share with you the other two top biochemical imbalances that I see across the board in all the people that I work with, with chronic stress or these trauma patterns. And that would be copper excess, and zinc deficiency kind of goes with that. And then something called pyroluria or pyrol disorder and pyrol disorder causes a deficiency in zinc and B6 specifically. And what it does is that it actually makes the nervous system very sensitive. So these would be people who feel like they are highly sensitive people, where they even don’t feel like they can keep energetic boundaries. And when they walk into a room, like can feel the energy and it drains them and they almost become introverts because it’s like, ah, like people’s energy is just too much for me. Like that’s actually many times a biochemical imbalance that when we can fix that, it puts the nervous system into a place where it can hold more capacity for all of that. And it can have these stronger, natural, healthy boundaries, and you can have your emotions and I can have my emotions and your emotions don’t become my emotions.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And the copper excess has been something that’s been a huge influence for many women and so much so in fact, that they have found that women who experience postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and for sure any aspect of postpartum psychosis, over 95% of them have copper excess.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Whoa.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And so we’ve done wrong by sending them all to therapy, thinking that, oh, this is all just emotional, right? Like there must be some underlying reason, which there may be, right? And for most of us, we actually did come out of childhood with some degree of insecurities and now having our own children, right, like that can trigger some stuff from our childhood. So it’s not to say that there’s no purely emotional aspect, but these biochemical imbalances actually drive our emotions. And so for women who experience that, have had that in the past, this is something that I would so want them to go check out. Please go check your…

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

How do you check it?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Yeah, so you can do a blood test and there’s a blood test that I use that actually will check your methylation status and your copper and zinc. We do need to bring in ceruloplasmin, in order to be able to calculate the free copper in your blood. And that’s what we’re looking at. So I’m happy to give you that link. I do all of my testing through DHA labs for that, because they can all just do it in one blood sample. And I wanna see it all and so happy to give you that link. And that would be where people can go to get this testing and know for sure that they’re getting the right testing that we need to calculate that copper excess the right way.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, perfect, perfect. Now you’re talking about the biology that gets people stuck on their healing journey. Is that different from the biology that predisposes us to experiencing trauma?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

No, it’s actually all the same thing because the biology that will keep us stuck includes those things like the mitochondria that are a result of chronic stress and trauma. And just as an example, if you’re low in magnesium, because you’ve been running on empty for so long, right? Now that is actually going to be what’s keeping you in stress and trauma. But also if you’re an under methylator, if you have copper excess, if you have a zinc deficiency, those are things that will keep your nervous system stuck, no matter how much therapy you do. So those would be things that are both going to predispose you to a trauma and keep you stuck. 

Again, kind of going back to that example with the under methylators and even just an insecure attachment. For the under methylators Laura, they are, what I’m finding, is that they have what I call gaps in the neuro development and attachment process in zero to six months of their life. And I can measure that based on, actually, their belief systems about themselves and some very specific things that I can look at that includes what is called a tummy time crawl. And so I even have those people going through my courses, get on their tummy, send me a video of them on the floor, on their tummy and trying to figure out how to move and scoot themselves down the floor with keeping their belly button on the floor.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Without using your hands?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

No, I’m not saying that. You can do whatever you want. I just need your belly button on the floor.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

You can use your hands, you can use your legs. I just need you to figure that out. And based on what I see in the video, I can tell somebody if they have had gaps and disruptions in that zero to six months of life, that they are not gonna have any conscious memory of ’cause that’s certainly all preverbal. And yet, if they have gaps in that, Laura, like that was when your pons was developing in your brain stem. And so what your experience will be is always feeling a little like you’ve got no power in your life.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm hmm

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

You’re, you don’t really necessarily even know where you are in space and you don’t feel your body as much as other people feel their bodies.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

A little bit disconnected, disconnected.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Very disconnected. That pons level, gaps in that zero to six months of life for the neuro development is really where we establish our sense of grounding. Grounding in our hips, grounding in our feet. And so this is where we learn how to thrust ourselves forward in life. And so if you’ve had disruptions at that zero to six months of life, whether that was because you are an under methylator and have one of these biochemical imbalances or for other reasons, then that’s kind of the pattern that you can expect both on a cellular level and then throughout your life, as it spills over into all these areas of your life, like you’re just having a hard time moving forward and completing things in your life.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And there’s a solution for that?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Totally. Oh my goodness, yes. And it’s so exciting. In fact, I’m thinking of Lisa right now and she sent in her first video, her first video of her doing tummy time crawl. Laura, I looked at that and I was like, oh my goodness, like we’ve got, we’ve got some pons level gaps and disruptions here. So I had her do tummy time crawling five to 10 minutes every day. She resent the video one month later and the progress was incredible and just correlating with the progress in her tummy time crawl. Then she’s also experiencing that increased sense of being able to move forward in life and her sense of grounding. And it’s like, these were things that she didn’t even realize that she lacked until she started to notice that it was appearing in her life. 

The other thing with the pons is that again, these people generally, because these disruptions happened so early in life, they experienced a lot of overwhelm in infancy, because of the lack of regulation in their nervous system. And so they are used to having to brace in order to, to cut off sensations. So they may not be ones that feel their hunger, they just eat because they know that they should eat. They don’t actually feel hungry. They may not feel full until they’ve stuffed themselves. So there’s all these things that start to come into their life, that then we can look at their coping mechanisms, right? Because then now they’ve got maybe health issues from their coping mechanisms from not actually being able to feel their body as much as they are intended to feel their body.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You know, what’s coming up for me right now while we talk is, so the word safe is coming up, this all feels so safe. And I know there’s people listening right now who are having relief and feeling safe with you. So the relief that, oh my gosh, I’m not a disaster. I’m not a big mess. There’s actually some biology and some science behind what’s happening here. And somebody has figured out how to help me heal from those things that occurred when I was younger or the lack of whatever they lack biologically or whatever happened to them. And yeah, so that feeling of, this is all so safe to do this, and it makes sense, and it’s so hopeful.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And that’s exactly what it should be Laura, right? And that’s exactly what it has not been.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, no, because people are like, I don’t know, I can’t help you. I’ve tried everything. Clearly you have some psychological issues that you haven’t fixed yet. So here I’m giving you a referral to psychology, go talk to somebody, right?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Right. And there’s actually a very specific sequence that we need to do to reverse engineer all of this. And it doesn’t need to be confusing and it doesn’t need to feel unsafe. It doesn’t need to be done in a way that I describe as like jumping off that emotional cliff, be like, oh, good luck with that landing, right? It’s like, no, no. Like that’s actually how we retraumatize ourselves. That’s actually how we stay in a place of, of bracing for, oh, how bad is this gonna hurt? And that’s the wrong way to be doing things. So I’ve worked on like, what is the essential sequence? What are the specific steps and modalities that we should bring in at the beginning? And then as we build our capacity with those, then we can bring in the other things, then we can bring in the EMDR. Then we can bring in the talk therapy, then we can bring in this other stuff. But those don’t belong at certain places in the healing journey. There actually is a specific sequence on how to reverse engineer this.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow, this is, this is remarkable. So we’ve been talking about, you know, that very young age, zero to six months, is there kind of a magic cutoff age when childhood trauma affects us more than, I mean, what’s the age range we’re looking at here? What if you are traumatized by what age do you, really would, really benefit from some work?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Yeah, and I mean, I think that my answer is gonna surprise you. And I will also say that the more that we experience trauma early, early in life, the more trauma that we experience overall in our lifetime, because we, it’s almost like we attract more because now we’re living in that place of feeling powerless or we’re reactive, or we’re not thinking right, or we’ve gotta kind of survive the rest of our childhood, even though we don’t feel like we belong or we feel out of place or we feel different. So it accumulates and it really builds. And certainly people can look back at their childhood and remember certain things, certain events, certain experiences, and be like, oh, that was trauma. And I’m gonna come in and tell them, Laura, ah, actually these trauma patterns were in place before that. You went into that experience already having the groundwork laid for that being a trauma for you. And this is where we really need to redefine trauma, and what is trauma, because when you’re asking like, what’s the age, I’m gonna say three.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm hmm.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Three years of life. And there’s not that many people who can remember that much of their life before three years old. You might have one or two memories, but we don’t have a lot of memory of that. And so again, this is where we’re not, we’re not actually looking at the explicit memory that’s in your hippocampus. We’re looking at the implicit memory that is your body memory. And this is why we will find ourselves reacting in certain ways that we may not understand logically or we may not even want to do, but we can’t seem to stop ourselves in the moment. And it’s not until afterwards that we’re like, ugh, I hate that I keep doing that. I hate that I keep reaching for that. I hate that I keep reacting in that way. And we’re not able to break those patterns. That’s because the body literally has taken over in it’s self defense and protecting because of these implicit memories that happen early, early in life and get imprinted.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And then there’s the kind of trauma that occurs, you know, let’s say you, let’s say you had wonderful parents, you were loved, you were nurtured. Everything was amazing. You went through life amazing. And then, you know, you’re 26 years old and you’re standing on a street corner and you get hit by a car or you get mugged or you get like some horrific traumatic, it causes trauma. What do you have to say about those types of traumatic experiences and how they affect us? And is there a setup for that or is it just being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Oh my goodness. You’re gonna, you’re gonna make us go there.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

So again, what I’m gonna say is probably gonna surprise a lot of people, possibly even offend a few people and I’m okay with that. So when we look at childhood, we really need to redefine trauma as anything that for any reason at that time overwhelmed us.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm hmm.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

It does not need to be abuse. It does not need to be neglect. There are many, many people, and I’m gonna say Laura, many parents in this generation right now, the younger parents, they don’t realize the common social practices that are actually causing overwhelm to their young children. They are wonderful people. They have amazing hearts. They are great parents. And they just don’t understand that these common social practices are actually causing trauma and overwhelm to their young children.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

So when we look back at our childhood, I don’t want people to say, oh, I didn’t have any trauma because I didn’t have abuse. I didn’t have neglect. No, that’s not the definition of trauma. The definition of trauma is anything that, for any reason, overwhelmed us at that time.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow. That just totally opens up a whole new level.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Opens up a whole new level, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Probably all of us could be supported with this work.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Exactly, exactly. Like this really then just becomes, how are we navigating life, not how are we just addressing trauma. Because it’s like, no life, life is challenging. And so if we notice ourselves reacting in certain ways to just normal life challenges, that informs us, oh yeah, like, I’ve got some, I’ve got some work to do. And I do think that everybody, everybody has some work to do. So let’s go back to your story of you’re 26 and you get mugged.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm hmm.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Were you just at the wrong place at the wrong time? Is that going to be a trauma for you? Those are all really good questions. And I’m gonna tell you that, if it ends up being a chronic trauma, like a trauma that gets stored in your body, causes lasting changes, then your system was set up for that going into it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Ah.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

If you’re able to go through that experience, process it, integrate it, reach out and connect and complete the trauma cycle, it’s not gonna become stored trauma in your body.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And you’re not gonna go around always looking behind your shoulder for the next time that you’re gonna get mugged.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So not all trauma becomes stored trauma because there is a way to work through trauma. Okay. This is really big. So if you can work through trauma, then at the cellular level.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Mm hmm.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Then you’re gonna have a healthy recovery. If it becomes stored, then it’s gonna cause all these biological problems that cascade.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Yes.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And how do you know it’s becoming stored? Because it’s leaving lasting changes on your life.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm hmm, mm hmm.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

You’re staying hyper vigilant or you’re noticing that you’re, you just wanna, you know, curl up and pull the covers over your head.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Or you notice health changes or you notice again, like you’re now living your life differently because of that experience, in a bad way, right? Like not, not because like, oh, I became wiser and stronger and kinder and you know, so I’m living my life differently.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

When we look at even PTSD, Laura, we see that it’s really not about the event. So trauma is not about the event, and trauma is not an event. When we look at PTSD, we see that people are going over and they’re experiencing the same event. Some are coming back with PTSD. Some are not. So it’s not the event. It has more to do with your nervous system going into that event that determines what your experience will be in the middle of that event.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Aha. That’s why a group of people can go through the same experience and they all react differently on the other side. Beautiful. That makes sense. Okay. We went deep today. Let’s give people some hope. What can, ’cause people are probably now wondering if you’re watching this like, oh, do I have stored trauma? Is my trauma affecting my ability to heal from my chronic health conditions and my gut health and my autoimmune conditions. And, oh my goodness. So what are some practical tips that you can give people right now that they can start putting into place to support themselves?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

So I’m, I mean, right now, this summit, listening to the summit is amazing, right? Because you’re bringing to them this mitochondrial peace and this energy peace. And for those people that I’m working with who have chronic stress and stored trauma, energy is where we have to start. Because if trauma was an energy problem, energy is our way out of the trauma problem. And so energy is the first thing that I use in my protocols for someone who is now in a chronic freeze response. So, and I have a whole guide that I can, I’m happy to share with you on how to actually support your body and your physiology if you realize that you are in this chronic freeze and energy conservation state, because it’s definitely going to impact all ability to do healing work, trauma healing work, and all of that. I also have a guide on steps to identify and heal trauma. So I’m happy to share that with you. I’m happy to share with you all that I can, but my first recommendation would be if this is resonating with you, then watch this summit, because energy is gonna be a really important piece to the trauma, not just to your physical health, but actually for the first step in reverse engineering, that freeze response specifically.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes. Thank you for your generous offer to give that support to the audience. We’ll make sure we get that from you, and that there’s a link where they can get ahold of it. Anything people can do on their own at home while they’re waiting to get access, you know, to you, to your programs, to more support, what are some things people can do right away to start healing?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

And it really depends on where they are in their healing journey. So if they notice that they’re in more of the stress response, it’s gonna be different than if they’re more in that shutdown and energy response. So as simple as it sounds, being aware and starting to learn those three states of your nervous system and knowing which state am I in, because that determines am I, what is my next step to do? So there’s a lot of somatic practices that I use to kind of help with that. If they’re dealing with stress or grief or loneliness, then I use some really basic somatic techniques. One is really to kind of do a containment hug and you can experiment around with like, where exactly do I want my hands that feels the most supportive for my body. And then once you find that, just hold that for at least 60 seconds and start with that three times a day. And that will even just help you start this process of being able to drop in and notice, hey, where is my body at right now? Is it seeming to react to stress and trauma in the moment? And how can I bring that under an under kind of more of that healthy parasympathetic state that we want to be in?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Amazing tip, amazing Aimie. Can you also tell us where can we find you? Where, I mean, we’re gonna have your link and everything, but for people listening right now, where can they get access to your stuff?

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Yeah, they can find me over at TraumaHealingAccelerated.com ’cause that’s what we do is, I help people accelerate their healing journey, not waste any more time than we need to.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh thank you, Aimie so much. And I, you know, what I would say too is, you know, people who are working with me that they’re doing gut restoring health and doing toxin removal from the body, this piece is critical. It’s common. You know, I might, I might say to you, have you checked out Aimie, Dr. Aimie Apigian’s stuff yet, because I think this would help support you in your healing journey. And it really like, I really encourage you to embrace building a team of experts around you. This is Dr. Aimie’s expertise, which is different than other practitioners on this summit. They have different expertise and it’s not uncommon for you to work with a couple of different people to help you restore all the different areas and aspects because this healing journey is not linear. It’s not, and it’s not just one thing that’s gonna get you where you wanna be. There’s a lot of layers. And so build your team, is what I’m saying. Build your team and just be in that mindset that I’m probably gonna work with more than one practitioner to get where I wanna go based on, you know, their different levels of expertise in what’s going on in my body.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Mm hmm, yep.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Thank you Dr. Aimie, so much, for being here and for the work that you’re doing. This is so vital and I will be continuing to send my clients your way. What you do is so important.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS MPH

Oh, thank you, Laura.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You take good care now, bye.