Leah Hadley [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Intentional Divorce Insights. I'm Leah Hadley, certified divorce financial analyst, accredited financial counselor, and the founder of Intentional Divorce Solutions. I'll be your guide through the complexities of divorce, finance and emotional wellness. Join me as we uncover practical tips and empowering insights to help you navigate your divorce with clarity and intention.
Leah Hadley [00:00:25]:
Hi and welcome back to Intentional Divorce Insights.
Leah Hadley [00:00:29]:
We are so happy that you are here today. We have a great topic today. I'm really looking forward to getting to know Laurie James. Laurie is a mother, a divorcee, recovering caregiver turned author, somatic relationship coach, and podcaster. Laurie's podcast, Confessions of a Free Bird was inspired by her youngest of four children, leaving the Nest and is the sequel to her book Sandwiched A memoir of holding on and and letting go. Now Laurie helps women divorce, heal and date differently in midlife. She blends her coaching and somatic training to help her clients develop a better relationship with their bodies and nervous system. Doing so allows them to find the inner freedom to experience more happiness, joy, and create the life they desire.
Leah Hadley [00:01:16]:
Welcome. Laurie, thanks for being here with us.
Laurie James [00:01:18]:
Yes, thank you so much for that beautiful introduction.
Leah Hadley [00:01:21]:
Oh, my pleasure.
Laurie James [00:01:23]:
Can you come onto my podcast and share that every time?
Leah Hadley [00:01:27]:
I would be happy to. So, Laurie, tell us a little bit about your story, your background, and how you got into the work that you're doing.
Laurie James [00:01:35]:
Yeah. Thank you. So you know, I was a stay at home mom for 20 plus years. I stayed home to raise my four beautiful children. Feel very, very fortunate that I had the pleasure of doing that real quick. As you shared. During this eight year period of time in my life, when I was writing my or that I write about in my book, my world really turned upside down and I was really trying to make sense of it. So my book is really, it's about the sandwich generation, it's about parenting, it's about family.
Laurie James [00:02:08]:
It's about my adoption because I'm also adopted. But really it's my introspective journey through a very difficult time in my life and how I made sense of what was happening and how I went from feeling alone most of my life to finding, belonging and spoiler alert to spoiler alerts. Who do we belong to? We really belong to ourselves. And so often along our path, through our childhood, through our marriages, especially as women, we're always trying to. We're the nurturers. So we try to please other people and we become people pleasers. And like some of your listeners, I lost myself along that way. In fact, I may have not really found myself until my late 40s and 50s and I'm still discovering myself to today.
Laurie James [00:03:04]:
And just to fast forward to how I found somatic. So I've always, so for the last 15 years I have, you know, I've practiced yoga, I've taken energy classes, I've done a lot of energy work. I, you know, through this eight year period of time in my life, I explored a lot of spirituality which are all super, super helpful. I, you know, meditated, did all these wonderful things that helped. But when I left my marriage, that's another, that's the second spoiler alert is I fell very ill and to the point where I was in the hospital twice within two weeks. And the doctors could not figure out what was wrong with me. And I'm a healthy individual, I don't take medications, I'm very active, I eat well, I exercise, you know, I love nature. So I'm, I, you know, I take good care of myself.
Laurie James [00:04:09]:
But what I learned through that process was I said yes to too much, right? And I'll get into the definition of somatic experiencing and the definition. But what I want to say right now is so the definition of trauma, which somatic experiencing is about nervous system regulation, but it's also about healing past trauma that is stored in the body. The simple definition of trauma is anything too much too soon, too much too fast, too much for too long, or too little for too long. So that really covers the gamut. So when I share that is because I took on too much too soon after I left my marriage. Now first I want to say divorce is the second most stressful and dysregulating thing that we can do to our nervous system and to our bodies. Then I moved out, so then I moved, so. And that's in the top five or ten most stressful things you can do is to move.
Laurie James [00:05:24]:
Right then I was writing my book, I started coaching, I started dating, I was saying yes to my friends. And even two weeks before I fell very ill, I was walking with a couple of friends and I said, everything is really good, but I'm stressed. I could feel it. And I didn't know how to back out of it. I didn't know how to stop. But my body did and my body shut down. And I left the hospital the first time with a walker. My blood pressure was low, severely anemic.
Laurie James [00:06:02]:
I looked like I had put on 20 pounds because I was carrying water weight. I had severe pain in my joints and my lower back. I mean, it was bad. And they were also giving me a lot of medication because I was in pain. But then they were chasing my symptoms as well. And that is hard on your body too. Because my body's not used to taking medication because I haven't needed to. And now all of a sudden they're pumping all these drugs into my body. My body's going, what the hell's going on? Right? And I'm not saying that drugs don't have their place, because I think that they do, but it was too much for my system.
Laurie James [00:06:45]:
So fast forward, once I was. I ended up back in the hospital again. I lost 14 pounds. I couldn't keep food down. They finally diagnosed me with an unnamed virus and what they called migrating arthritis. Because I had these hot patches that were moving around my body. And what I believe now based off of my training is that was stuck energy from a lot of trauma from my childhood, a very difficult marriage. And the last five and a half to seven years were probably eight years of my marriage were very, very difficult.
Laurie James [00:07:24]:
Five and a half years of talk therapy. One of my therapist friends said, you need to go see Bob. I'm like, okay. And I'd heard about Bob. He's a therapist, but he was also a somatic experiencing practitioner. And I have to tell you, the healing that I was able to do in the first year of working with him was life changing because I healed more in that year than I did five and a half years of talk therapy. I had left my marriage. And so what I want to just share with your listeners is so somatic experiencing.
Laurie James [00:08:07]:
People like, what is that? That sounds so woo woo, right? You know, and what I want to say is, I want to simplify it for you and for your listeners. So somatic comes from the Greek word soma, which means body. So what we do in somatic experiencing. And Peter Levine is the, the guy who created Somatic Experiencing. He's written several books. He's in his 80s. He's been, you know, over 80 years. I'm sorry, over 45, 50 years.
Laurie James [00:08:41]:
It's all you. Neurological. I mean, it's biological and, and neurological. So it's, it's talking about the physiology of the body. And so basically what I want to say is somatic experiencing is body experiencing. We're experiencing what's happening in, in the body. So for instance, for your listeners, your. If you're going through a divorce, as I said at the beginning, your body is very dysregulated, which means that your body is more in a sympathetic state, which is fight or flight.
Laurie James [00:09:22]:
This is where fear shows up. This is where worry shows up and that is normal because there's a lot of uncertainty that's happening. But when we stay there in a chronic state, it can have physical ailments to it. So what happens is that unease, that restriction in your chest, the tightness in your shoulders, the tense muscles, that unease eventually turns into dis ease in the body, pain joints and can eventually turn into dis ease disease, I should say. And because our immune system, it affects our immune system and over time. So I love, I mean I love this work, but it's. And people are afraid of it, but it's actually not as scary as one might think.
Leah Hadley [00:10:31]:
So how is it different from like talk therapy or mindset coaching?
Laurie James [00:10:37]:
That's a really great question. So what I want to say is so somatic experiencing and body based healing is really having more of a moment right now. And that's because the research is showing that body based he therapies, the bottom up approach type therapies are more effective than mindset and mindset coaching and talk therapy. Why is that? Is because 80% of our sensory information travels from our body to our brain, right? So our nervous system, our autonomic nervous system is what we call afferent. So the senses travel up to the brain and then we make a thought about it of that scary or I don't want to do that or I can't believe or whatever our belief system is or whatever. We think about the situation in the moment and then our, our mind, our brain reinforces that thought because our nervous system was created very, very effectively to keep us safe. Which is why we're all alive today, right? But a tiger is not chasing us right now. Yes, the divorce is scary.
Laurie James [00:12:11]:
Yes, there's a lot of uncertainty. Yes, you have a lot. You have your kids you might be worrying about, you might have your finances. Where am I going to? All of that is scary. But the more that we can learn to bring our nervous system down out of that chronic state, sympathetic state and into more of a parasympathetic state. Rest and digest. And for those who are watching, we want to. It's like riding a roller coaster, right? We want our nervous system to go up into a sympathetic state so that way we can activate and, and do the work that we need to do.
Laurie James [00:12:50]:
Either going to work or taking care of our kids or working to come to an agreement about our divorce. But we need to learn to also down regulate our nervous system into a parasympathetic state of rest and digest. That's how our Nervous system is meant, but our society, and our society rewards us to stay in a chronic state of dysregulation up in our sympathetic nervous system.
Leah Hadley [00:13:23]:
That's really interesting. I'm curious, what does a healthy nervous system look like?
Laurie James [00:13:28]:
That is a really good question. So when I work with clients and whether I'm offering a workshop or one on one, the goal is to work towards relaxed alertness. Right? So that's where you, your body's relaxed, but you are alert, not hypervigilant, where you're constantly scanning. Because we do have a part of our nervous system and it's at the brain stem that is chronically scanning for is this dangerous, is this life threatening or is this safe? So we're constantly scanning for that. But when we are dysregulated, we think that everything is a threat and we, and then our thoughts, as I said earlier, then reinforce that and then we stay there. Does that make sense?
Leah Hadley [00:14:24]:
Yeah, it does. And it's, you know, it's something that I work with people on quite a bit. Not, not in the kind of work that you do. But we can't make good financial decisions when we are in that state, right. When we have so many different things happening in our mind. And so creating that space for clear thinking is so critical to the work that we do. I'm curious a little bit about how do you start working with somebody? What does that relationship look like?
Laurie James [00:14:54]:
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for asking. So when I'm first working with somebody, what I try to do is so, so many people are cut off from their bodies. There are some people that can't even really feel sensations in the body because most of us have been taught to live from the neck up and a lot of us have been parented that way too. Oh, you know, you're too sensitive or, you know, you're making a big deal out of this and why are you emotional about this? And maybe even our ex spouses or soon to be ex spouses also did that. I mean, I know that, you know, when you're gaslighted, that happens a lot. And then you start second guessing yourself to. So the idea is to build a relationship with your body.
Laurie James [00:15:47]:
And one of the ways I do that is I have my clients track their nervous system and have them just check in with their bodies and their sensations a couple of times a day, even if it's just once a day for two minutes, checking in. And the free guide that I have that will be in the show notes that you, that we talked about before we hit record, there's what I call a sensation. They're little bubbles. Sensation, bubbles. Because the language of the nervous system is sensations. So as soon as. And that's not always easy for somebody to connect with. But.
Laurie James [00:16:29]:
So the two things I try and do is one, have my clients bring awareness to what's happening in their bodies when different things happen throughout the day. When they get that email from your exes or soon to be ex's lawyer, and what's that going to do? It triggers you. And instead of trying to move away from that trigger, from that restriction which our nervous system says, that's dangerous, I need to fight or I need to flee or sometimes we freeze. Can I just notice those sensations? Can I be with them? Because when we can stay with the sensations we're experiencing, 99% of the time, they will slowly dissipate. And what that is doing is that is completing that fight, flight or freeze response that email sent you into. Because what trauma is, it's. Trauma isn't what has happened to you, it's what stays stuck in the nervous system. So the whole goal of somatic experiencing, experiencing the body is learning to complete that fight, flight or freeze response that we as humans have not been taught to.
Laurie James [00:17:45]:
But if you look at the animals in the wild, they know how to do that. How do they do that? They shake, they freeze, they play dead to their prey until the prey goes away. They get up, they orient to their space, they shake off the energy and then they take off. Right. Or they fight until they can get away.
Leah Hadley [00:18:18]:
Yeah, this is really interesting. I'm still going back to what you said about trauma isn't what happened to you, but kind of what has stayed in your body. Because I've never thought about it like that before. And that also, I think helps me to understand better how there are things that happen in your life. An email, Right. That maybe if I think back, I'm not gonna think of an email I got 10 years ago, it's just not gonna happen. Like, I just don't know. Right.
Leah Hadley [00:18:41]:
But I do remember feelings that happened, you know, in the workplace or, you know, different things that have happened in my life. And now that I think about it, I'm just curious, like, what has stayed with me? Right.
Laurie James [00:18:53]:
Yeah.
Leah Hadley [00:18:53]:
That maybe and especially. And I could see how that would be useless in talk therapy because like, I'm just not going to come up with those things to talk about. Right, right.
Laurie James [00:19:03]:
But here's the thing about what you said, and that's a great point. And thank you for bringing that up. Because what happens is so our nervous system and our brains, because they're connected, they use past information to make a decision in the present. So you have a database of information that's happened, so whether it was when you were a child or when you were working in your career early on. And so if what's happening in present moment is familiar or somewhat similar to something that happened in the past, that is still. That didn't get completed, that's still in your nervous system, it's going to react similarly in the moment now. So when you talked about even though you might not have remembered what happened, your body remembers, and that's what the trigger is. It's taking all that past information.
Laurie James [00:20:00]:
And so let's just take an example of the email. Going back to the email. If you have received several unpleasant emails from your ex or maybe even also in your work environment or from family members, that is going to show up in the present moment when you open that email and then you just take off and write this nasty response. What I would recommend you do is, you know, Oprah always talks about, you know, sleeping on it and, you know, waiting and not responding to that email. And I would say, yes, don't respond. You want to be more in a calm, centered, grounded place before you respond. Because here's the other thing. Our thoughts are directly related to the state our nervous system is in.
Laurie James [00:20:54]:
So when we're in more of a parasympathetic rest and digest state, you're going to say, yes, this is hard. Yes, this is difficult and overwhelming, but I can get through it. When we're in a sympathetic state, this is when you're like, oh, my God, I need to get this done now. I don't know. You know, I have to get an answer. And I. And I need this to be resolved now, otherwise I'm not going to be okay. And then we move up into the next state, which is our dorsal vagal, and that's when we say, I want to, but I can't.
Laurie James [00:21:24]:
I need to, but I can't. And then we shut down. That's when we feel numbness. That's when we shut down. That's when we feel hopeless. That's when depression starts setting in. So that's why, I mean, the foundation of healing and the foundation of getting through a divorce and getting what you want and you deserve is rooted in regulation, in a regulated nervous system.
Leah Hadley [00:21:53]:
Oh, this is so interesting. So I have to imagine that a lot of our listeners are going through A time in their life where they are feeling very dysregulated. And I'm curious, Lori, if you maybe have some simple tips or strategies you could share with them how they may regulate their nervous system as they're going through the divorce process.
Laurie James [00:22:12]:
Yeah, so, you know, as I. I'll give you, like, I'll give you three. So the first one is, which I talked about at the beginning or kind of in the middle of our conversation, is even just in your notes. You can download my guide or not, or just in your notes, just take a note. You know, just check in with yourself once or twice a day. Like, what am I feeling? Do I feel anything? Do I feel numbness? Can I connect with my body? Do I feel dysregulated? What, what does dysregulation feel like? It's, you know, the restriction, it's the tightness and it's, you know, the shortness of breath, it's elevated heart rate. That's dysregulation in the body. Do I feel that? The second thing is to build what I call a self regulating toolbox.
Laurie James [00:22:59]:
When you're going through a divorce, it is so difficult. And for all you out there that are going through it, I feel you, I went through it. It's not fun. So what I would say is find things and everybody's different. And again, this is in my free guide is find things that are regulating for you. So there's two different things. We have self regulation that we can do and that might be making sure you get in your walk, get in your exercise, sitting and just watching the breeze blow through the trees for two minutes, right? Going for a walk and using your five senses. What can I see? What do I smell? What do I hear? What do I feel? What am I missing? What do I taste? Right? Do I taste something right? Anytime? Because what that is doing is that is signaling to your nervous system.
Laurie James [00:23:58]:
Even though all of this crazy ass shit, pardon my French, is going on right now, you in this moment, I am safe, right? And that, and that could be a bubble bath. That could be. I mean, everybody is different. And then the third thing is, one of the first things that I do with, with people I work with is to stabilize their nervous system. Because when we are going through divorce or we're going through a difficult time, we are very dysregulated. And again, our society rewards us to live in a chronic state, state sympathetic state of go, go, go, do, do, do, and, you know, rest when you're dead kind of mentality, right? And Your nervous system. That's when burnout happens. That's when overwhelm and so stabilize your nervous system Grounding.
Laurie James [00:24:52]:
Whether it's meditation or I have an inexpensive nervous system starter kit that's got three exercises, anything to stabilize your nervous system. Take a moment, just feel the chair underneath you. Feel where the chair is supporting you in this moment. Feel where your feet are touching the ground. When I do that, I immediately, because I've been doing this work for a little bit while I can feel everything dropping down, I'm out of my head and I drop down into my body. And when I can do that, that's when I can down regulate my nervous system into more of a parasympathetic state. And we're in that parasympathetic state. We think more clearly, we're going to make better decisions.
Laurie James [00:25:44]:
We can come from a place of compromise, we can be more curious and we're going to be able to advocate for ourselves better.
Leah Hadley [00:25:58]:
Oh, I love that. I mean, that's so important when you're going through this process. You have shared some wonderful resources and tools, Lori. Where can people find these things?
Laurie James [00:26:08]:
Yes, my website is lori l a u r I e middle initial e james.com. you can also find me on Instagram Lori James. And my free guide is on my website and also my nervous system starter kit as well.
Leah Hadley [00:26:28]:
Okay, fantastic. We will include all of those resources as well as links to Lori's book, which I'm actually really looking forward to reading myself. I haven't had a chance to read it and when you were talking about it, I was like, maybe we might need to have her come into the Empowered Sisterhood and do a little book club conversation.
Laurie James [00:26:45]:
Yes, I'd love to.
Leah Hadley [00:26:46]:
Yeah. I just think that that book is going to resonate a lot with the folks in our program. So I'm looking forward to checking that out and we will include that link as well. Lori, again, I really appreciate your and the tips and wisdom that you've shared with our audience today. I just think it's going to be so valuable for our listeners. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure, Lori.
Leah Hadley [00:27:09]:
It has just been an absolute pleasure to be here with you today and we will see you next week.
Laurie James [00:27:15]:
Sounds great.
Leah Hadley [00:27:17]:
Thank you for joining me on Intentional Divorce Insights. It's a privilege to share this time with you. I hope each episode offers valuable guidance to navigate your journey. If you find our content helpful, please leave a review to help others discover the benefits of Intentional Decision making in divorce. Until next time. Take care and continue to embrace your path with intention.
