Safeguarding the Self: How Avoidance Protects Us—and How to Reconnect with Authentic Agency

 Episode 227 Safeguarding the Self- How Avoidance Protects Us—and How to Reconnect with Authentic Agency

Jeffrey Besecker:
This is The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Biesecker. Avoidance. As an emotional coping strategy, it quietly shapes our inner lives, influencing how unresolved psychological data interferes with emotional regulation and self-awareness. In this episode, we explore how avoidance perpetrates unprocessed trauma, the ways it sabotages attuned connection with ourselves and others, and strategies for gently confronting these patterns without overwhelm. As we cover the subtle ways avoidance dictates our reactions in relationships, it becomes clear facing what we've long avoided is both challenging and transformative. Find out how when we return to The Light Inside. When it comes to mobile service providers, many of the big-name networks leave a bad taste in your mouth, with their high-rate plans, extra fees, and hidden costs or expenses. Mint Mobile is a new flavor of mobile network service, sharing all the same reliable features of the big-name brands, yet at a fraction of the cost. I recently made the change to Mint Mobile, and I can't believe the monthly savings, allowing me to put more money in my pocket for all of the things which truly light me up inside. Making the switch to Mint Mobile is easy. Hosted on the T-Mobile 5G network, Mint gives you premium wireless service on the nation's largest 5G network with bulk savings on flexible plan options. Mint offers three, six, and 12-month plans, and the more months you buy, the more you save. Plus, you can keep your current number or change to a new one if you like, and all of your contacts, apps, and photos will seamlessly and effortlessly follow you to your new low-cost Mint provider. Did I mention the best part? You keep more money in your pocket. And with Mint's referral plan, you can rescue more friends from big wireless bills while earning up to $90 for each referral. We often go through our daily lives experiencing things that challenge us or make us uncomfortable. The difficult conversation we push off, the troubling co-worker who always insists on debating, or that relative with whom we seem to constantly be at odds. In our daily lives, avoidant coping often shows up as brushing off difficult emotions, over-committing to distractions, or deflecting conversations that feel uncomfortable. This avoidance disrupts emotional attunement, making it harder to truly connect with others or even recognize our own needs, as the tension between what we feel and what we think we believe creates an inner barrier. Its pervasiveness stems from the central culprit, dissonance. The eternal conflict between our conscious self-image and the unresolved psychological data lurking beneath the surface, quietly shaping our behaviors and relationships. That is, until we bring it into our awareness. Brianna Sanborn is a compassionate, licensed mental health therapist with over a decade of experience in behavioral health. Through her course, Building Emotional and Somatic Language, she's dedicated to helping individuals navigate life's challenges by fostering emotional attunement and guiding them toward healing and self-discovery. Today, Brianna is here to guide us in uncovering how avoidant coping quietly shapes our emotional world and to share her practical ways to cultivate deeper self-awareness and attuned connection. Brianna, thanks for joining us today. How are you?

Brianna Sanborn: I'm doing well. How are you doing today?

Jeffrey Besecker: Fantastic. Brianna, our therapeutic community is excited to explore how avoidant, defensive, deflective, and protective mechanisms arise as safeguarding strategies, which evolve from early survival adaptations when carried into adulthood that undermine adaptive connection, identity integration, and a felt sense of agency. Brianna, could you share a brief elevator pitch about what inspires and motivates you as a therapeutic professional when helping clients recognize these coping patterns and their influence on their ability to build healthy, adaptive emotional regulation?

Brianna Sanborn: Well, something that I have found to be most important is really framing avoidant patterns as protection. We tend to really get down on ourselves. There can be a lot of shame involved, especially when there's this dissonance between, you know, my protective barriers and who I want to be and who I value myself to be. And that can create a lot of shame around the ways that we might show up in the world. And I think meeting that with compassion can be a really great way to open the door to, you had to do this to survive.

Jeffrey Besecker: A great way to start our conversation today by framing that as this is our body's overall goal to keep us surviving, to keep us moving forward, to find that evolutionary point. So often, you know, We even look at how we frame that idea of surviving somehow as being a little subjective and stigmatized.

Brianna Sanborn: Exactly. We talked about it as a bad thing, right? Like, you're just keeping yourself safe. Well, yeah, of course you are. We're wired to do that.

Jeffrey Besecker: From that perspective, research shows that avoidance often begins as a protective response to overwhelming stress. Like a child hiding under the bed during conflict, it persists long after the threat has passed because the nervous system has learned to equate withdrawal and safety as the inherent same thing. So can you share how avoidance first shows up as a protection and why it often persists long after the danger has passed?

Brianna Sanborn: avoidance again begins as a survival strategy. So it says, if I can't fight or flee this perceived threat or real threat, I'll just have to disappear, go quiet, or shut down in some way. So for a child, withdrawal is often the only option for safety when the environment is overwhelming. And over time, the nervous system makes that association that withdrawal equals safety. and that tends to get coded into the nervous system and is the default at some point. And the challenge is that even when the environment changes, the body doesn't quite know how to update, especially not right away, and especially not with other experiences. So it can be quite difficult for the nervous system to catch up to what safety can actually look like.

Jeffrey Besecker: So I think it's essential to start this conversation by looking at how, first, our somatic state and emotional regulation are inherently contextual, based on how we view it, what we experience, our beliefs, all of these diverse factors of our humanity. and those relational qualities, not only how we're relating to ourself or each other, but how these concepts relate emotional and embodied states.

Brianna Sanborn: Yeah, because it's first felt in the body, our emotions, right? It starts as a feeling, and then we can really identify what is that feeling trying to communicate to us.

Jeffrey Besecker: From that aspect, early childhood experiences play a critical role in shaping the nervous system's default orientation toward safety or threat. For instance, as a child raised in a household where conflicts are frequent, they may unconsciously adapt hypervigilance or that protective eye to constantly be on guard. In that regard, known in therapeutic practices as ACEs or Adverse Childhood Experiences, how do early childhood experiences, whether familial, social, or even intergenerational, shape the nervous system's defaults?

Brianna Sanborn: So the nervous system is sculpted by experience. So repeated cues of danger train it to expect that threat. That's where that hypervigilance comes from. If I'm on guard all the time, at least I'll be ready. At least I can defend against the threat for myself. So if a child grows up in perpetual conflict or even unpredictability, hypervigilance becomes their baseline operating system. That becomes the go-to, per se. And we can adopt these behaviors by observation. So for instance, if one parent displays an avoidant behavior perpetually, we might learn that that's the safest or the best way to go about things, the best way to react. And over time, that state becomes the body's normal. And this can explain why some people live with bias towards threat detection, even when their present life is objectively safe.

Jeffrey Besecker: So in that regard, what role does early social emotional learning play in influencing or affecting how we tend to judge and evaluate these interactions?

Brianna Sanborn: I mean, these can even come from other environments as well. I mean, societally, we hear all the time, don't rock the boat, don't make waves, right? And so there are so many different directions that these messages are coming from to really reinforce that avoidance is not only protection, but is the right way.

Jeffrey Besecker: As we're children, we tend to mirror and reflect what our parents are doing. We tend to mirror and reflect even down to when we start to form some of those abilities to logic and reason, what their belief systems are, what's socially acceptable, what's not, what's safe, what's not. And we're reacting on a lot of those implicit cues. We're not fully aware of it as children to begin with, yet we start to adapt and adopt some of those patterns. What role do you feel neural imprinting, that plasticity of our brain and our body, programming those patterns plays on the introspection illusion or our ability to accurately reflect on what's going on within our somatic states?

Brianna Sanborn: Could you reframe that?

Jeffrey Besecker: So the introspection illusion is the idea that we inherently have an intuitive self-knowing, yet there are parts of our somatic response, like where our body is on the autonomic ladder or when we're activated in stress, that we might misidentify. For instance, arousal misattributions. We might feel excited about something, but mismark that as anxiety or any number of other emotional cues. We're often not attuned to where our heart rate variable is, which is a very determinate factor of where our body and our somatic experience is. Or, for instance, we're often not aware of where or how we gained an implicit attitude, belief system, or a value, even a conditioned learned response. So in that regard, how do those factors interact and influence the way we start to adapt these programs?

Brianna Sanborn: Yeah, I mean, again, that just becomes the normal, that becomes the baseline that the body has. And so it can be really hard to interpret things the way that they are. It can be really hard to know what's true, what's real. And there can become a very big gap between the world and then how we're experiencing shaping the lens that we're experiencing basically everything through.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's curious to watch and observe that, to even back that up to our learning structures, to back that up to our social structures. We're not often given a very accurate or a very expansive model of what's going on biologically for a number of reasons. we're just learning a lot of these patterns themselves. So it's interesting to see how that very framing affects how we frame things like intuitiveness or what our thought processes are doing. That tends to kind of guide us toward different filters, different ways to kind of distort or delete things we're experiencing.

Brianna Sanborn: Yeah, we can repress a lot of things. I'm thinking about how that can show up, of like, I'm feeling this way deeper down, but I'm not able to access that, or I'm not able to interact through my intuitive knowing, because again, that's not safe. This is what I'm supposed to be doing, which is avoidance.

Jeffrey Besecker: So avoidance doesn't stay static. You know, we're trying to illustrate that today, how context and situational factors influence the way we experience. All of these avoidant patterns, all of our coping strategies, our internal processes, it adapts and shifts as our ego and sense of self develop. taking on new forms of protection at different stages of identity growth and identity relationship throughout life. So in that regard, how does avoidance shift as the sense of self and ego evolve through different stages of our life cycle development?

Brianna Sanborn: So early on, avoidance is about, again, shame and survival. So hiding, not being seen, staying quiet in hopes that they might fly under the radar. But then in adolescence, we see it shifts towards compliance and belonging. So avoiding conflict by fitting in. This can even look like skipping school or disengaging from responsibilities, which might be looked at in a pretty negative light in our society. But really, that kid, that child, that adolescent might just be relying on those survival mechanisms. Later, avoidance can appear as selective disengagement. but it's still rooted in fear. It can look like discernment, it can look like choice, when really it's just, again, that barrier of safety. The thread through all stages, I see, though, is that avoidance protects identity and preserves coherence, or at least perceived coherence, even if it costs authenticity.

Jeffrey Besecker: Looking at that, developmental psychology and ego development research demonstrates that defensive strategies, including avoidance, evolve in tandem with our identity structures, beginning with that basic shame avoidance cycle you mentioned in early stages, and becomes more complex forms of protective, adaptive coping as social roles and ego maturation expand. You know, we're looking at research from Jan Lovinger or Levine that illustrate how we are very divergent, emerging complex individuals. Often even look at how we stigmatize roles or what we deem quote unquote authentic and true to us. How do you feel that impacts our ability to psychologically distance ourselves sometimes from our identity in order to see it through a more objective light?

Brianna Sanborn: I think that can be quite difficult. And even something that comes up for me when we're talking about authenticity, I hear all the time in my work as a therapist of like, oh, I'm just shy or, oh, I'm so introverted. And it's like, are you really? Or are you afraid of rejection? Are you avoiding these natural life events, like social events? I mean, rowing socially through adolescence and adulthood, are you actually shy or are you just afraid?

Jeffrey Besecker: Now there again is that a contextual and situational variant based on what role you're in, what environment you're in, who you're interacting with. More importantly, what relationship does that interstate play? You know, when we're in the somatic incoherence or emotional dysregulation, we're going to relate unconsciously from that frame. We're going to have that felt sense of discomfort arise that tends to stifle and squash that sense of psychological safety that does allow us to feel that sense of agency.

Brianna Sanborn: And it can be really difficult to access that agency or even experience that if we're afraid, right? If our nervous system is saying, danger, stay away, right?

Jeffrey Besecker: Brianna, what role do you feel emotional capacity plays in allowing us to gauge that back and forth movement between that role of feeling discomfort and that role of engaging psychological safety?

Brianna Sanborn: Well, someone's window of tolerance for, let's take social events with this social dynamics, with this example, like that person's window of tolerance might be really small. And so again, it's like even pushing out of that window can feel like death. It can feel like a saber tooth tiger is about to attack you. And that's pretty compelling to avoid any type of social interaction that does feel uncomfortable.

Jeffrey Besecker: When we move into those phases, what role does, again, somatic coherence and regulation play, and how does that perhaps trigger like a hormonal cascade of cortisol versus that dopamine effect that's the body trying to find its healthy middle ground?

Brianna Sanborn: Cortisol is a big one that's gonna make you avoid, right? Because that's literally sending messages all throughout your body, signals all throughout your body that this is not something you should be doing. And having that pleasurable experience that social dynamics can bring.

Jeffrey Besecker: Frame that for us from a somatic experiencing framework. You know, I know I'm going very contextually broad here and intellectualizing quite a bit. So bring that into the frame of somatic experiencing and how you tend to address those things from your practice.

Brianna Sanborn: I think it's really important to first become aware of what your body is experiencing, right? Like you said earlier, a lot of us aren't quite aware of, ooh, my heart is beating really quickly, or I'm starting to feel really hot, I'm feeling the urge to flee. I think the first step is really getting in touch with that, really recognizing, what is my body trying to tell me? And then even bringing that up to the brain of, does this make sense anymore? Right? This was true for me at one point, but is my body reacting in a way that's actually accurate to this experience?

Jeffrey Besecker: That aspect of framing itself is essential there. I do tend to recall some of those patterns that we draw associations to, to childhood. Implicit beliefs being one of those things. Don't cry because big boys don't cry or big girls don't cry. That's one I see us kind of stumble into as adults often even to evaluate and kind of transform. How do we frame that? Well, maybe big boys and girls do cry and that's our natural response. Why are we trying to stifle and suppress that? What comes up? We learn to silence that inner voice. We learn to mirror that pattern that triggers that cavalcade of cortisol that then triggers all of those felt senses and brings us back into that pattern.

Brianna Sanborn: And even crying is a way to express what we're experiencing somatically. Right? And if we're holding that in, if we are suppressing that, it tends to just build and build and build, making it harder and harder to express and release somatically what we're experiencing.

Jeffrey Besecker: As we move through this and as we move through therapy, we know some clients tend to relate from a more intellectual model, much like I'm doing today. How can we guide each other or help each other co-regulate toward that fell sense of space? How do we create that framework from your perspective where we help form that window of psychological safety so another can also move into that emotional attunement?

Brianna Sanborn: Yeah, well, I find it actually really interesting that our nervous systems are communicating with each other. That's where that co regulation comes from. If you're around someone who's grounded and calm, right, like our nervous system is really going to be able to pick up on that that signal safety. I'm safe here. This is a safe person. And that's really important for someone who is trying to regulate themselves. Of course, there are so many things that we can do individually, but that co-regulation can take it one step further because it's not only regulating, it's also creating a sense of connection, which I think is really important when we're talking about somatic regulation.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's an interesting window to look at because so often that resistance against connection is the very thing we're avoiding. It's the very thing we're experiencing unconsciously that tends to trigger those cycles like rumination, recursive feedback loops, oversimplification. Is it avoiding coping mechanism that diverts us from considering the complexity of something? I think that's one that may inherently get discounted a lot of times or kind of subjectively unconsciously stigmatized even. You know, sometimes it's that nuance that we're neglecting that triggers the same interaction.

Brianna Sanborn: Totally. Something that comes to mind for me with that is like, we're talking about how this can show up in childhood. That can be overgeneralized, right? So connection equals lack of safety. And that can be blanketed over any experience that this person might have when that's just not the case, right? There are a ton of people out there who are safe and that we can create that authentic and safe connection with.

Jeffrey Besecker: So at the core, do you feel that sometimes we emotionally flatten that response itself in order to avoid or defend against something?

Brianna Sanborn: Absolutely, right? Even if someone might have a little voice inside saying, maybe that's not true, that could feel like way too big of a jump to even try to experience for sure.

Jeffrey Besecker: From my perspective, that can become a very integral primary trigger point. You know, it's that stress response, that key survival strategy that then prompts us to defend back. I feel unsafe here. I feel uncertain here. Things are kind of cloudy. I lack a sense of purposefulness in how I engage with this. You know, I think even that idea of purpose itself, a lot of times can get flattened, smashed down emotionally, suppressed emotionally, stigmatized and misguided in a lot of ways.

Brianna Sanborn: Could you talk a little bit more about that? I'm curious about your thoughts on that.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, that was a left-feel-stray here. See there again, I'm going to that 40,000 foot we talked about in our pre-discussion today. Sometimes we can develop that ability to say things from a number of dimensions or levels, you know, in the purest kind of epistemic sense, that sense of purpose. Sometimes we have implicit beliefs about why I'm here, why I'm feeling this, what I'm supposed to be doing, what role am I supposed to be feeling? Very often we flatten that context down to, well, I'm only predispositioned toward this one belief. I'm only here for this one person. My identity is only here to serve one purpose. My mission is only to serve one purpose. Yet again, as humans, we're very relational. We're very dynamic and complex. You know, the context of what we're experiencing becomes very complex and often very diluted as we move around. And we have to be somewhat paradoxically open to that ambiguity, yet still, when called upon, be able to form some clarity and focus. How do you feel that affects those interactions? And that's very contextual.

Brianna Sanborn: Well, what I'm thinking about is that's so important to this life, that ambiguity, that broad perspective. And for someone who has been through trauma or a dysregulated nervous system, we are seeing so narrowly because that's all we can see in that state of dysregulation. And so that can be pretty inaccessible for someone who's displaying these types of behaviors.

Jeffrey Besecker: So to frame that conceptually, I'm going to try to vacillate and switch back and forth hats here today. Changing roles, you know, so often we're cemented in our identity toward the idea of a one quote unquote true self, rather than a core self that's able to adapt and evolve throughout these roles. So putting on my thinking hat. It brings me into touch with the concept of vagal breaking. The nervous system coupled with the brain, you know, we often try to dissect that down as an either or equation. Either we're thinking with the brain or we're feeling with the body, yet those processes are partnered. Vagal breaking, breaking as in putting on the brakes, is that stopping point through those interactions through our body, through the brain, that tends to shut us down and diminish us. When we frame it in that metaphorical sense, they make us feel small. or they might quiet our voice. That's the natural somatic response to say, let's put the brakes on here a minute. Let's reevaluate, let's recalibrate, let's recenter. So as we're moving into that state from a somatic perspective and the framework of somatic experiencing, what are some of the practices or signposts we can be mindful of when we're starting to move into those phases?

Brianna Sanborn: Well, I think about physical ways to help access that vagus nerve, to activate that vagus nerve. And if we're talking about practices, one of my favorite ones is actually so simple. It's just a hand over the chest. Doing that, especially over time, really allows that body to get that break, allows the body to say, wait a minute, let's actually think about this, because that signals to the body It's safe to rest. It's safe to, that's the rest and digest state. And that's really where we can use the logical, the rational parts of our brains to even be able to explore that.

Jeffrey Besecker: That to me plays an integral role when we shift and modulate between how we form narratives and relate to our stories. Again, context and situational nuance comes into play. We often hear, well, talk therapy didn't work for me. Well, there's a reason and a pattern to why those things do not work. And those revolve largely around whether or not you're able to feel that felt sense of safety. So there again, as practitioners, That narrative does play a very integral role in how we experience life, in how we form our perspectives, in how we co-relate. Again, going back to that basic of reconnecting with that felt sense first becomes crucial.

Brianna Sanborn: Absolutely, because like you were saying, the mind and body are relating to each other, they're communicating. But if we're in that survival state, we're not going to be able to think about those things very rationally or logically.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm challenging myself here today because I'm instantly being called in to recognize where my perceptual biases come into play or where I might bump into my own, what I've now discovered, tendency to intellectualize those feelings. Sometimes that does become an avoidant pattern for me where I am intellectually moving ahead. I'm trying to process it. I'm trying to go ahead and move to the outcome, which unconsciously is an avoidant coping strategy. How do you feel from a therapeutic lens? We help somebody frame that and realize when they might be out of attunement or out of harmony with either side of that equation. When are we over intellectualizing or when are we under feeling?

Brianna Sanborn: I think most of us live in that space, right? That's what we're taught. I think the body is just so neglected in so many aspects of the ways that our culture is shaped. I think that a good place to really evaluate if that's happening, if someone's over-intellectualizing and under-feeling, is really trying to slow down and say, what are you feeling in your body? What sensations can you pick up on? And this can be a really, really difficult and overwhelming practice for someone who isn't used to this. But that really helps bridge that gap to what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling and how those two things can relate.

Jeffrey Besecker: So that to me, I'm going to pivot on that point of dissonance. That discomfort being the gap where either we move one way or the other with the avoidance strategy. Dissonance being those defenses, being all of the filters that come up and understanding whether you can attune somatically with that with the client, or whether you can identify it from a logic reasoned point. And the two aren't inherently in opposition to each other. Some of us do tend to be a little more contextually leaning toward one or the other based on our patterns. I think that's a key role to me as a practitioner, to realize that, yes, you might relate this way, Yet the way another relates based on their experience, based on all their patterns, based on their conditioning, tends to lean toward another. Even recognizing how epigenetically, if we're predispositioned to stress and anxiety, we might move one way or the other with our somatic experiencing. You know, we might move more avoidant if we're programmed or preloaded with that trait to be more sensitive to anxiety. We might move more into the feeling as the coping mechanism. We might relate to that more as kind of the protective shield. I'm more familiar with this, so I bias toward it.

Brianna Sanborn: And I think both are equally important. And I think that if one person, I mean, most of us do lean one way or another, but I think that it's important to invite in the other side, whatever side that you might be on. Let's try to slowly try to invite in, right, if I'm over intellectualizing that person might even be overthinking, which we know is a big part of anxiety in itself, right? So I want to know why, what is that doing for you? Not to say that we need to stop doing that, but what are you avoiding? What are we kind of putting a blanket over and not wanting to see? Because I think that's really important to, that's an important piece of the healing process. If we're avoiding one or the other, that's important information to get that more holistic, well-rounded way to move forward.

Jeffrey Besecker: Let's look at that role of dissonance. This is a big one I've been really leaning into over the last six months. What are some of the common, often overlooked factors that trigger our behavior responses or that push us towards specific patterns? That dissonance, again, let's frame that as that felt sense of discomfort when we experience something that is either contradictory to our internal state, We're contradictory to our belief system and values. We're contradictory to our implicit attitudes and condition patterns. Kind of a contextually broad thing. It's that unease we often feel with that anxiety, you know, that stress response, the tightening of the body. Let's move this back to somatics. For me, when it comes up, it's that stress response. that inherent sense of heat when I feel nervous. You know, and I unconsciously do it through my conversations. I know this instinctually now about me based on it's a bias. I understand that I tend to move toward these somatic responses. I feel warm and flushed. Even when I feel mentally confident, there's sometimes a physical disconnect where a part of me is still experiencing that anxiety. It's an unconscious undercurrent that I can acknowledge that fragmented part of myself. I don't have to stigmatize that part. I can invite that part because it's giving me a cue. That part is telling me that this is important to what I value. You know, this is important that I have trust in others, that I relate to each other, that I connect. In order to feel that, I have to somewhat pause sometimes and realize it. Right now through our conversations, and I generally do this in most of my interviews, that unconscious stress response and unconscious anxiety and those fears come up. So how would you frame that from a somatic response for a client to help them create that space to attune to those things if they bring that to you?

Brianna Sanborn: Well, first, I want to say how important that is that you just said, like, I might think that I'm, you know, feeling a certain way, but then there are these undercurrents, these messages coming from my body. I think that's so important, because a lot of people might say, Well, I guess I was just lying to myself. Well, not necessarily like a part of yourself might be feeling really unsafe, or anxious, anxious, or whatever it might be, but that doesn't mean the whole you feels that way. And I like that you mentioned inviting that part in, because I think that's one of the most important things, especially when we're talking somatically, is let me speak to, for example, let's say, you know, a part of me is feeling anxious, I might ask that part. where in my body is that showing up, right? Let's say in the stomach. Then I really want to focus on that part of my stomach and say, well, is it tight? Is it hot? Is it pulsating? That can happen sometimes, right? And usually just the awareness and the witnessing of that part and of that part of the body is really powerful in alleviating whatever is going on.

Jeffrey Besecker: I find it also interesting, now I'm going to move back into a slightly intellectual frame, how those set points, I'll call them set points or relational points, often correlate with what is actually going on with the intellectualized process of what our biology is doing. You know, when I feel that heat, it's generally in my throat area, you know, or a throat chakra, if we're going toward, you know, framing it through what we might quote, traditionally call ancestral wisdom or an Eastern perspective of energy. That's inherently where that vagal breaking happens, where we're starting to brace as we're tightening up, where we start to shut down those interactions between the logical brain and the more emotional centers like the amygdala or the anterior cingulate cortex. So when those things are coming up, whatever the trigger is, when we start to feel that warm sense, if it's in the throat, you know, that's inherently where we're starting to brace. If we tune into that and pause, and move past the intellectualization of it and just take a moment to feel it. Rather than rationalizing it away, which is a form of suppression, what happens when we tune in and breathe into that from your perspective?

Brianna Sanborn: I have found that that has a really similar effect that witnessing can have is just release. And a lot of times it can actually feel much worse before it starts to feel better. Because then once we start paying attention to it, that's giving it space. It's giving it a spotlight, so to speak, to do whatever it needs to do. And that is often actually where that release might come from, the crying. Someone might feel the need to scream or to yell or whatever it might be. I think, yeah, attention to that area often allows for release.

Jeffrey Besecker: Do you feel from that perspective, and this is going really broad and kind of opinionated, that sometimes once a client is able to attune to that point, whether they're able to say, yes, I feel the sensation, I'm able to breathe into it, now I've breathed it and you went through the cycle and I feel that temporary resolve. Do you feel that sometimes gives us a perspective that That in and of itself is that quote-unquote healing, and that's the end of the cycle. Can that be kind of a crutch?

Brianna Sanborn: Absolutely not. A crutch? I don't know about that. I think that it is, I'm trying to search for the word that I'm looking for, I think it's effective in the healing process, but healing isn't linear. Healing doesn't say, okay, we did that, now we're all good. Right, there might be more triggers that are going to be building up in the throat or causing that somatic sensation again. And we might need to do that again. It's more of a lifelong process. It's more of a journey rather than let me check this off the list and everything's going to be fine.

Jeffrey Besecker: So that's where I was hoping to kind of subjectively push us to understanding that there, again, we're going back to that dynamic emergent nature of humanity. We look at that process, again, as a very linear, well, either I'm healed, quote unquote, or I'm not. We contextualize that in a lot of different ways, sometimes over-intellectualize it in a lot of ways. that presents us a pattern where we aren't able to remain present in the future again, or where we go back to some of those recursive cycles where we slip back into that pattern.

Brianna Sanborn: Yeah, and I want to bring up shame again, because that's really where shame can come in for people as well. Of, oh, I already healed this. I already went through this. And I think it's so important to look at it as more of a continuum. rather than like a static process.

Jeffrey Besecker: So let's look at that guilt, shame, blame cycle. You know, it tends to be kind of a trio. Wouldn't you agree?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Jeffrey Besecker: That dance with, you know, we're finding blame either in ourselves or thrusting blame on others sometimes or blame on our body, blame on the external circumstances. Any number of things where we're looking to kind of pin that down and sometimes even quote unquote scapegoat it where we leverage that power. And sometimes that can become a very imbalanced power dynamic. How do we start to recognize from a somatic sense when we're starting to pivot through those frames and starting to brace again?

Brianna Sanborn: Just awareness can go so far. The awareness that it's not me. it's humanity. This is just how it works, right? Like the body isn't going to get to the point where it's not experiencing any discomfort that's a part of the human experience. And I think once we can really detach blame and fault of ourselves and realize that it's a natural process, I have found that that in itself goes in extremely far away, because it breaks that loop. It breaks that cycle of, I healed this, now I failed. I healed this, now I failed. We can break that and say, this is going to happen indefinitely. And removing the self from that can just be powerful.

Jeffrey Besecker: Again, it illustrates how, as human beings, we're constantly, quote unquote, unfolding. We're constantly evolving. Change is kind of the only consistent. I'm going very philosophically broad there. What is certain change? And is it certain? No. You know, there's always a paradox there.

Brianna Sanborn: Right. There's always room to shift in different ways. It's just, you know, again, that awareness helps us know where we want to shift and helps us make those choices more clearly.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm noticing, again, you know, how we honor our differences here, where you lean more toward the somatic, I lean more toward the intellectual. A lot of times. I'll frame that. I'm going to give myself an escape clause there. A lot of times. I'm able to shift between the two. It doesn't always seem that way. I'm justified now, which itself is an avoidant coping mechanism from a logical standpoint. It's a good example. There's a lot of things we're only surfacely aware of. What kicks us into those cycles? How we experience that in our day to day. And I'm searching even right now how to force myself to decontextualize it and just simply allow you to step in and frame it. So if you were to come in and now I'm the client and I'm going to humbly and very vulnerably submit to being your client right now in the theoretical sense, where would you go with that? Say I'm having a struggle with it. I'm going to theoretically say I have a struggle with it and acknowledge it. Yes, sometimes I do deny that I have a struggle with it. How would you coach that?

Brianna Sanborn: I would first want to know what is that doing for you, right? How is that serving you? Because that's important.

Jeffrey Besecker: How's that serving me? I'm going to logic it first. That's how it's going to serve me because that is my go-to default. I'm going to logic it. Well, that serves me in a lot of ways. I have an understanding of it. I do have the ability to zero in and go to that 40,000 foot view and say, well, I might not necessarily be triggered by this thing. I might just be present with it. There might be a part of me that feels that part, but then there's a part of me sometimes that dissociates from it. It moves me out of that connection. Rather than guilt or shame either of those parts, my new frame of reference is now that ability to honor and hold space for all of the parts. not flattening that down to any one true sense of self, but maybe a core organizational self that can also differentiate the two and pause. And say, what is this protective part over here resisting feeling? What somatic senses? There again, going back to my earlier reference, and my dog is going nuts.

Brianna Sanborn: Can you hear that in the background? No, I actually can't.

Jeffrey Besecker: Oh, good. Well, I'm going to point it out and I'm just going to discard that in the end. So it's distracting right now. And I'm going to laugh through it rather than feel a sense of stress and anxiety about it. So when we can tune those two in, I'm going to bring this in and leave it in today, rather than feel shame because the dog is doing what the dog does, rather than feel shame through Jeffrey, because Jeffrey's going to do what the somatic body does and then relate to it. I can now pull that into a context and just Go back to that earlier instance where I can humbly pause and reframe and say, maybe I should lean in and listen. What's coming up through the sensory is recognizing how I'm feeling that heat, how I'm feeling those triggers. It's a, yes, there's an undercurrent of fear there. How do we alchemize that undercurrent and leverage it in an adaptive manner?

Brianna Sanborn: You know, I'm even thinking about pairing what you're thinking about this with the belief under that paired with that somatic sensation to really help understand, you know, what's the core there? What does that mean for you?

Jeffrey Besecker: Which belief? That's where I'm going to go first with this. Which belief? Because I don't flatten it from my perspective. You know, there's a number of beliefs, and some of those are unconscious. Which am I aware of? And where might that somatic embodiment point me toward? Is it the protective belief? Or is it the expansive belief? Is it the adaptive belief? Or is it the rigid belief?

Brianna Sanborn: And there would be some exploring to do with that, right? So, for example, this is just off the top of my head. Like, if my dog barks, if people hear it, what does that mean for me? Does it mean that I'm unprepared or that I have done something wrong in some way, right? Like, what's underneath that and how can we work with that?

Jeffrey Besecker: That is the aha moment because subconsciously now when I'm able to call that to the surface and vulnerably yield to that and I feel the tension now see I'm feeling the tension that I just suppressed back in that instance it lingered and was not processed. When I lean into that now, that was the awareness trigger point to lean into what is that deeper belief that unconsciously, why did I deflect and offer validation for it? Because I wanted that validation that I inherently felt guilt and shame that it might not be validated, that I might somehow be flawed, that I somehow might not be living up to expectation. All of those insecurities were the trigger point underneath.

Brianna Sanborn: Exactly. That's like a wonderful example of what I'm talking about here.

Jeffrey Besecker: So how common do you think that is? Again, it's neither here nor there. Let's not go there. How do we guide that itself? Okay, now I'm conflating. Okay, I want to validate this again. What did I just do? See, I caught myself shifting into that. I'm trying to reinforce my own validation now. And we'll sit with that a minute. I'm catching myself because I'm doing my own double binds here. And when we start to recognize those things, we can apply that to different contexts. Let's relate that to an interaction on social media. We've got a general conversation going on. Somebody makes a value-based comment. I believe X, Y, and Z about this thing. And then, say, person B comes to the conversation now and makes a kind of tarse retort to that. that we have a triggered response to. I'm not going to contextualize it too much because then it brings that dynamic in. Regardless of what that comment is, we automatically go toward a defensive avoidance stance.

Brianna Sanborn: Yeah.

Jeffrey Besecker: And I don't even know now where I'm going with this because I'm trying to decontextualize, which then becomes another challenge for me that inherently signals back to how often I intellectualize. So as a client, if I'm moving back in the client role again, and I'm not going to put myself in the role, I'm going to be the client that's regulated, yet I'm dealing with the conflict of when I engage with people and I'm trying to be neutral and regulated. I'm trying to hold that empathetic space. How can we start to somatically notice when some of these defensive mechanisms come up, even when we believe we're being neutral and adaptive with another? And how can we also honor in a respectful way when that other person is also out of that frame? It's very broad. Yeah.

Brianna Sanborn: Well, when the person is regulated and they're aware of what's going on, that really allows a window to go deeper with this, right? So like, let's say this person has been working with a core belief that has been bringing up these somatic responses for quite some time now. That belief doesn't necessarily go away. I hear all the time, especially in the spiritual community, of you have to release these beliefs, these negative beliefs. It's not really a matter of releasing it.

Jeffrey Besecker: Do we ever release or do those neural imprints remain until they run their cycle? That's an interesting biological point to look at.

Brianna Sanborn: Yeah. Well, I think a really important part of that is really focusing on, yes, you know, tending to the negative belief and helping alleviate whatever comes with that, but also bringing in a positive belief, countering that, right? Because we want to make that positive quote-unquote positive belief, more adaptive belief, stronger than the non-adaptive belief. I think that's really where things come into play. So when a person has that level of awareness and that level of regulation, all right, now let's tip into the adaptive side of things and make that stronger.

Jeffrey Besecker: I love how you reeled that back and moved that out of that kind of binary framing of negative positive. I'm going to reinforce that and give you kudos on that. Because sometimes that can become a sticky point where either we repress that negative sensation, what we quote unquote call negative, and sometimes we overemphasize quote unquote what we call positive. Yeah, totally. Adaptive again, you know, it's that ability to kind of consider the different framings from a logical standpoint then that sometimes becomes that pivotal point. when we're semantically attuned and coherent, when we're in that kind of capacitated state, I'll say capacitated state, where we have that ability to be more accepted and tolerant of things. We are then able to kind of move into that kind of logic reasoning or those comparison models to switch between those frames.

Brianna Sanborn: Yeah and you know it might even be helpful to frame it as like positive feelings and negative feelings because that kind of takes away from labeling it as positive or negative but what feels good or what feels bad and then we can kind of go from there because that's subjective.

Jeffrey Besecker: Can that itself become a double bind sometimes where we have the beneficial outcome of feeling a certain way, yet there's an expectancy bias there where we inherently then avoid addressing or processing those discomforting things.

Brianna Sanborn: I think that's where it becomes maladaptive, right? If we're avoiding the things that we don't want to be looking at, that's a really big sign that we should absolutely be looking at those things.

Jeffrey Besecker: I think if we've got a certain subconscious context going on today, it's that idea of breaking, embracing. Breaking, again, being when we're putting on the brakes on things, we're shutting it down. Somatically we're tightening up, somatically we're moving into those bypassing modes, or when we're neglecting, or however we want to frame that engagement with the felt sense. And then that bracing when we start to expect certain things, whether it's, you know, a big one I see is sometimes we conflate that idea of joy. We feel like, okay, joy is a good thing, so I only want joy in my life, which itself is a form of suppressive avoidance. Wouldn't you agree?

Brianna Sanborn: Totally, because that's not real life.

Jeffrey Besecker: We're neglecting that full nuance of what those other signals might be telling us emotionally. There again, we move into that kind of subjective stance of negative positive. You know, through a lot of context, we see conversations that revolve around, well, emotion X, Y, or Z is a negative emotion. Yet there is a framing there that removes that context that, well, emotion X, Y, and Z are pointing toward a specific need that we're experiencing. Whether that be a bodily need, whether that be a contextual need, whether that be a relational need, we've moved that context out of the frame now. and simply flattened it again.

Brianna Sanborn: Well, I think some people hear negative feeling and might say, ooh, that automatically means we don't go there. For me, I know we go straight there. That's exactly where we need to go. And I think that's important. Like negative feelings, even if not, you know, we're not going to label it as negative, but we all have felt bad and we tend to like, ooh, I'm going to shy from that. Right? And when we're talking about somatics, that's really where somatic sensations, discomfort can build because we're not looking at it, we're not feeling it, and things that aren't felt just grow.

Jeffrey Besecker: You know, that's a great point, I think, to kind of hang on today here as we near the end of our conversation, maybe is understanding when to tune into the somatic signals first. You know, this felt sense of heat, you know, where do I feel tightening restriction? What part of my body? And for me, it's not so much about making meaning about the intellectualized part of that. other than understanding sometimes when we decontextualize it or even depersonalize it. I'm not tying my identity to this thing. How essential do you think those two roles are? Understanding when we're maybe over-contextualizing things, over-reasoning, Thinking it, you know, I'm going to say overthinking it, but that itself is kind of a flattening, moves us into recursive patterns. It removes us into rumination patterns where we're doing the same thing in a circular manner over and over. It's not so much that we have too much thinking. It's just, we're in a lot of the same circles or cycles of thinking, or even beyond the thinking, what we tend to do from my perspective as both a therapist and a coach. we tend to remove that context of what's going on beneath the surface in the body. It tends to be the key avoidance part is, now I'm avoiding the body by blaming and guilting the thinking. Do you see where that comes full circle?

Brianna Sanborn: Yeah, I think they all feed into each other and making those loops. If we're feeling guilt, we're going to make an assumption about that, or we have a certain thought about that, which then can create the shame, and then it just loops from there. I like that you mentioned earlier something around detaching our identity from it. I think that's a really important thing, and I think we touched on that earlier as well, of this isn't who I am, it's something I'm experiencing. Once we remove ourselves from that, we can just notice it as a human experience and that can really help transmute that and help work with it rather than like sticking to it.

Jeffrey Besecker: And much like everything in human life, that's a very context situationally dependent circumstance. It's not to say we don't move into those dissociative patterns where we're now avoiding parts of our identity or we're now avoiding parts of our experience behind the identity. Or where we subjectively downplay and shrink the importance of that idea. Again, it all becomes a very nuanced dance of being able to tune in with our bodies and find that point. I'm trying to decontextualize it and feel into it. Even that feels foreign to me. I'm going to have a humble tell here, you know, those unconscious or subconscious tells are a lot of the points. And when we can turn into that with feeling rather than tune out from the feeling, that's when we start to understand when we're starting to dive under that surface or we're trying to float away from that surface.

Brianna Sanborn: I think an important point here when we're talking about somatics, like in some way we already touched on this, but it's just really important to not view it as, should I rely on somatics or should I rely on cognition or intellectualization? It's really important to bridge those gaps, help them work together, because just like we did with that example with the belief that you might have had about your dog barking, that was a really profound moment where you noticed the somatic sensation paired with that cognition. You know, yes, a lot of people, at least from where I'm sitting, do have room for leaning more into that somatic sensation and experiencing. It's how do we kind of marry both of those and kind of help connect that mind and body.

Jeffrey Besecker: So bringing myself into a present frame, that's something that consciously I can be aware of at times. Yet, as we kind of illustrated, unconsciously, first at the embodied level, I'm not always realizing when cortisol is starting to trigger that, which is an introspection illusion. It's that felt sense that, well, I know and understand everything that is true about me. Yet there was another possible truth that, until I tuned in, I don't always become aware of it. Sometimes it's not essential that I tune into that signal. Sometimes it does call a need where, yes, rather than stopping myself and shutting down our conversation, or being vulnerable more than anything, I can take it offline and let it be back there. It's role goes on. You know, it's just keeping me mindful that it's important to me that we connect with each other first and foremost as guest and host, as human to human, as Brianna to Jeff. That's important to me. It has value and meaning. There's a purposefulness to that. Going back to that idea of purpose. Sometimes we flatten that purpose. And I'm only here to tell this thing or I'm only here because this is the only value I have or the only shared opportunity we have. So sometimes it's just finding that healthy dance for me to acknowledge it. And when it does become a limiting factor or when it does become a repressive suppressive cycle.

Brianna Sanborn: Yeah, and having that discernment can be difficult, but important.

Jeffrey Besecker: What was that? That was just a ramble, but you know, that ramble hopefully has some value and it hits a point. So as we kind of roll into things here, I know I've kind of drifted off it, that shows me where I use that intellectual anchor sometimes as that brace point. And it's not so much that inherent need to brace. It's kind of like, you know, I'll quit that metaphorically. It's like being on a merry-go-round and the world is spinning around a hundred miles an hour. If we don't have that emotional anchor point or that somatic anchor point, sometimes when we completely let go, we slip into that chaos, whether it's the emotional chaos, whether it's the chaos of life, you know, whether it's the chaos of feeding those cycles, that break point is always that grounding point for me.

Brianna Sanborn: And with that, I think it's important when you notice that merry-go-round to drop down into the body. We don't even necessarily need to see where we're feeling anything, just dropping down, grounding.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's a great point to end on today. So with that in mind, as we're working with clients or as we're working with our own interactions, what are some tips and practices you can share from your experience, Brianna, with finding that grounding point?

Brianna Sanborn: Finding the grounding point, you know, there's so many different ways to ground in your body. But there is one practice that I really wanted to share today with kind of getting a more embodied experience of that somatic experiencing. So not only has this helped me tremendously, it's also helped my clients, it's comparable to parts work from internal family systems theory. So this kind of draws from a couple of different methodologies, but it's really like shifting towards finding the worst, finding a core wound, similar to what we kind of did off the roof today. But we can, when we go to the source, we can allow the wounded parts of ourselves to feel witnessed, and we can more easily release those patterns that perpetuate avoidance. So it's kind of like a step-by-step thing that I'll go through. So first grounding, gently noticing your body, putting your feet on the ground, feeling the contact with the chair or whatever you're sitting on, maybe even noticing sounds around you, really like tuning into that sensations, those sensations, and then identifying what is here right now. So asking yourself, what emotion and or sensation am I noticing right now? Naming it simply, whether it's tightness, sadness, heat, and then wonder what part of me feels this? What does this part of me need right now? And you can even take it a step further to say, when's the first time I remember feeling this way? And our memories are not the best all the time. So just, you know, the first time you can remember. And then imagining yourself talking to that part of yourself, whether it's visually a past part of yourself, or even, ooh, I'm feeling a sickness in my stomach, let me talk to that part of my body. And just saying something like, I see you, I understand why you might feel that way. Thank you for protecting me through everything that you have been through, that we have been through. And again, simply witnessing, I have seen, makes tremendous shifts. It allows for that release, allows for that expansion, which ripples. So that would be probably one of the most important practices that I have learned personally.

Jeffrey Besecker: So you've shared some great tips there that I know even I tend to rely on, yet don't always acknowledge or sometimes intellectualize away from. So thank you for sharing those today. This has been such a great in-depth conversation to remind me how great of a challenge sometimes it is for me to kind of surrender to that need to hyper-intellectualize and just lean in and ground. So you have a great online program for clients and individuals to learn when they're starting to move into some of these avoiding patterns and how to lean back into that felt sense. Share the name of that program with us and where our listeners can go to tune into it.

Brianna Sanborn: It's actually on gum road. So I can, um, it's a site where you can build courses and things like that. It is a course is a big word for it. It's not like you have to like get your notebook out and whatever. It's more of an experience. Um, but it's called building emotional and somatic language. There are also worksheets in there that I have developed to help experience a lot of those practices. So I can share the link with you if that's easier to just share in your description.

Jeffrey Besecker: We'll put that in the descripting notes. And I want to thank you for this very deep, challenging conversation for me today. I have to humbly acknowledge how it did push me to kind of zero back out from where I'm bracing and where I'm starting to deflect. So thank you for that.

Brianna Sanborn: Thank you so much for a rich conversation and having me on here.

Jeffrey Besecker: I always enjoy our time together because I can feel that attunement when we engage and when we can just kind of relax and soften into our nuances, soften into how we experience and share that space vulnerably together. So thank you so much, Brianna.

Brianna Sanborn: Thank you.

Jeffrey Besecker: Avoidant behaviors, while protective in the short term, often arise from deep psychological, emotional, and somatic patterns that, if unexamined, can limit connection, growth, and resilience. Briana and I discussed the protective roots of avoidance and how avoidance can develop as a survival strategy in early environments such as inconsistent caregiving and in high-conflict households. We also expressed the role the nervous system plays in detecting threats and triggering withdrawal behaviors, and how the brain encodes these patterns as safety defaults. Finally, today, we explored how simple grounding and titration practices, like noticing the sensation of your feet on the ground and using mindful breathing, can be the key to attuning to the subtle cues within our somatic experience. If you found this episode meaningful, please share it with a friend or loved one. And as always, we're grateful for you, our valued listening community of clinical professionals and mental health practitioners. This has been The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Biesecker.