Rewiring Your Brain for Emotional Wellness: A Journey to Overcoming Anxiety, Depression, and Trauma

Hey everyone, welcome to the Cope and Chill podcast. I have Dr. Karen Cureton here with me and today we're going to talk about a variety of things, but first I wanted to start with what Dr. Cureton actually does and then she can take us into her world and how she does it. So she when I first connected with her she had written me and she told me that she helps people rewire their brains.

To resolve chronic anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma, chronic illness, and chronic pain, which sounds wonderful. So what I want to ask you is when you say you rewire their brains or you help people rewire their brains, what does that mean? How does that work?  

Let's start.  So that's a great place to start because it applies to all those things that we can help people with.

Right. So, you know, really.  They all converge all those issues that people have all converge to a certain degree, and this issue with the limbic system, which is a part of the brain, the limbic system is the part of the brain that's determining in any moment if you're safe or not. With the circumstances you're in and that's a part of the brain that generally governs our emotions.

Yes. Okay. Both. And so your emotions are, are intricately linked. They're totally linked to the state of your autonomic nervous system, which is this. I like to think of it as like a relay system between the brain and the body where it's communicating that data of safety or that you're not safe whichever it may be to every single organ system in the body. 

And so when somebody has dealt with trauma big T or little T doesn't have to be like the huge stuff. It can be a A culmination of a lot of smaller traumas, or they have been through a period of intense, chronic stress, or they're running some stress patterning. And I had probably all three of these, but by stress patterning, I mean, things like perfectionism or overachieving or, you know, being overly empathic or you know, what’s another I was thinking of?

Oh, the over caretaking personality, right? Some of these sort of patterns that we find ourselves in, unfortunately. If we're, we're running those patterns all the time, then we are triggering stress physiology too much of the time. So, in any of those cases, it's common for someone's limbic system to get stuck in a state of sending the survival signals to the rest of the body all the time. 

And when that happens, people can develop chronic anxiety, chronic... depression, all kinds of mood imbalances that can swing all over the place. It doesn't have to be constant in one state or another, but people can go from rageful to depressed and, you know, anxious and all these other things. And on top of that, because the autonomic nervous system communicates to the rest of the body, that danger signal.

It changes the physiology of every single organ system in the body and really hamstrings a lot of them, unfortunately. So really imbalances our hormones and, you know, shuts down detoxification and digestion to a large degree. And so many other things. So what we see is that anybody who has that kind of, we like to call it nervous system dysregulation or limbic system dysregulation.

Which it turns out is incredibly common in our society. I have 

that. I absolutely have everything you just described. 

Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's rampant. And I think there are lots and lots of reasons for that. But once somebody has that, it becomes very easy for them to develop this, this whole picture or multiple parts of it.

Chronic illness with anxiety or depression with chronic pain or, you know, mix and match.  Anything in there. And so what we do with people is we help them actually reverse that, that programming in their limbic system, because it is programming it's learned. And so even if you've been anxious for most of your life, still generally that patterning is learned.

So even from a very young age, like if we don't have good. You know, attachment with our, you know, caregivers, then it becomes harder for our nervous system to determine or to feel that we are actually safe in the world. So, sometimes, you know, even from the age of, like, 1 or 2 people's nervous systems are already starting to develop this programming right that.

Oh, maybe the world is not safe and I need to be on high alert and just keep myself safe that way. Right. But unfortunately, it has all these negative downstream effects, which are very obvious in the studies now, right? It's been that way for a long time. We've known that chronic stress patterning can lead to all kinds of different mental and physical health issues.

And, and so since this is a, this season of the podcast is particularly focused on empaths and HSPs, and a lot of the things that you described, the experiences that people have, the reasons why they come see you are things that empaths and HSP often often struggle with. Why do you think it is that people who are empaths and HSPs tend to  have the chronic anxiety, tend to be hyper vigilant and perfectionistic?

What's going on in their brain that, that relates to that type of personality?  Yeah, so I definitely was a highly sensitive person before I started rewiring my brain. So I know this pattern very well. And it is a stress pattern. It is one that I think for everyone who struggles with it, it has a relationship to causing stress physiology in their, in their system, brain and body.

And I think that, you know, It depends a little bit on the person, but for me, the crux of that was that I was basically programmed to feel responsible for other people's emotions. And so, of course, when I was around other people who were upset or emotional, you know, I would get upset and emotional. I got really good at mirroring other people's feelings.

But as a result, I was putting myself into stress physiology. You know, every time that I would, you know, go home crying after a really, you know, hard day at the clinic where I saw some people really suffering. I, I was putting myself into a state of stress physiology and that. Unfortunately, affected my physical health as well.

And so I think that is one of the underlying things that is such a big stressor for people that are highly sensitive. And the other big thing I think is that.  And then I see all the time is that people are really attached to wanting to have control over what's happening in the world, you know, really wanting to feel like they can do something about all the suffering and, you know, climate change and all these other big issues we have going on, you know, political systems, you name it.

They're rescuers. Rescue. You have a desire to rescue and save. 

Yes. Yes. Exactly. And I, unfortunately, many of those things we don't have a lot of control over, right? And so, what's that, what that leads to is people just being stressed out all the time because they're just thinking, I need to do something, I need to change this, I have, how can I contribute?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it just doesn't end.  Well, because you, you can't ever really bring about the results that you desire, right? It's too big of an objective and, and so that sort of creates the stress right there, right? You have this desire to achieve something. You can't achieve it. There's frustration.

There's, you know, you're putting pressure on yourself to do more and all this other kind of stuff. It just adds, adds to the stress layers. Exactly. Yeah.  So with even with that patterning, that is usually learned. It's usually something someone modeled for you or someone taught you, or you got scolded for not being compassionate enough or some other thing.

And so we can rewind that patterning. We can rewire it in the brain so that your brain automatically does something different. It doesn't run that program anymore. And when that happens, of course, people’s entire systems get healthier because they're not constantly in that stress physiology.  And so when, let's say somebody, you mentioned earlier that someone might have suffered from chronic anxiety for most, if not all of their life how long would it take someone to rewire their brain such that they aren't  You know, overtaken by anxiety all the time.

Yeah. 

So it's usually a gradual process. And it usually takes.  You know, if somebody has been anxious for that long, you know, it's usually takes somewhere around a year. It could be a little less, it could be a little more, but that's kind of average, that's kind of ballpark. But even at like the three month mark and the six month mark, people are already saying to us, Oh my God, I feel so much better, you know, and really what they're doing from six months to a year is they're cleaning up some of their more minor programs. Some of the things that they don't run into as often, but when they do run into it, it really dysregulates them. Right? So that's kind of what typically is happening at that point.

And so when you say a year, is that like. A year of doing something every day. I presume if they're your client that they're working with you, maybe on a weekly basis or something like that. I mean, what is what is the daily sort of routine look like or weekly routine look like to to get that kind of a result? 

Yeah, so it  can vary a little bit from person to person, so I'll give you a couple different scenarios to think about. So, if a person has big T traumas in their history, that is a situation where we recommend That they do some private session work just to help them rewire those big traumas, because rewiring big traumas on your own is pretty tough.

I tried it. Trust me. I'm like very stubbornly independent. And I was like, I could do this by myself.  And I got stuck in the trauma. Like when I tried to. Go into it and then do the step I needed to do to rewire it. I couldn't do step number two because I was so overtaken by step number one, right? So, and that's really common.

It's a typical experience. So, it's good to get a few sessions to do that. But, ballpark, when you're using these kinds of tools.  Like, it usually takes somewhere between one and three sessions to rewire a trauma.  And when you say a big T trauma, like what's an example? 

So as an example, I had a woman who had a surgical complication that was really severe. 

She almost died and it was due to negligence in the hospital with the surgical team. And so she went home and immediately had PTSD symptoms after that. Like she was having flashbacks and, you know, insomnia and anxiety during the day and all these things that she didn't have before that event.  And so with her that was very fresh.

Like she contacted me right after it happened that took three. I think two and a half sessions with her to rewire it,  but for other people, and especially for traumas that are further in the past, sometimes I'm able to rewire like eight traumas with them in a session. So it really depends on a person's brain and how big the trauma was, but that's kind of a good ballpark for people if they're like, Hmm, how long will this take me based on how many traumas I have? 

So that's something that you can use as a ballpark to, to budget that. But... The other thing, I just want to just clarify something because you talked about the big T trauma and you gave an example and you've mentioned little T trauma before. What is that? And what's an example of that?  

Yeah. So little T traumas can take an enormous number of forms, but the way that I like to think about trauma is it's anything that creates sort of a lasting change in your sense of safety in the world.

Right. Right. So from that. And that's, that's how we should define trauma based on what's literally happening in your brain, what's changing in your limbic system. So if you have an experience that changes your limbic system forever after that to, to cause you to feel less safe in the world, even if it's only in certain contexts,  that is, in my mind, a trauma. 

So if let's say let's think of a minor trauma,  I'll give an example from my life. And because it's going to sound, it's going to sound like one of those things where you're like, oh, that's ridiculous. But it did actually have this lasting impact in my life and on my nervous system. So I want to give this example because it may resonate with a lot of people. 

So when I was in high school, I, I started to get into boys and I was more into sports and I didn't really want to, you know, dedicate myself entirely to school. And my parents are both educators, so school is extremely important for them. And there was a time in high school when I basically overheard my father saying, Yeah.

I don't really think she's going to do much in life. Like she seems too interested in other things. Like I don't really expect much of her kind of thing. Wow. And, and I was like, wow, what? You know, that was all new for me. Like he'd never expressed anything like that to me before.  And it hurt. I was like, Oh man, I didn't know that he expected so little of me or thought so little of me.

Yeah. So After that point, what happened for me is I became so determined to prove him wrong.  That that is when my overachiever pattern started. It was just like overnight. I cannot rest. I have to be productive all the time.  And it was like a subconscious driver. It wasn't like I was thinking about that event all the time.

I wasn't, but subconsciously it no longer felt safe to relax or to, you know, do the frivolous things that I wanted to do as a teenager. Yeah, no, no, no, that, that, that makes complete sense to me as you're saying that, I'm kind of like, my goodness,  if I could like, go back and think about like, all the things that were said to me that were like that, not necessarily from my parents, but from like,  Playing varsity sports.

I mean, the kind of mind games that the coaches used to play with you you know, just, and then you realize later it was, it was designed to do exactly maybe what your father was trying to do, which was to motivate you, but it sticks with you, right? And you, and you don't forget it. And it becomes something that causes that.

Dramatic change in behavior for you, you know so, so, okay. So you, I'm sorry. I thank you for clarifying. I think I interrupted you from going down the path of your example. Yeah, it's all good. Let's see. So I think we were, yeah, we were talking about what it takes to really rewire, you know, a chronic anxiety pattern.

So. So that private session work is a piece of it for people that, that have some traumas, particularly big, big T traumas, little T traumas, like the one that I just mentioned, we often find that people can rewire those on their own, so they don't need to have. Help necessarily with those, but anything that when you think about it, it sends you up to a nine or a 10.

That's, you know, on the scale of zero to 10, that's something that you want to work with a practitioner on.  So the other piece of it, even for those people that do do that trauma work, everyone has to do this other piece in order to rewire their anxiety pattern. And the other piece is the daily practice. 

So. That's why we created the Wired for Wellness program, because we got these tools to use in private sessions, and we thought they were amazing, and they did incredible things, and they do. However, you have to, when you rewire something in the brain, you have to get a lot of reps in, so to speak, in order to make that new networking strong enough that it becomes your new default.

Right. And so, when we're in sessions and we're, we're working on something, the, what, what I like to think about the way what we're actually doing is we're mostly focused on breaking down the roots of that problem.  So the roots are like the memories and the belief systems that created that pattern in the first place.

Yeah. But then what grew from that, right, the trunk and the branches is basically the neural habit that you have practiced for years and years and years. Yeah. And so that part really needs the, the repetition for a while in order for the brain to learn a new trick and to learn it solidly. So it becomes your new default.

Explain that a little bit more. When you say that it's the thing that you kept practicing over and over again throughout the years. Is that, is that rumination? Is that, what, what is it exactly that we're doing there that we keep, are we?  We keep rethinking, we keep reliving the experience in our brains, is that what you're talking about?

Or what did you mean by that?

It can be. It means anything involved in the anxious patterning, right? So for some people, their anxious patterning is about reliving the past in their head over and over and over again, right? That will make that memory network bigger and stronger. The more that they rehearse it, which essentially means they're more likely to think of it as time goes on. So anything that gets stronger in the brain is more likely to fire. And so another thing that people practice regularly, but unintentionally is. Yes. Anxious thought patterning, catastrophic thinking, right. Or you know, worst case scenarios or  something like that. Replaying what happened, what they said in their conversation yesterday and going, Oh my gosh, I should have said this.

And why did you say that?

You know, everybody’s got their own patterning as far as that goes. But the other ones are, you know, like those patterns I mentioned of. Perfectionism or overachieving or whatever, every time we get anxious looking at the to do list, we basically are saying to the brain, the to do list or not having everything done on the to do list is a threat and we're saying, we're saying it's a threat to my life,  which we know is not true, but we don't realize that's what we're doing, you know? 

Yeah, I had developed some of those patterns earlier in my career. I'd worked in some high stress jobs that I really didn't like, and they actually required, you know, at one point is working like 80 hours a week and and was doing work at home staying up, you know, sometimes 34 in the morning trying to finish a presentation because I didn't really know what I was doing.

And and you know, as a result of that, you know, there was just remember is like, just constant sort of like, pressing myself to like, you got to keep going. And, you know, you're kind of like, constantly flogging yourself mentally you know, and and feeling anxious because you're not going to get it done.

And so now, even today, you know, sitting in front of a computer, I have to literally talk to myself so that I'm not feeling that same feeling of anxiety of especially if I'm working on something. It's like. You know, this is not that same situation that you experienced, you know, years ago. But I'm sure I can learn more from you in terms of more appropriate ways or better ways to, to actually work with that.

Yeah, but that's, that's a great illustration of how it can happen when the scenario isn't trauma or these, you know, Childhood patterns. Maybe we develop for stress, but it can just be from a really intense period of chronic stress that happened for me. And when I was basically in medical school, it felt like there was constantly a fire to put out, like, you know, every day there were quizzes and tests and things like that.

It was just nonstop for six years. So at the end of that, I was left with a Totally wrecked nervous system that just literally could not figure out how to relax. Because I couldn't for six years, it just wasn't possible in order to get through that experience. So after something like that, it's very normal for people to have to unwind that patterning.

Another really common life event that. That sends tends to set that off for people is having children  really, we see that a lot that new mothers, you know, they don't sleep, you know, for a long time, you know, they are needed at all times.  Right. They never get a break. Right. Yeah. And so it's so common to, you know, basically get women coming to this work after that, that period of sleep loss has ended and they can think straight again.

And then they're like, oh, I've changed. This isn't comfortable. This is not how I want to be. And then they look for something like this. Luckily, some of them do. Wow. 

So if you mentioned your wired for wellness program how would people, if they wanted to work with you, how could they work with you? Is the, is the, it's a group coaching program.

Is that right?  

Yeah. So the Wired for Wellness program is a group program. It's online. A bunch of content on there is pre recorded so you can go through it at your own pace. It's got a lot of educational content so you can learn more about the brain and the nervous system, how they work, how your emotions are involved in that, how to actually rewire your brain.

And just a lot of amazing stuff. And then, yeah. Alongside that, we also have this huge library of guided neural retraining processes. So things that we know for sure are going to rewire your brain for what you want, those are in there. So you can just press play anytime you need one. And we find that that's really important for people who are.

Very dysregulated because they can't call us individually every time that happens and have a session right so in the beginning people are dysregulated a lot usually when they come to us like the majority of the time and so they need to be using processes you know every day and we have like. Some calendars in their suggested calendars of like, Hey, if you have a limited amount of free time, here's how we think you could best use your time in here.

And if you've got a lot of free time, like you're retired and not doing much, then here's another schedule for you. So that's that. And that is what helps people really to rewire these chronic habits of chronic anxiety or chronic perfectionism or whatever. That's what that's set up for. And then you can.

Actually try it out. You can try out what is neural retraining like in our free program. So the free anxiety program you can find at getwiredforwellness.com slash anxiety slash anxiety. Okay. 

Yeah. Yes. Mm hmm. And then there is like a general free Mm hmm. Free program for people out there who, that one is more geared towards people with chronic health issues.

It talks about, hey, how does nervous system dysregulation actually cause digestive dysfunction and all these other things that people struggle with physically. And that one also has six free neural retraining processes in it. And that's at getwiredforwellness.com backslash free.  

Awesome. Awesome. So if there was one thing that you'd like people to take away from what we've talked about or even what it is that you do to help people what would that be? 

That's a good question.  I would just say that it, it doesn't matter how long. Or how severe your stress patterning is or your health issues, you know, if it doesn't matter how long you've been stuck in them, how old you are, none of that matters. You can reverse all that programming. We have people in the program who are 75, have been anxious since they were four years old and are happy as a clam because they've reversed their chronic anxiety.

So it can be done. So don't write yourself off. You know, as the one person it's not going to work for, it's, it's quite amazing. You might as well try it. Like there's literally no downside. It's completely safe. So why not? 

Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, this is so awesome. Thank you so much for everything you've shared.

Thank you for being with us today. And I, I might even go look at this stuff myself. I think I probably need to. So I'm so happy that you've shared this on our show here today. 

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.