Skip to content
TrackPodcasts
healthSep 11, 202640:33

E 369: Becoming Trigger Proof/ Guest Nima Rahmany

About this episode

Why do some relationships feel safe while others leave you anxious, overwhelmed, or constantly questioning yourself? The answer may have less to do with your partner—and far more to do with the attachment patterns your nervous system learned in childhood.

In this episode of the Adult Child of Dysfunction Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Nima Rahmany, creator of the Becoming Trigger Proof® methodology, to explore how unresolved attachment wounds continue to influence our adult relationships, emotional reactions, boundaries, and sense of self. Through his own personal story and years of clinical experience, Dr. Nima explains why healing isn't about becoming "triggerless." It's about learning how to regulate your nervous system, repair relationships, and respond instead of react.

Together, we discuss why conflict itself isn't the problem—it's the lack of repair afterward that slowly erodes trust. We also explore anxious and avoidant attachment, emotional attunement, people pleasing, codependency, childhood survival patterns, and how the nervous system quietly shapes the way we show up in every relationship.

One of my favorite takeaways from this conversation is the reminder that you can't think yourself to safety—your body has to feel safe first. That shift alone has the power to change the way you approach healing, parenting, communication, and connection.

🎁 Free Gift from Dr. Nima

If you're curious about your own attachment style, Dr. Nima is offering his Attachment Style Assessment completely free.

👉 Take the free assessment here:

https://go.drnima.com/it11r

You can also learn more about Dr. Nima and his Becoming Trigger Proof® methodology at:

🌐 https://becometriggerproof.com/

If you've ever wondered why you keep repeating the same relationship patterns or why certain situations trigger such intense emotional reactions, this episode will help you understand what's happening beneath the surface—and remind you that healing is possible.

Hey there, I’m so glad you’re here and tuning in! If this episode spoke to your heart, just know there’s even more support waiting for you.

Book Your Free Clarity and Calm Call: No Judgement, just a chat https://calendly.com/tammyvincent/clarity-and-calm-call

If you are curious about where you stand energetically, or just need a frequency boost, book your FREE biofrequency voice scan here: https://calendly.com/tammyvincent/complimentary-scan-demo if you want to take part in an amazing club, where you can get unlimited scans and free coaching every month, sign up here: $25 ($250 Value) Join For One Month Here https://workshops.tammyvincent.com/offers/JQz3QDrr/checkout

If you would like to ask a question, and hear the answer in a future episode, please leave your question here: https://www.speakpipe.com/Tammyvincentcoaching

Trials To Triumph: An Adult Child's Emotional Freedom Blueprint: Use code THRIVE25 for 75% off today. https://workshops.tammyvincent.com/offers/DSbcgrZZ/checkout

As an international inspirational speaker, NLP Practitioner, Trauma-Informed Coach, Neurofit Trainer, and Best-Selling Author, I bring both deep personal experience and professional training to the work I do. I believe in prevention, not just intervention — and use a body, mind, and spirit approach to guide others toward becoming the happiest, healthiest versions of themselves.

My holistic toolbox includes nervous system regulation, trauma-informed coaching, nutritional support, and natural healing strategies,

🔑 Start Your Healing Journey

Find ALL THE THINGS HERE: Anything that I have to offer is right here

✈️ Bonus for Travel Lovers!

Did you know I also offer access to an amazing travel savings program that can help you save up to 70% on hotels, resorts, cruises, and more? Let’s compare your next upcoming itinerary and see how much you could save.

👉 Try the Trip Check: https://calendly.com/tammyvincent/trip-check

📺 Subscribe to My YouTube Channel

👉 Adult Child of Dysfunction on YouTube

🌟 Book Me to Speak at Your Event

👉 Let’s connect: https://calendly.com/tammyvincent/speakers-event-chat

🫶 Let’s Connect

📩 Email: [email protected]

📱 Text: 513-280-3555

🌟 If this episode helped you, please share it with a friend, leave a review, and hit follow. Every share helps break generational cycles and brings healing into more lives.

Get every episode summarized

Each time Adult Child of Dysfunction publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.

Email me new episodes

Free for 3 shows. No card needed.

Hosts & guests

Transcript ready

394 searchable segments. Every word is indexed and playable.

E 369: Becoming Trigger Proof/ Guest Nima Rahmany

Adult Child of Dysfunction

0:00
40:33

Full transcript

Adult Child of DysfunctionE 369: Becoming Trigger Proof/ Guest Nima Rahmany. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.

Welcome to the Adult Child of Disfunction Podcast, where we untangle the past, rewrite the present, and reclaim our future. I am your host Tammy Vincent, and together we will break free from old patterns, heal wounds, and create new narratives. Are you ready to transform the effects of your dysfunctional past into your superpowers? Are you excited to get back in touch with your true authentic self? So then hit subscribe and join me weekly on the Adult Child of Disfunction Podcast. Here we will learn from experts as well as experienced drivers how to turn our trials into smiles while living our most authentic and joyful lives. Okay, hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Adult Child of Disfunction. Today we have with us Nima Ramani, whose work centers on helping adults heal from the lasting effects of growing up into dysfunctional family systems, drawing from his own healing journey and years of clinical experience.

He developed the becoming trigger proof methodology to help individuals regulate their nervous systems, heal developmental trauma, and break free from patterns such as anxious or avoidant attachment, codependency, people pleasing, and emotional reactivity. His approach empowers people to understand how childhood experiences shape adult relationships and provides practical tools to create secure attachments, healthier boundaries, and lasting emotional resilience. Welcome Nima, how are you today? I am so delighted to be having this conversation. Yeah, it's a very controversial one out there. So I'd like to shed some light on it and I love that you're leading this conversation, Tammy, well done. Thank you. I think I think I agree. It's one of those taboo subjects that nobody wants to talk about. And before it was kind of stick everything under a rug. Yep, stick everything a rug, ignore it, pretend it didn't happen when you move out when you're 18, everything will be good. And it is so far from the truth. Correct. Yeah. And you start to learn the impacts of those unresolved attachment wounds

soon as you get into relational dynamics. And I don't know if you can relate to this, but if you notice that after moving out of the house, that your relationships became an absolute shitshow, like mine did, where in my case, constantly seeking chasing the never-ending quest for more women and using women and extracting from them, because I deeply felt this deep wound, especially with the mother and then dad with both of them, the whole thing growing up in that environment. But I want to preface this by saying they are the most loving parents. They would die for their children and their grandchildren. They came to Canada in the mid in in late 70s with the revolution. They fled their countries. They had to immigrate from and be in deep survival mode. And I am so profoundly grateful that I grew up in in a beautiful country like Canada. And two things can be true that we

got that. And at the same time, there was some deep core wounding that was created. And as a result, let me down this path where I made choices. I made those choices. I was the one that chose, but I was doing it from a wounded place. And so the relational shitshoes on the other side of healing that my relationships are amazing. I can set boundaries. And my relationship with my parents is very boundary. I don't have to go no contact with them. But there's there periods where we have to go limited contact and we start to see, all right, are we able to repair this? And so verbally, I do it's challenging, but they're slowly demonstrating a little bit of a willingness to repair. It takes a lot of courage to do the work. So let's absolutely. And especially when you're talking and I truly believe it's generational, like you said, it's you didn't want to pass down to your children, what got passed down to you, which probably got passed down to your parents

from your grandparents. So it's like at what point I always say that be the cycle breaker, be the one that just says enough is enough. And also with knowledge, yeah, with knowledge though, because it's one thing for me to say, I'm going to do everything opposite for my kids that my parents did to me. But that's not the answer either. There has to be a happy balance of actually learning what is healthy. Yeah, not everything they did was bad. They did. I am profoundly grateful. They did an amazing job in making sure that they boundary life around in the best way they could faith through education, like high values, faith, education, this kind of like duty and obligation to something, the faith, the cause, the the family. I love all of those things. Those are really great. And the one piece that I didn't know what I had no idea because because I was like we had an

amazing childhood, we had amazing upbringing. But what would happen was I had to figure out why my twin brother, I have a twin brother who we were raised in the exact same environment. He is able to have relationships. He's got a great marriage. He's just on one path. He's not seeking all these validation from all these women. And so he's in a stable marriage. He's got two kids, great dental practice. While his twin brother is just one epic, disastrous relationship after another, I had to look, I thought is there something wrong with me? And apparently, when you, I didn't realize when you are separated from your mother at the age of two, there is a, I didn't know that a wound can also be separation trauma. I thought trauma only means physical violence and sexual abuse. I didn't experience. There was the odd volatility and physical thing that went a little too far. And there was the odd time and there was a lot of volatility, like a co-dependent

relationship where we had to be present and witness so much ruptures. But then everything was fine the next day, but there was no repair. And I didn't know, I just thought that was, that's just what we did, right? But what I realized as I went through this search was I was, it's like we're born into a fish bowl, like we're fish, born into a fish bowl of dirty water. We don't know that it's dirty, but until we leave that environment and we go and we see what healthy looks like and what communication is supposed to sound like. And we are relationship with your emotions and all of these things that on the deep side superficially, we had it all on lockdown. But then the deep stuff, the emotional connection and most things like emotional attunement, things like validating the experience of the child and validating the reality, things like dismissing someone's emotions and experience, oh, you shouldn't feel that way. And so those

things I didn't know slowly shaped our characters, shapes who we believe we are. And that led me into finding relationships that had the same chaos, or my reality was not validated, this push and pull dynamic ruptures without real, without real true repair. So I was a perfect storm for a toxic relationship that thank God woke me up to this work. And now after doing it on the other side of what I call becoming trigger proof, not trigger less, I have a great marriage. My friendships, my relationships, my working relationships are totally different. So the quality of our relationships is all about our relationship to our attachment wounding. And this is why it's such a worthwhile conversation for anybody that wants to clean house and then have relationships that are aligned. And it is amazing going back to where you started there with you not knowing it had to be a big T. That's why I can't stand when people talk about these big T, little T, middle T's, all these

different kind of traumas. I'm like, when you were too young to process what was going on with you, anything that happened, any experience, everything that happened to you got stored in your nervous system. You didn't know what to do with it. You survived and adapted to make sense of it. And it's not your fault. It's not your parents fault. But if it changed, I always say, if it changed the way you look at the world, or it changed the way you look at yourself, it is most certainly going to change the way you show up in the world. And so if you're not showing up in the world, tolerate, tolerate what you can, yeah, absolutely 100%. So in that case, then it deserves exploring and being curious and not judging yourself. And I think the distinction happens and the controversy comes in where the actual exploration, the actual naming of it, the actual discussion itself makes you an ungrateful child, right? Parents are getting triggered. They're feeling,

they're feeling attacked. We did the best we could. There's no such thing as a perfect parent. We did the best we could stop it. And this is not about expecting perfection. But this is about reconciliation. This is about closing these open tabs that weren't. There's a huge opportunity. Once we become aware of this and we deal with all the hurt, the grief and the shame and the guilt that naturally comes up, if we can just stay with it for a moment and not react to it and not try to dismiss it and not try to stop it, but really practice staying with it, then we're able to create healing, able to create empathy. But if we can't sit in it and we just react to it and we try to dismiss somebody else's expressions and experiences and we seek to be understood without all making the effort to understand, you know, if we don't pay attention to that, we're going to

have a really rough time because everybody's carrying it and unfortunately when you don't address it, you then make the child responsible for the parent to become the parent, to become the one to validate and so that the parent becomes the victim towards the child's ungratefulness and gets bitter and then resentful. And then that bitterness and resentment and that entitlement makes the child, it just builds up more like duty and all that. It just escalates and it becomes so toxic and so heavy and it passes down to the patient. And that's coming from a family where your parents loved in a door and did the best they could. Then there's the family like my family who did not love in a door and teach me faith and happiness and joy and do the best they could. They didn't even really give an effort. So there's two sides of the world where one is coming in going, I have no freaking clue because I was never even modeled an effort to show empathy and compassion. Yeah, see,

two things can be true at the same time is that our parents loved us the very best they could. If Tammy, your parents, nervous systems were so in survival mode that they were bracing all the time, that they were in shutdown, that they were like grinding or they were like constricting, right? That protective posture is read by the child. So your mother's nervous system is becomes the child's nervous system. So because of that, a parent can't give that emotional connection despite all of their best efforts. So then even all of the material things are taking care of. If that emotional one isn't, you're going to become something like an overachiever. You'll then become a super duper successful doctor, physician, whatever. And then constantly be in this experience, which I when I'm working with leaders who are successful

is this push force energy to try to prove themselves all the time because this wound of a lack of emotional attunement, it might not be like such an injury that it paralyzes you in life, a life of addictions or whatever, which it's a spectrum, I believe, but it can turn into a workaholisms. It turns into a sex addiction. It turns into some sort of a coping strategy to cope with the lack of emotional attunement, the feeling that no matter what I do, I'm not enough. Absolutely. And so that becomes our posture and it's a nervous system issue. So I had to really look at that with people who are willing to meet me where I'm at. And that's one of the hardest parts with this whole process is the self-reflection. At this point, once you are aware that you're not showing up like you should be, could be or want to be, then it's like, okay, you can go back, you can look at it, just I tell people once you become aware, it is now your responsibility. And that self-reflection part, having gone through three different 12 step

programs, that is the hardest part. It is the tendency will be to say to be in this little child type of pride to say, take it or leave it. This is who I am. Take it or leave it. You'll hear this from the baby boomer generation is it's who I am. Take it or leave it. And quite frankly, that attitude is not sustainable as like that attitude does not create sustainability in a relational dynamic. So we're looking for sustainability. If you and I are in a relationship, even a friendship and conflict happens. And the only way that you can stay in this relationship is to shrink yourself. You eventually get collapse. So it's not sustainable. All I care about is the study and the application of skills that make relationships sustainable. Perfect. And that's what people need is they need skills because they're not taught. If you grew up like that or you

even and there's a lot about information out there too. You would like to think that everything out there is good information and you can someone says, well, it's like, hey, hey, you take what you love and leave the rest. But at the same time, there is some definitely bad information out there. But yeah, you want to have you want to be able to have those relationships and skills are what we need. Talk about your trigger. What's that trigger? I know you said it wasn't trigger less. It was trigger proof. It's not me. Trigger proof doesn't mean trigger less. No, my wake up call that led me into this work was I did a lot of personal development. And in my last relationship, it after my divorce, I went on a series of failed relationships looking for validation through women. And I was really showing up very extractive in nature. It's like whether it's with clients, whether it's my title, it's my whole identity is just about extracting validation, extract using women as something that I must extract from why? Because of that paralyzing wound

at the age of two where I separated from mom. And by the way, how are we so different? The main difference is came from a wound where I at the age of two, my mom left to come to Canada. And because of that with my brother, because she can only bring one of us for three months as a two year old boy, I was without my mother. And I don't remember a damn thing. But my body remembers your body remembers and how it shows up is this anxiousness with women, this deep paralyzing need to have more than one's attention, just in case one of them abandons me, just like my mom did. That's what my nervous system was saying. My mom did not abandon me. She was doing the things she needed to do to help us immigrate that we didn't know anything about that. But it still had an impact. And I constantly showed up in this neediness with women and this kind of push pull dynamic where I would just play the field until I got married. And then I get divorced and then

a series of failed relationships leading to this final one that was the most volatile with somebody who was a former sex worker. And all of a sudden, I am like completely hooked in. We would argue the same way that I would observe at the home front in my home. There was volatility arguments. I thought was just normal. And it's just this is what a relationship is. There was these just volatile emotionally violent arguments. Sometimes it's three in the morning. We were constantly having to play this weird kind of therapist role and try to see. And with the gift of that experience, was that I was able to see two different perspectives because I would hear dad story and I hear mom story. And they were totally different. But I could see both of them. They just couldn't see themselves. They couldn't do it. But I could. And I was like, this is my training. I was being trained for this ever since I was a kid. I didn't realize. But they would always repair. They're still

together. They love each other. But there was no modeling of repair. There was a rupture. But there was never repair. There was never really, hey, I want to understand you. You understand me. It was just let's forget it. And so the built up of resentment, that just builds resentment. And I just thought that's just normal. So when I saw this model in my last relationship, the red flags just it came up. I just kept going. And because the sex was great afterwards, we would have amazing makeup, makeup sex. And so it just kept going like argument back together, arguing back together, makeup, second, and I had left chiropractic. And I was teaching these tools, teaching one thing, but having a totally toxic relationship on the other side. And this dichotomy of incongruency. I didn't know how to, I didn't know how to deal with because I was too busy getting all this validation. My career was taking off with this. I'd left chiropractic. The sex was great.

So let me, and the people around me would say, Nima, this is unsustainable. Nima, Ilina, one of my right hand in my community, another coach and trainer does IFS work, just a very gifted individual. She would look me in the eye and say, Nima, this is not sustainable. But I was too busy riding the gravy train. And so it wasn't until March 11, 2018, where we got into an argument and I slapped her. And in that moment, it was like, whoa, I had never gotten like this in any relationship. How did I get here? How can I make sure that I don't ever do this again? And that's where I realized I was using personal development work without dealing with the nervous system postures that happen as a result of these stories from the past. I got into somatic experiencing polyvagual theory, attachment work, hearts work, shadow work, breath work, everything somatic, like I just went all in and the concept of becoming trigger proof was born. And the concept is that

when we are in relational dynamics, conflict is actually a good thing. If there isn't conflict, it means one of the two are shrinking to be in the relationship and that's unsustainable. So what makes a relationship most sustainable is conflict but with repair. Repair. And so I realized that I had to learn how to repair and I learned how to repair. And when you learn how to repair, you regulate your nervous system, you integrate all of these younger parts of you that are active in this conflict that came up with my last girlfriend comes up in my marriage, integrate it and then communicate for repair. And just by repeating that every conflict, the relationship gets even deeper. We're even stronger together. It's like a muscle it gets built because as you're working it out, little mini ruptures are happening in microscopic levels. And the rebuilding of it causes the muscle to be even stronger than before. So that's what becoming trigger proof does is your relationships get stronger. That's awesome. I had someone on my

podcast not too long ago and he was a marriage counselor to help people and he was funny the way he described what you're talking about is he called it death by a thousand paper cuts and it made so much sense how each one is as hurts a little bit but you just okay, just forget it and then all the sudden you are so resentful. You have nowhere to go with it. And that's not where you want to be. I can't be in a relationship anymore if there's a rupture and there's no repair because what happens is in order to maintain the relationship, you have to put on a mask, you have to pretend but you're bracing the whole time. So imagine you and I are in a relationship and we get into a rupture but there's no real repair. You can say sorry but it's not really a repair. Sorry isn't actually repair. This is the biggest myth. I said I'm sorry. No. So repair means two people are really feeling understood. There's a genuine effort to hey, hear about the impact to listen, to

validate the other person's experience. And so without that, you don't have repair. And so if I just have rupture and no repair, rupture after the third or fourth time, when I hang out with you, I'm just like, I have to brace myself to be around you because it's just I feel like I'm abandoning myself. And so it becomes a co-disregulating relationship. So when you're with somebody and just being around them, dysregulates you and you don't feel a sense of emotional safety to say, hey, I'm feeling some stuff here. I'd like to deal with it. I just sent a message to a mentor of mine from three years ago. I want to read it to you. I actually said this to him and I said, hey, are you open because we might be working together on another project? I said, before I go and I just there's something I've been withholding from you. On our last experiences together, I've had some things come up but I have this story that were you're too busy. And I know

I realize I take full ownership that I that was my own story and I use that as an excuse not to reach out to you, but I feel it's important that I do and I apologize for withholding this from you. Are you open to hearing me and I possibly repair? And he was like, yes, and thank you. And so that tells me that kind of a relationship is one that I want to maintain. If we repair and it does when we and I think we will, I have a lot of respect for this guy. If we repair now on the other side of this repair, there's a deeper bond and a deeper trust that develops. So conflict and repair becomes the mechanism where trust is built, but you have to have the capacity to sit in it because as soon as there's conflict or some sort of an emotion, people either fade away or they collapse, they clench or they freaking push and force and fight. And so none of those things create safety and resolution. So that's all I care about now. Very cool. Is that and that's what all of

your work is revolves around? Regulate, integrate, then communicate. This is the trigger proof methodology. There's a way when you really understand the mechanism of the nervous system, you have to become a student of the nervous system. You got to learn how to master your own nervous system. This whole concept of, ah, just take it or leave it. What you're doing is you're telling the people around you. You're saying, this is who I am. Take it or leave it. You know, in business, if you have a business, it's good to delegate the things that you suck at to people who are better. That's smart business. But in relationships, you can't delegate your emotional labor to somebody else that creates resentment. You put yourself in the baby position that needing a parent, right? Especially if you're a parent to adult children, for example, and you want to learn how to repair. You got to take ownership and become the parent. You got to go. All the resentment you're carrying is 100% valid, but it is not meant to be dumped on your child. That's for you to work through

with a professional so that you can show up as the leader to your child, right? Your child, even if they're adults, they have kids. They don't want to feel like you're another burden on them. No, absolutely. And just the fact that half the time, like, especially when your kids are younger, when your kids trigger you, it's usually not even the kid. It's something like I said, it's something inside of you. It's not them. It's something that stirred something old up inside of you. So it's like, you can't project and get mad at them for being kids when it's really mom's issue. That's it. Yeah. That's it. And what you're talking about is very true. It has a father to a five year old child as on the recording of this. He triggers the hell out of me, but the cool part about this is as the cycle breaker, we reframe parenting as I'm not here to teach him any more than he's here to teach me. He is here to teach me about parts of myself that I haven't loved. So when he triggers me, which he will, it's so funny because I have the

budding heads with my father. He always wants it his way and I want it my way. And he is my greatest contrarian. Every time I say I want to do this, he says the opposite. And what's funny is that's my dad's victim story about me is that you never listen, right? And he's right because I just want to do it my way. So now that I have a five year old, just yesterday, like I was like, hey, but do you want to go golfing? No, I want to do Lego. And I'm like, and then I turn to die my wife. And I'm like, why does he never want to do what I want to do? And then Diana says, that's exactly what he said about you yesterday. And I was like, oh, wow, busted. I was, I was just like a mic drop moment. And I'm like, oh, my God, our children are our mirrors. So then what did I do? Thank God that I knew that. Then I was like, Hey, bud, do you want to do some Lego? Even though I just wanted to watch the game with him, watch the blue jays with him, right? And so sometimes to spend time with

me, he'll come and he'll lay down on me, cuddle in to me. And then we watch the blue jays together. Right? I know that he doesn't really care about the jays as much as I do. He does. But we enjoy it together because he likes spending time with me, right? And it's my job to be aware of that, to appreciate that and to make it because I see him make that sacrifice. I go extra loving. And I'm like, Hey, but thanks for doing this with me. And then I'll tickle him. And then I'll be like, oh, look, bloody Guerrero. He gets it up and then we high five each other. And I make it such an interactive thing so that even though he wouldn't choose to watch the baseball game over watching Lego or whatever other show that he's into, that I'm creating an experience where it's like, I want to center around his experience when he's with me without abandoning myself because it's not sustainable if I'm constantly giving and not receiving. So it's this beautiful opportunity where

I can understand boundaries and really see things from him, his perspective, really give him what I never had. My parents gave me everything they had. And I'm giving my son what they couldn't give me. And this is the beauty of this work. Yep. Absolutely. And it seems like that's where a lot of people are doing this work. And I love that you're doing this work because a lot of people need those tips and tricks and those relationship hacks because sometimes it's just one thing that somebody says and you're like, dang, it can change literally what you do. What I do, the podcasting, all of that can literally change your life. But it's a framework. Instead of thinking of a hack, I want you to think of the trigger proof work. This this work to become get activated by somebody in your family, but then return back home to safety. This is really what it is. My son's going to trigger me later today. I guarantee it after after it's around this time and I'm making dinner. This is where he's most active. He's running around screaming, jumping around. And I'm and the

dog is going off as well. And both of them after I've been working with people walking them through their trauma, helping them through really difficult periods of betrayal and challenging times, then I go to that and I feel overstimulated. So how to get go through that without jumping down his throat without losing myself, without going into dissociative rage, hearing bad news that, oh, he got sent to the principal's office. And so I now have to sit there and go holy shit. And I'm feeling all the shame and I'm realizing that's what happened with me. I was always sent to the principal's office. So I could empathize with my dad was going through and I could then go, how would I wish that I had been approached? And then with understanding with a hey, help me understand why you were being so rude to your teacher. And then after regulating and then integrating, bringing those younger parts of me that he's triggering because it's all my stuff,

as you said, after I do that, now I can communicate with him and go, hey, bud, I want to understand you. Instead of the traditional way that our parents teach us, so these little subtle things are shaping his nervous system, are shaping his connection with himself, his sense of self trust, his sense of creativity, his sense of knowing who he is, his sense of self worth, his sense of living to his truth rather than being a performer that's trying to seek validation. So exactly. And so my greatest gift is watching a little boy fully express himself to the point where he doesn't want, when he does it when he goes close shopping, Diana just told me today he goes close shopping and she's not allowed to pick his clothes. He knows exactly what he wants. He's five and I know what I want. And that's a victory for me. Hey, man, it absolutely is. And everybody needs to understand that the end of the day, that's all we're trying to do is get back to safety. You can't think yourself to

safety. You cannot, your body has to feel safe. I tell people when they're like, I couldn't even stop and I'm like, by the time you think and process why you're even triggered, your body has already gone through a thousand physiological changes of stress and knots and hormones surging and all kinds of stuff has happened. I always say I can trick my mind, but I can't my body. I can't lie to my body. And those moments are where you hurt the ones you love and you'll say something that penetrates their soul and their identity and time will pass and cooler heads will prevail, but those words that you choose to tell your child stays with them. And it formulates, formulates an opinion about themselves and self-worth. Yep, and I always say it doesn't take long. Once you learn to regulate your nervous system and get back to safety, it does it. There's so much power in the pause. That expression came for a good reason. And just sometimes that's

just a breath before you react, but I'm sure that's what your program has a lot. The breath is percent truth and that's literally the first surface level. Yeah. So part of regulation, we must go into the breath and the exhale must exceed the inhale, for example. And just doing that, even the physiological sigh can regulate and just bring your prefrontal cortex a little bit back online and then put the break on. It's called the ventral break on the activation, but then what do we do with that? Right. How do we regulate is one thing, but then we have to really look at the contextual framework underneath the relationship dynamic that's causing us to be so dysregulated. And there's usually an argument with reality. There's usually a should. Right. So my parents might have, no matter how much they regulate or whatever, if underneath, there's a contextual belief that the

child should soothe the emotions of the parent and make them feel good about themselves and only be positive and just be grateful and never have any feedback. Reality that then the child either had their stuff that we're all grateful for, but certain moments, there are emotions that come up, challenges that come up, which now violate the belief, violate the contextual framework of the should of the parent. Now that separation from, hey, what should be and what is causing the dysregulation. So now if I just have to do the breathing, but I don't examine these unconscious covert agreements, these fantasies or delusions I have about human beings, myself, others, if I don't look at these, then I'm always going to have to be regulated. Yes. So both are important. There we just keep going deeper, but yeah, breathing is a big part of it. Yeah. And it's a whole process for the people out there listening that are just

learning, that are just getting into this like he said, it's a framework. What I just gave you, what's a hack before you react, before you hurt someone's feelings, before you say something you don't mean to, like he said, one quick breath, one deep breath, one physiological sigh, any of that will bring you back into your prefrontal cortex and not in the amygdala, which is your reactive crazy brain. Emperorly, Emperorly. And so that's especially when I work with younger people, and I'm like, whoa, sometimes that's all I need just to get me through right there to where I can be like, okay, totally, totally, but the deeper the deeper that we go with it, the more we access a state of freedom, right? And the ultimate freedom is not having your sense of okness be conditional upon the other person changing. Oh, yeah. That is freedom. And that's the goal of work. That is the complete freedom. Yes. This has been super fun, Neema.

I've had free time. Tell people where they can find you if they want to reach out and work with you. I'll give you the show notes. Sorry, in the show notes, my team should provide a link that gets you the attachment style quiz. Okay. That's the best place to begin to really find out what that is. If you want to get a hold of me, finish that and send me an email with your backstory. If you have a question, I'll read them all and make suggestions of where to go from there. I might not be the right person. I, this one woman reached out and was like, I need to help someone who's going to help my partner deal with the fact that he had enmeshment and emotional incest with his mother. And I need to find somebody for him to deal with that. And so my question was like, why are you in this call rather than him? That's the first red flag because I'm not interested in working with somebody who isn't here asking me the questions. But she just wanted to know for him and then she got really uncomfortable when I started asking her, can I ask what this brings up in you, what his

relationship is bringing with his mother is causing within you. And she started telling me about some of her pain that she's experiencing. And she says, I'm getting coaching for that and all that. And I'm like, oh, okay. And then I asked her, I said, have you seen, is this a familiar feeling for you? This sense that you're not, you needs are not getting met and you always have to fight for them. And she's like, yeah, it's always in this relationship. I said, have you experienced that? Like, how old do you feel when you experience that? Oh, and she starts crying and it's like, happened when I was a child. And I'm like, yeah, he needs to do his work. But this is your work to do as well. And she never realized that there was a connection there, giving me the backstory and telling me what you're dealing with and what outcome you want to have. I can now see it and go, all right, this is not the right place. Or yes, this is exactly the work we can help with. Yeah. And socials are all there too. So I'd love to hear. Absolutely. I will put all of that in the show notes. So everybody, if you're driving or you know, you can write anything down. Don't worry about it. It'll all be down there. And then before you

go, first of all, I want to thank you very much because I'm sure the listeners got a whole lot of wisdom out of that. So thank you for that. And before you go, though, you're not off the hook. I want you to leave the listeners with one piece of advice or one small change they could make right now that might make their lives a little easier. What might it be? Learn how to expand and your capacity to be misunderstood. I love that. That's a superpower. If you can do that, which is what the whole goal of these practices and work is, you can speak your truth. You can lead and say the damn thing. You can ask for what you need. You have greater capacity to receive. You're okay when other people disagree and you're okay with disagreement. And you become a master at authenticity. Because I'm going to speak my truth and you're not going to like it. You might not like it. And I'm okay with that. And that's

the freedom. There's no freedom unless we move towards that. Thank you for that. And I love the way you were to do. That's true. And I love to do. I realize that I don't care. I'm like, unless I am intentionally purposely harming someone or being hateful, then I am me. And we're not going to all have everybody liking us. And it's not even worth the struggle and the energy to try. Yeah. I love it. But I like the way you put it. Thank you so much, Tammy. That was a great way to put it. So thank you so much. And for everybody else out there, you all have a blessed week. And we will see you back. Thank you. Before you go, if this episode helped you, please like, subscribe and share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you're wondering what patterns your mind and body may still be holding onto, I'd love to invite you to a complimentary clarity and calm call or even a bio-frequency voice scan. Together, we'll identify what's been keeping you stuck and talk about how you can begin to break free. You can book yours using the link in the show notes. Until next time, remember,

awareness is just the beginning. Transformation truly begins with action. And never forget, you are worthy. You are enough. You are way more than enough. And you always have been. See you on the next episode.

More episodes

More from Adult Child of Dysfunction

View all episodes →