Descript_Raw_Christie
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[00:00:00] Hey, Christie How are you?

I'm good. How are you?

I'm really good. Welcome.

I would love to ask you to introduce yourself. You okay with that?

Absolutely. Yeah. I am Christie Davis.

I have been a midwife in private practice

for close to 15 years. I've been working really

hard to retire that practice.

My final retirement fall client

is due in August. I've been attending births for over 20 years and in 2018

started transitioning into the work

of birth trauma healing from a somatic perspective.

I work with people who have experienced

a traumatic birth as well as birth providers

on career burnout and secondary trauma.

Oh, it's so real. It's one of the reasons

I really wanted to talk to you because

[00:01:00] I deal with this issue on the other side,

which is, after a traumatic event that

includes a poor outcome.

Midwives need chart review.

They need legal guidance and counsel.

And they need help with their chart a lot of times.

And so I kind of do the more heady,

intellectual stuff. But it doesn't mean I don't,

hold a lot of bleeding hearts.

And so it spoke to me so much,

this transition that you've done

in really formal education and experience

and now, you know, shifting your whole focus,

to create a different kind of practice.

It just really spoke to me because

I think number one, midwifes need what

you offer desperately.

Not just in poor outcomes,

but even in outcomes that went okay,

but caused trauma.

I also think there are a lot of midwives who might

benefit from even following in your footsteps

and making this transition as well as they

pivot [00:02:00] in their careers or as midwifery,

becomes unsustainable for some.

So I just thought this would be such an

amazing conversation. Let's start with who finds

out about you and how do they know to call you?

I think a lot of it is word of mouth.

The way I've gotten in touch with

midwives throughout North America,

and a little bit into Europe, is doing seminars.

I have a, day long seminar about burnout

and birth work and secondary trauma

and it's something that I've been traveling

the country doing over the last few years.

And that's been a big one as far as

just getting to know practices,

getting to know regions of the country.

And I have like several midwifery group practices

that I work with, in, like coaching.

I have a monthly subscription option

basically that I do coaching with.

Practices as well as working with individual midwives.

It ends up being word of mouth that

[00:03:00] largely comes through people that attend the seminars.

That's awesome. So tell me more about this coaching.

Yeah, I really, really love doing it.

One of my practices, it's a partnership

and they joke that it's like their marriage counseling.

For midwifery? Yes. Tell me more.

Which I adore. But you know, we just meet weekly

and it's sort of half just debriefs,

you know, of the births that they've had.

Especially those that have ended in transfer,

not from the perspective of chart review

and more like what you're talking about

in the work that you do, but more like how

that went in their heart, in their system,

and in their work together, how that felt for them.

And so debrief from that perspective

and half. Or I guess I should say more like third

third, just how the practice is running

as far as the relationship of working together.

And then a [00:04:00] third just really straight up somatic work.

How is the nervous system feeling

on a day-to-day basis?

You know, we do a lot of checking in,

like, wow, you're talking super fast today.

Can we just pause and check in what's

happening in your body right now?

Are you noticing how is your breath

coming in and out?

How I see you moving your hands a lot.

Like do they need to do some movement?

Let's just shake our hands a little bit and get into that.

And just really finding safety

in the nervous system so that

we can process the emotion of what is happening.

So it's a mix of that debrief sort of

neutral third party coaching of somebody

who understands midwifery practice.

And from that perspective of your nervous system,

how can we keep this sustainable?

That is so beautiful and so needed.

I love it. I get calls from midwives who are divorcing.

It's never a clean divorce in midwifery.

And we wanna work together

so badly because the [00:05:00] work is so hard.

Yeah.

And so all encompassing.

And yet, from my perspective,

they don't put into play the business piece of it.

They don't write contracts and they

don't negotiate salaries and they

don't make an exit plan and they,

they don't deal with the legalities,

the real administrative drama of

actually sharing a business.

And that's usually leads to resentment

and money, blah, blah, blah, blah,

that it falls apart. It's much like marriages.

Yeah. I think at heart we're just largely

creative heart led people that doing things

like contracts can often feel,

we don't trust each other.

We don't, you know, it, it feels sort of

against that heart space.

And we do in when I work in,

we need prenups. We need prenups.

Yeah. When, when I work in coaching perspectives.

So much boundary work happens.

Yeah. You know, one tip that I often

offer is weekly, depending on the size

of the practice and like capacity of everybody,

weekly or monthly meetings in

which we have those [00:06:00] priorities

in which we go over and constantly reevaluate,

reevaluating, excuse me, practice guidelines,

practice boundaries, practice contracts,

things like that to keep everybody safe.

Oh, I'm cheering for you.

It's so epic.

this is so important and I'm so glad

that you are offering this service.

There are a number of birth trauma

focused folks out there.

We've loved to meet the folks from Dancey Perinatal.

I'm sure you're aware of them.

Gosh, there's a few other Utah, like there's

a few places I'm thinking of where there are

birth trauma counselors and therapists.

But it's, such a fantastic and unique,

bridge that you are holding between

having been a practicing midwife and

now having this trauma informed,

somatic informed therapy practice.

People must just resonate with you so much

it's such a weird niche of a profession

that you can't always go to a therapist

and be like, so anyway, "she was hemorrhaging [00:07:00] and I had my hand inside her..."

Nobody understands that.

So you, you get it.

People must resonate so well with you.

Well, and I think it offers people too,

like you don't have to spend

20 minutes of your session

explaining why you would have

your hand inside of her.

You can simply say like, you type

into midwifery education.

Yeah. I know there were still clots.

We were having this issue.

I had to go in.

Done.

I get it

I get how

much you didn't wanna do that.

I get all of it and I already understand that.

Yeah.

You don't have to educate me.

Oh, it's such a shortcut in our lives.

Like, girl, I'm high fiving you

because it's so badass that you are

willing to come through this work

and then hold space for other midwives.

Thank you. I hope people listen to this

and get excited. Let's tell a story.

I think some of our listeners are

familiar with what Somatic Healing is.

But it's also kind of a buzzword.

Yes, totally. And maybe it's not super [00:08:00] clear.

Because it's kind of the foundation

of your healing and because I think

it's the foundation of all of our real healing,

would you go a little deeper and define what it is,

and then give us an example of what

that means to work with that in your practice.

Yes, absolutely. And I agree with you.

There's a lot of buzzwords out there,

and that's something that I work really hard at

separating out the fact from the buzzword

somatic at its most literal root means of the body.

And so what we're looking at is the

nervous system and when we go

through a difficult event.

Our nervous system becomes

activated into its state of fight, flight, freeze, fawn,

and it gets a bad reputation, right?

Activation is another one of those

sort of buzz words like, "oh, I'm feeling so activated".

Good. Your nervous system is doing

what it's supposed to do.

It's sensing danger and it's protecting you.

But in a difficult event,

when that activation system steps

up to keep you safe. [00:09:00] And for whatever reason,

doesn't have a chance to return

to its baseline state. Once the safety returns.

That's what we integrate as trauma.

So the trauma is not in the event itself.

Two people can escape a burning building

and only one of them walks out

with trauma because one of them

was resourced to return to their baseline state.

One of them was not,

therefore only one of them has trauma.

And so it's not a better than worse than,

you know, anything like that.

It's just one of them had different resources

than the other.

And so when we are working

on healing through that somatic lens,

what we're recognizing is that there

is something that happened in your

story in which your nervous system is still stuck.

So when you think about it, talk about it,

maybe even smell something that reminds you of it.

There's some sensory experience that happens.

That tells your body, we're back there.

It's still happening. You have a physical [00:10:00] reaction

of some sort. And so we go through the story,

we slow it down, and even right there,

sometimes when I say the word, like when

I'm doing a consult and I say,

we're gonna slow it down, that's the activation.

People are like, no, I don't wanna slow it down.

I just wanna get the information out to you fast.

Yeah.

That's your body protecting you, right?

Slowing it down is dangerous.

But when we do that with resources

in a really safe way, with the understanding

that we're doing it in a space,

that danger is no longer happening.

We get to find those places

where the activation lies.

We get to look into the body and

what that looks like is simply,

okay, you're telling me about this.

This feels like a big moment.

I can see that your body,

that your eyes are shifting,

that your hands are moving,

that in some way there's activation happening.

Can you tell me what's happening in your body?

Can we just look at what's happening right now?

[00:11:00] Not what you remember feeling,

because that's the past.

What are you feeling right now?

And some people may mention like,

I just feel this real tension in my jaw.

Okay. Can we just be with the tension in your jaw?

We sit with it, we allow that moment

that didn't get to complete, to complete.

And so often, you know, 30 seconds,

we just sit and we watch the change happen.

We watch the body work it through,

and the next time they talk about that moment,

the tension in the jaw doesn't happen.

The emotion's still there.

You get to keep that. The experience was important.

We're not about getting rid of or letting go of it.

We're just returning to a baseline of safety

so that the nervous system understands

it's not currently [00:12:00] happening.

I would say nobody knows what

we're getting into as we're getting into.

Definitely. It's like becoming a parent,

like you can be like, oh, that looks so cute,

and then you're like,

oh, the roof just got blown off

my house and I have no idea.

Definitely there's no clear way to

communicate the level of

intensity that this profession entails.

But I would also say that there's a reason

that we make it through apprenticeship,

and that is that some part of our

nervous system thinks that this

kind of chaos is normal.

Yes, I talk with a lot of people

about being empaths

which is another, like the buzz word, the

that is complicated because empath

really could just be shorthand for

codependent, which brings well

Being an empath is a coping mechanism

that helped us survive our childhood.

That's what I mean.

Like it is a skill, right?

The reason we have that superpower

is 'cause it kept us alive, right? Yes.

Yes. Sometimes the work that we [00:13:00] do is

being able to uncouple empathy with our work.

So that we can keep that

skill of being empathetic

without being in that role of empath,

surviving my childhood while I'm working.

We're so in it right now.

Given that we hypothesize that 100%

of home birth midwives have a

history of trauma, because otherwise,

why would they accept what

they're currently working in?

We're speaking to the, our entire audience.

Right now. And I guess I would love

to give them some really tangible examples

of what the difference is between

the reality that they currently think of as

normal and the reality that a fully nervous system

regulated person experiences.

I feel like I've had to do this work for myself

in a really hard way, and then being.

The midwives midwife for [00:14:00] crazy events.

I've gotten to see this in enough ways that

I feel like I can see pattern recognition.

You've come at it from formal training

and education certifications and licensure.

So maybe we could meet in the middle.

Would you go through and speak to

our entire audience and explain

some things that they think are normal,

that are not normal?

Yeah. That's a really great question.

I think one of the big ones,

depending on the degree of regulation,

legality, illegality in the state where you work,

one of the things that has just widely

been accepted as normal is.

Every decision you make having this

undercurrent of, am I gonna get persecuted,

prosecuted, thrown under the

bus for this decision?

Yeah.

And just having that it's like this

minor activation, well, not so minor.

No, it's pretty major because

someplace, yes, I guess [00:15:00] like felony,

just always sort of

thrumming in the background.

Yeah.

I am maybe practicing in a way

that feels true to me, that matches up

to my level of comfort, my level of education.

Yet however, am I going to come through

the other side of this and still have a career?

Or a life because it involves jail time sometimes.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. That's terrifying.

That will activate your nervous system.

And that's the marginalized profession that

America has made. Home birth midwifery. Yes.

I'm here in Australia,

and it's so different.

I went to a Australian midwifery

conference and hundreds,

400 midwives at this conference.

I was talking to various ones

and they just have none of the

worries that American midwives have.

Like none.

I can tell you right now,

I mean like from a somatic perspective,

my body reacts to that.

I mean, like that's an activation for me.

Like what?[00:16:00]

Yeah.

Is that, but yes, none of the worries.

They practice in homes and birth centers

and hospitals. They have the same-ish scope.

There's a few things that are different,

but in general, they're midwives.

Fully supported by their community,

by their employers, by the government,

by the other healthcare facilities.

They practice in an integrated environment

and there are 35,000 midwives in Australia.

It's a country of 35 million. It's still not enough,

but the US has less than 15,000

midwives in a country of 335 million.

Those sort of realities just hit me.

You just notice the difference, you know?

What it could look like with support,

what it could look like, and really how far

outside of normal the whole profession is in the [00:17:00] US.

And with that, I've worked in so many

communities where the relationships are so broken

and damaged among midwives and

you see why when nobody is able to

work in a safe and regulated way.

Yeah. And it's so sad

to see and it's so beyond

like, we can't fix this,

you know?

It's such a big problem.

So one example is the idea

of practicing with varying levels of,

if this doesn't go well,

I bear the brunt.

What's another example?

A physical example or mental,

emotional, spiritual, like whatever.

But what's an example

that American

home birth midwives

live with that they

think is normal,

which is really not normal?

I can't say if this is an American midwife

or world midwife problem,

'cause I've never practiced outside of the United States.

But the [00:18:00] relationship with client and midwife

and the level of expectation whether

it's a small practice or an individual solo private practice,

the expectation of client to midwife and the

level of professionalism that we are expected

to carry and the amount of pain we live with

every time things don't go expected for our clients.

I agree.

It is simply devastating

inhuman.

Like it's so much to carry. Intentions

are always for the best interest of our client

because nothing else makes sense.

Why would we do this work if we didn't want

empowered birthing people?

If we didn't want healthy babies,

healthy birthing people, healthy relationships,

we wouldn't be doing this work.[00:19:00]

And when that doesn't happen and the

blame is shifted to the provider and

we are expected to just absorb it.

The level of pain that we carry, it's unrealistic.

It's unsustainable. And I mean,

from a very personal level, it's partially why I left.

I was simply exhausted with having

my heart broken over and over.

Most of my clients were extremely satisfied.

But it's impossible to have a hundred percent

of them be satisfied.

Right. And the ones that aren't my

heart eventually just couldn't handle it.

And I don't think that's normal for a

care provider to have to sustain.

Yeah. I don't think it's normal at all.

I would say everything you said I agree with,

and then I would add the word available.

The expectations of availability is not normal.

I oftentimes will say, think about the OB[00:20:00]

Yes. Anywhere in the US

Yes.

And the client has something

that they wanna ask the OB

how do they get ahold of that OB?

Amount of barriers that they have

to go through to get to their doctor.

I'm not saying that that's optimal either.

The diametric difference tells you that

there is a gulf of difference that you could be

choosing in there. You don't have to be 24/7

seven on call all the time for every single person.

Work is every, and that is definitely

something I work with, practices that I work with.

It's something that I speak about

in my conferences is how to have.

Those healthy boundaries of communication.

Yes.

Because it is absolutely not sustainable

to be available 24/7

It is simply not sustainable.

And yet that's the paradigm that

most of us were raised in midwifery.

Yes. if you do not become a martyr,

you are selfish.

Yes. And that's really, really not normal.

No. Nope.

In fact, if [00:21:00] we were to put this into some other

context of trauma, like say the

family unit or school, right?

The expectations that midwives have

had placed on them and that they

continue to place on themselves.

'Cause that's how trauma, rolls downhill.

That whole Yes. Yes. Are really crazy

and so I always like to try to pull it out into

some other context that we're familiar with.

Like the OB or whatever. Yes. So what, like how crazy is it?

What we're doing, our availability

compared to any other system?

Yeah. It's pretty crazy,

right?

Yeah. Oh my goodness.

Yeah. You think about like making your grocery list.

Are you gonna call the clerk at the grocery

store at three in the morning and be like,

oh my goodness, are you guys gonna have milk tomorrow?

I need to know. Do you have milk? I need milk.

Yes. It's a perfect example. [00:22:00] Thank you.

I literally cannot go to sleep

if I don't find out right now.

If you have milk tomorrow.

Yeah. That's not how any

other world works, but midwifery.

And to take that just a tiny bit further,

does anybody go up to the grocery store clerk

when they buy their milk and say, are you sure that that's how much milk costs?

Oh my God.

Well, and it's one step even crazier because

it's not the grocery store clerk.

They will stand there and wait for

the owner of the store to come out.

Whatever they were doing, that doesn't matter

because their needs are more important

in that moment, and they will call them out

and then demand a discount on the groceries

they have already agreed to buy.

Yes. It's crazy. And so we could spend a lot of time,

and in fact, I think I have spent many podcasts

thinking about how we got here, but let's not.

Absolutely. Because it's like, yes, let's not go backwards.

Let's go forward.

established this is where we are.

Yeah. So let's go forward.

So like speaking [00:23:00] again to the individual,

because there's nothing you or

I are gonna do about the system today,

but like speaking to the individual who's

listening to this podcast who may be about to,

or currently running a practice that feels unsustainable.

Nervous system, financially, time,

like all the ways it feels unsustainable,

how do they begin to decouple from the

paradigm they were raised

in order to get to a safe place?

What's some steps they could take?

I think that it can all be summed

up in one word that many people

love to hate, and that is boundaries.

you speaking my language.

I love it. I love it.

I adore boundaries once I developed a really

great relationship with them. I do so much boundary work. the biggest thing, like when we're coming

out of the life of being you know the empath,

once we learned that being an empath

is an ineffective coping technique that [00:24:00] was

very effective for surviving our childhood,

but is no longer effective.

Correct.

Once we can put it into that perspective

and start to understand that utilizing boundaries

is an effective coping technique for this time of life.

It's not being mean, it's not being bad.

And if we establish them in appropriate ways,

it sustains us. It honestly, at the end of the day,

it helps our clients feel safe because

if we say what we are going to do and

we follow through with it, they trust us.

If we say what we are going to do and

then we don't do it, they don't trust us either.

Nobody feels safe.

So boundaries are safety for us.

They're safety for our clients.

That's it right there.

That's beautiful. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. And for new midwives

just entering practice, it's something

that I have been really shifting my [00:25:00] focus

to because that's where we need to start, right?

one idea that I've been tossing around is doing

some cohort work.

With student midwives and taking a few months

with a group of student midwives

and sort of working into that.

How do you write, practice guidelines? when I sat down for the

NARM years ago, one thing that they wanted me

to do is submit my practice guidelines.

I'm like, I don't even know what that means.

I just started practicing.

I basically copied my state regulations

and submitted them.

Yeah,

but like being able to really talk about

what do boundaries look like for you?

Where do you feel safe in your practice?

What are some practices that work for you?

What are some practices that don't?

What have you observed?

What have you done? And really starting off

with strong practice guidelines,

things like that, so that we're walking

into this career with boundaries already intact.

Yes. I fully support that work so needed.

I feel [00:26:00] terrified for the next generation

of midwives who are practicing in an

increasingly transparent fishbowl. With higher standards of documentation than

ever with multiple tech and video cameras

running from people they can't control of

family members and a state that is actively hunting them.

I am terrified for this next group of midwives

because while those of us who came up in the nineties,

we were doing the same thing. That nobody knew about.

There was no record. Nobody knew nobody

was videotaping us. If they did, it was like a camcorder

. You can't even see what's happening.

They certainly don't have the whole birth,

Yeah. the witch hunt

was not as organized or aggressive.

what's happening now is midwives who

follow the licensure path feel handcuffed by their

requirements and midwives who follow the

radical midwifery path feel [00:27:00] alone and extra

and you know, excommunicated

from the rest of the community.

And I think We need midwives who toe the line

and midwives who break the line like this

is one of my full beliefs. Always.

Both types of midwives are.

But I think both of them are becoming more

and more disillusioned because

of the fracture in the community,

the lack of boundaries, the muddy waters

that just sort of confuses everyone.

I feel like there's one step before boundaries.

Once I say it, like PPGs

, you know, I teach this course on

policies, procedures, protocols, and guidelines. This PPGs is like your public facing. And boundaries is like how you communicate with you.

Because boundaries are for yourself.

They're not for anyone else. only you can break your own boundaries.

Rules are for other people. Boundaries are for you. But then in order to install.

The way that you communicate with yourself,

you have to believe that you're [00:28:00] worthy of having needs.

Yeah, and I would say that is my

biggest stumbling block when I work with midwives

is I discover that many of them don't actually

have that core belief that they deserve

to have boundaries or needs or nice things.

And that's what leads you right into

that martyrdomif you don't believe that,

then it's very easy to walk right down

that path of becoming a martyr, of giving away self.

If there's no belief in self,

it's really easy to give it away.

Yeah. That self-sacrificing, self abandonment becomes the norm because it's the only way that you can conceptualize. Being functional, right? Like there's boundaries is an action for sure.

Mm-hmm.

But in order for that action,

it has to be a core belief that you are worthy

of having an edge, having a boundary,

having a border, you are worthy of

that because you are self-contained.

If you don't have that concept, then of course

people are gonna [00:29:00] bleed into you and you are

gonna bleed into them, and the

muddy waters just continues.

Yeah, so like how, how do we reach those?

Like how do we break through this?

Bringing that right into the somatic lens,

that is also a survival tactic, right?

I mean, like, if I can just make myself disappear,

if I can basically make myself tiny, that's a survival tactic

or spread myself around or whatever, yeah, but

It's making myself in a way, unnoticeable.

Yeah, a disillusionment.

Yeah. I become a chameleon.

And so then I'm unnoticeable.

Yeah. And so, I mean, in a lot of ways, un answer

to that can be working with coping techniques,

working with the nervous system,

working with the sense of safety. from the somatic perspective. It always comes

back to the body first. That sense of safety,

that sense of regulation, that sense of, okay,

I'm feeling safe here when I feel safe here, then I have access [00:30:00] to

examining questions like, why am I the way I am?

Where do I come from? Where am I going?

What do I need? as long as I'm

in that place of not feeling safe.

We literally cannot think our way out of a state

of trauma because the nervous system,

only its only job is to keep us alive.

And it will always override the brain because

the nervous system doesn't care what the brain is thinking.

It only cares about keeping you alive. when we're so far into that place of like, if

I just become small and become a chameleon

and just blend in. The brain, of course, is looking

for a story for the activation. it's telling you a lot of information, but none of it's

gonna be able to do anything until we find a place

of safety and regulation in the body.

And so from a somatic lens, the answer is let's find a place of safety first.

Brilliant.

we can start working with the issues.

[00:31:00] Yeah. Brilliant. You are a point of safety.

I hope to be. That's what I work towards too.

It's like I'll be available and, and,

I feel like what I can demonstrate

those projects more confidence is that

I'm a place of accountability.

I can guarantee accountability for my own system.

Ooh, that's powerful. I'm always struck with the similarity between parenting. aside from all the labels of parenting styles ultimately we all know that

you can't teach emotional intelligence.

You have to be it. And regulated nervous system

is the core of emotional intelligence. parents have to sort out their own stuff. Otherwise they'll pass it on to their people. this is the call of modern times, right?

The millennials are breaking all the generational curses.

So this is our call [00:32:00] of our modern times is like,

Hey, midwives now who are thinking of

taking students or are currently teaching students.

Sort out your own stuff so that you don't pass it on, right?

Yep. Do the work. Do the work. Yeah.

So what does that look like?

Say someone heard this podcast and was like,

"oh Christie is for me.

I'm gonna work with her." What happens?

Do they like call you schedule with you?

Like do you like how does it work?

Yeah. on my website there's a

scheduling link and one of the options is 20 minute consult. I always think a great place is to just jump on and do a consult, and that way we can get to know each other a little bit.

Talk about your unique needs. working with me, it's a, dollop of work life and a dollop of developmental trauma. Because they love each other.

We repeat and then we repeat?

Yeah. I mean, the way that I explain it often is that our nervous system has all these little file boxes.

It doesn't know that [00:33:00] this is different from this. It's like this is that feeling and all those things are stuffed in this box, and as we start to sort through things, we start to separate out the boxes a lot of times we start working and find this box that's overstuffed with

Experiences.

Yeah.

And that's where we started to separate it out. it's often a little bit of, a little dollop of this, a little dollop of that. But trauma is trauma and we just start figuring out how that looks in your system.

Yeah.

And you know, the cool thing about it is it's very results driven.

It's not like jumping into talk therapy

where we're gonna just talk about this for the next 10 years. you mentioned parenting today and I was working with one of my clients about her, partner, going back to work and

being at home with the two babies for the first time

and feeling really nervous about that.

And so my first question is, what are you nervous about?

And the answer, is never, I'm worried

about the kids dying, very few people focus at that level.

Some do, [00:34:00] and we work with that, if they do.

But for most people it's like, well,

if they're both crying or if they're both,

you know, so instead of trying to placate

like, oh well, they're both crying, it's okay.

What we talk about is then what is your goal? what would it look like to not

feel nervous about that? for most people it's performance based.

that I was able to do it right.

And so what we're, what we're trying to gear towards.

With most people that I work with, and

what we worked with today is what if your

goals simply looked like safety?

Okay, both kids are crying.

Can you take one second? To put your hand

on your countertop and notice what your countertop feels like.

My countertop feels cold.

Can you come up with one adjective?

My countertop feels cold in doing that.

You're telling your nervous system.

There's not a lion chasing you.

'cause if there's a lion chasing you,

I guarantee you're not feeling your countertop.

Touching the countertop and noticing it feels cold,

is telling you that you're safe.

You've succeeded in your goal.

Now go do whatever you do with the kids

Right? So it's, we're working on very practical levels.

Yeah, and so it may [00:35:00] feel huge and scary,

oh my God, we're gonnablow the lid off of all

of my childhood trauma. Yeah, maybe,

but we're not gonna do it in the way

that feels like now I'm gonna be broken down to my very core and I'm gonna have to rebuild myself.

We're gonna do it in the way of like,

Hey, can you just put your hand on your countertop

for a second and know that you're safe?

Which leads perfectly into this,

like how does online somatic counseling

work exactly like this? You'll have an exercise that you do together

or that they do away from you and come back. Right? Yeah.

when I first started doing it, I was like, ah,

online. Right. But I have come to really love it

because you can be in your space.

Safe space maybe. Yeah. I have a client that the other day she said to me,

she's like, I swear I'm not eating only when I see you.

And I was like, I think it's great that you're eating

when you see me, because we're working on

meeting the needs of your body. And you're sitting in your bed eating.

Yeah. I love that. That's what you do.

That's cool. So there's something about that I really [00:36:00] love about online. I'm in Colorado Springs. I see people in my office, sometimes, but I really do the bulk of my work online and it is, I think, just as effective.

Yeah.

I mean, my people, I think would say so,

and there's this thing

that you offer that is so rare.

This full understanding of what someone

is showing up with at your door in terms

of this crazy profession, that alone would

be such a gift that they probably cannot find

in their own community. So it's brilliant that you're.

I mean, there are, a lot of people doing really great work

in the realm of birth trauma and stuff.

Yeah. And they truly are. I mean, there's

people that do have really good understanding of it,

but I do think that, having just

that unique understanding of what we're

doing at three o'clock in the morning out there alone

Out there alone, yeah. I get it too, unfortunately.

Well, Christie, I was gonna say one of the,

I'm sort of switching to like 30,000 foot view now.

I loved art in the moment, but just sort [00:37:00] of

zooming out I see a sad trend, which

I think is also healthy and that is when we do the work and find nervous system safety,

we leave midwifery.

You know, and maybe that's

okay . Karen Strange, I was talking to her a

long time ago when I was making this transition, and one thing she said to me is

Hey, Christie, not everybody can be the midwife.

Yeah, I agree.

It's true.

I loved that. That felt just so affirming and so loving.

But also. Not everybody is.

Like, some people are just really figuring it out.

and I think one reason that my passion is really turning or including,

I guess not turning towards, because

I'm not turning away from, but including

student midwifery to what

I'm doing is that, hey, maybe if we change

the way we're walking into this,

it won't feel so much like that.

Yeah.

And same way [00:38:00] actually, I've been really

focused on students recently too.

'Cause if they get to create a different paradigm, they won't

experience the levels of burnout that we have.

Yep.

I agree.

And always in my seminars

I'm like, do as I say, not as I do.

just because I stop doesn't

mean you have to. Right. No.

But but yeah, I mean, I think sometimes when

we do confront our level of burnout. I found, especially when I was first starting out,

it was very hard to get enough participants

to travel and do seminars because burnout is so hard to look at.

It's so hard to confront. But I do think,

especially working in that somatic realm,

it doesn't mean that we have to stop.

I think there, are ways that we can

shift and you know, one way that, one thing that is,

one of the most simple little paradigm shifts

that I see make the biggest difference

is this idea of instead of pushing difficult feelings

into the corner like we all [00:39:00] do, that is not bad or good.

None of this is bad or good, it's just not as effective.

It's simply shifting to this idea of

acknowledging and soothing. I liken our unpleasant feelings to a whimpering baby,

that if it's just whimpering, it's usually pretty easy

to pick the baby up and soothe it.

Whereas if we ignore it, if we put it in the corner,

it's gonna start screaming and

then it's much harder to soothe.

And just simply shifting into that idea of like,

you're afraid, man, I see you fear,

I understand why you're here.

I'm practicing in a legal state.

Every time I walk out that door to go to a birth,

I see you fear. I understand why you're here.

Yeah.

I just can't let you rule me.

and

a lot of times then it'll be soothed.

It doesn't go away. Sometimes it's even,

thank you for protecting me.

You're showing up to warn me.

Thank you for protecting me. simple little paradigm shifts like [00:40:00] that instead of just saying,

go away. Fear I don't have time for you.

But saying, man, I see why you're here.

Thank you. I can't right now.

I have to go to work.

You know, there are things that we

can do that are small, that are functional.

Functional on a day-to-day level that mean no,

we don't have to quit, we just have

to shift some things a little bit.

Yeah, I love that. And I'll add it from the heady

intellectual space chart like that shit's gonna be read in court.

You know, totally feels like everyone's watching.

And then Charlie, like, you know what you're doing.

Because that I think makes a huge difference

in your ability to sort of close it and put it away.

Be like, I finished that. Yeah. Crazy birth.

Yeah. It is documented. That's my building.

So yeah, I've, I've sort of approached it from that.

Paper shields, if you will, like how are we

gonna protect ourselves?

But behind the shield has to be a nervous system

that can keep functioning and doesn't

become this burnout, cortisol mess that so many

of us have experienced. So thank you for that.

That is just so important.

And I loved your [00:41:00] analogy of treating them

like the little people that we love and

nurture all the time.

the first signs right?

The first little signs is where it needs attention. They just wanna be heard. Yeah.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Christy this has been such

a gorgeous conversation.

I'm so excited to know you.

I wanna collaborate on something like

you're gonna hear from me in the future.

I love that. Yeah. I think that there's something beautiful there

with the idea of working with the legal paperwork side versus the nervous system side,

and just smushing those into a beautiful sandwich.

Yeah. Well it's the intersectionality

of the work that we do, right?

Is it has to be yes and if someone wants

to work with you, how do they find you?

We'll put all these in the show notes.

I

think that

the easiest thing is the website.

It's www.perinataltraumacenter.com. I think that

20 minute consult on the, schedule now

or book an appointment or whatever page is great.

all of my contact info is on there.

I am on social media, on Facebook and Instagram,

although I'm terrible at [00:42:00] posting.

That means your nervous system's regulated, right?

So I'm on there at Perinatal Trauma Center. but yeah, the website is really

probably the quickest and easiest way.

Perfect.

We'll put that in the show notes.

Thank you again for sharing your time and your wisdom.

Really appreciate you.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

It's been really lovely to talk to you.