Healing Trauma Through Somatic Practices and Body Wisdom with Dr. Natalie Green

INTRO: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host Catherine Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you are ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a Sought after Entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you are in the right place.

Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter one size fits all approach to marketing, and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast, and here's your host, Katherine Thompson. 

Kathryn Thompson: Hey. Hey. I am super stoked to have Dr. [00:01:00] Natalie Green on the show here today to share with you all her amazing wisdom around trauma, trauma healing. And I know many of you are gonna love what she has to share. So without further ado, I'm just gonna turn it over to you, uh, so that you can share with our listeners who you are and what you do.

Thank you 

Guest: so much for having me. Catherine, it's wonderful to catch up and chat. Who am I? Well, I have a number of hats. It's always a great question. It's like, oh, and it's funny how we always start with our career and what we do, isn't it? I'm not gonna do that. I am a mom of two young adult children and a wife and a daughter, and.

I have a background in clinical and health psychology, and I've worked for a very long time, 35 years, to be honest, which I know shows my age in the, um, trauma, trauma field of trauma recovery, et [00:02:00] cetera. But I've now branched more so into coaching. 'cause I find that it's focusing on future rather than past.

And I, I like to come from that optimistic, hopeful area. Yeah. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. Such a beautiful intro and, and it's so true that we, we do lead with what we do for a living, our career, accolades, all those sorts of things. So I appreciate you providing, well brief, obviously, um, sort of a nutshell of like who you are beyond, beyond that.

So just curious, I know that you've kind of shifted into coaching and whatnot, but. Why this line of work? I'm not 

Guest: really sure how I got into it. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah, 

Guest: I, I guess from even a young age, people always came to me and would tell me what was going on for them and I. I guess I was a good listener and problem solver and I actually wanted to get [00:03:00] into physiotherapy, believe it or not.

I also had years of sports injuries. I was, I'd go away on a trip to play volleyball 'cause we played at an elite level and I'd come home and they'd always have a bet for what type of injury I'd come home with. So I thought, I'm gonna get into physio and I missed out by one mark, like one mark. Wow.

Getting into physio and I thought, oh, well I'll do psychology. And everyone's like, you were born to be a psychologist. You were always gonna do psychology. It's like, well, no one told me that. So, and I did, you know, a lot of different things throughout my career in psychology. I worked with children and adolescents.

I worked in a jail with, you know, 400 males and I was the only female. It was 

Kathryn Thompson: Wow. 

Guest: People would go, wow, my God, how did you do that? But it was just like, I don't mind. It's just I knew that I could help [00:04:00] people. It was part of who I was and it was my purpose. And then. I started doing a lot more work in the trauma field, so childhood abuse, sexual assault, and then more significant events such as, and I live in Australia, so I should have probably said that you can tell by my accent that I'm not Canadian or from the us.

So I was around when we had the biggest massacre we've ever had in Australia. And I worked for a year helping people recover and work through their trauma and, you know, significant distress and help in partially helping with rebuilding that community. So, and I, I. It was full on and it was intense, but I know that I made a difference and that really drove me more so into that was the area that I did.

From then on, I've done other big community traumas [00:05:00] and recovery, and then I just thought, you know, keep going with that, but I don't wanna keep doing the one-on-one. Yeah, I really love the community and the bigger groups, so now I've branched more so as I said, into. Trauma recovery in posttraumatic growth.

So really helping people heal in groups because I know community's so important in healing, we can't do it alone. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. Yeah. Isn't it interesting how people can see in us. Our own gifts sometimes before we even realize what our gifts are. And I love the whole, I played competitive soccer and so I understand the whole injury prone stuff.

And it's so funny because my right knee right now is. Bug in me and I, it's my good leg. As I say, my left leg is the one that I've had knee surgery on, sprained ankles, you name it. And so, um, I resonate with the whole, yeah, drive [00:06:00] towards kinesiology there, but it's, it's interesting how people see in us our gifts, what we bring.

Out naturally, which is, is that, you know, you're, you're here to help people and people would come to you with their advice and, and all of those sorts of things. And um, and I love the whole community aspect of it, right? Like shifting away from the one-to-one. I think it's, that's beneficial too, but how we heal in community.

Yeah. Yeah. So talk to me about the community healing and then the, you know, you talk about growth a lot, so the hope, the desire for change. Yeah. I. 

Guest: Yeah, so I probably should go back a little bit that, you know, I was doing what I thought was, you know, I was doing the best work that I could do, helping people heal from their trauma and recover.

And then unfortunately, well, I went for one of my many surgeries as well. Uh. Really significant major ankle reconstruction and that didn't go so well. So I have a bad leg and a good [00:07:00] leg, and my good leg is not much better either. It's, it's due for its reconstruction too. Yeah. I, um, went in for the surgery.

I knew it was gonna be major surgery and didn't go well. I ended up with a systemic golden staph infection. I. Almost died, was in and out of hospital for eight months, four surgeries, and then ended up being allergic to absolutely everything. And then. In the recovery of that, I then underwent another significant trauma, which I didn't see coming.

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. 

Guest: And that led me into, oh my goodness, now I have PTSD, and I don't really wanna be on the other side of the couch. I don't like that. Doesn't feel comfortable. And really it led me to exploring the work that I do now and thinking there has to be a quicker way to help heal trauma. And we need to stop looking at [00:08:00] the past all the time and going to.

Hope and recovery and what life can look like rather than staying stuck in our story and our trauma. So I started exploring what would be a quicker way to heal and tested it on myself and then have done it on other people independently and thought, no, I need to get this out in the world. So then I've started really.

Looking at what's the most effective way. So I've come up with a, A method that I call the A BS method, and it really looks at helping people reclaim who they are post-trauma. So who are you really, what's your identity and what really matters? Because we know that after going through some sort of trauma, and I'd had this from thousands of clients that I'd already seen plus.

Experiencing it and my own lived [00:09:00] experience, and I thought, no, we need to look deeper. What really matters now? So do a lot of work around identity and values, and then use a really amazing thing that actually comes from the field of NLP. Yeah. Around helping people release the negative emotions that are keeping them stuck.

Now I'm working more so with helping professionals who've carried their clients' stories for years. Yeah. And they're stuck in our nervous systems and they're sometimes adding to our trauma. So it's vicarious trauma and helping people release. That and then do the somatic work, which I know you and I have talked about before.

Yeah. The somatic healing work is the key. We can't stay in our heads. We can't just focus. Whilst talk therapy is really helpful, it's not enough until [00:10:00] we connect ourselves to our emotions and our gut. Which is that inner knowing and intuition. We can't really release the stuff that's stuck in our nervous system.

So that's the work I do now using that, and I have a few different ways obviously, of doing that, but I've probably talked enough. I love it. 

Kathryn Thompson: I love it because I know so many people that I know that are listening, right, are the highly intellectual, ambitious go-getters and. I know I hear this often with clients is like, I've been doing the work, I've read the books, I've done the personal development.

I go to talk therapy, I've done the things, and I still keep repeating the same patterns, or I feel like I'm in this cycle of, you know, it's good for a little bit, and then all of a sudden I'm back to where I was. I can't seem to break outta that. And I know you and I have talked about this separately is like, it is the [00:11:00] somatic, it's, it's that what's trapped sort of within our bodies and when we're just intellectualizing it, we're creating awareness around it.

We're not actually like integrating it, embodying it. And I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but everybody's trauma. I mean, I know you've developed archetypes and and whatnot, but we're all our own unique beings as well. And when we talk about that gut intuition piece, that can look different for me than it can for you.

So. T talk to me a little. I wanna dive into like the somatic stuff and the body stuff, and the gut, heart, mind sort of connection that I know we've talked to outside of the podcast. Because that's the thing that really intrigues me. And I know my, my listeners here are gonna wanna hear about it because they're probably at that cusp right now where they're like, I've tried all of the things 

Guest: and we do, we see that so much and then.

People come in to see me, whether it's, you know, in person in my rooms or [00:12:00] online and they go, I've tried everything. And they're so depleted. And I think, yeah, you've tried all the traditional things. Or some of them might've gone and, you know, sat on the beach 'cause I'm lucky enough to live near the beach and, and done their yoga or their meditation.

They go, it's not enough. And one of the things that I love and that you've touched on is. The work around the three brains and, and there's quite a bit of work around, but the work that I most loved that was popularized by two guys, Marvin Oker, OKA, and Grant Solu, S-O-O-S-A-L-U. They have this book that I read many years ago around mBraining using your multiple brains to do cool stuff, and I love that.

So I dug into that. 'cause you know, I'm really searching for what's the best way to approach this. We have the head brain, the heart brain, and the gut brain, and what we know. You know, the head brain is the cognitive brain. [00:13:00] It's responsible for rational thought. For, you know, the way we think, the way we process things, the way we analyze things, and also for our emotional intelligence, our creativity, logical reasoning and problem solving that's in the head brain.

The heart, brain, sorry, is where the emotional intelligence and our empathy and our compassion lie. 

Kathryn Thompson: Mm. 

Guest: That's where our values sit. Yeah. So. That's where when I'm doing the work using my method, I'm really connecting into the heart, brain for the values, component, and beliefs. Even though we think, oh, the beliefs are in the cognitive head brain, they're actually held in the heart.

Brain because our head and our heart usually speak to each other, and the gut brain is that. Intuition. You know, you hear people say, I've got that. Oh, that gut feeling, or, oh, I just [00:14:00] had these butterflies, or, or if we're talking to someone and you, you get that, like what I call a hit in your gut and you go, oh yes, that's it.

I just know, or, or you meet someone and you either like them or you don't like them straight away because our gut gets that message quite quickly. Uh, and that is responsible for responding to stress. Survival instincts and physical situations. 

Kathryn Thompson: What we 

Guest: know is that our head, heart, and gut brains, when we've been through some sort of trauma, at least one will disconnect.

It's what happens to keep us safe. So if you've been through significant. Significant abuse and you're in a, say a, a relationship that's been abusive, you start to be questioning your capacity to, [00:15:00] to pick people, the right person. You might go from one relationship to the next. You keep picking the same sort of person because you have disconnected from your gut.

Kathryn Thompson: Mm-hmm. 

Guest: You're not trusting your gut. It's probably there and working, but you've stopped listening to it because you've made choices that haven't worked for you, so you stop doing that. So it disconnects, or some people will get that heart brain disconnect because it's too painful to feel. I know, you know, for me that's, that's what happened.

That it was too painful to really look at what was happening after my trauma. And I thought, I'll just shut that down to protect myself. Totally. And what we know is until we reconnect the three brains and reintegrate them, then we can't really understand and make great decisions. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. It's so fascinating.

It is [00:16:00] so, so fascinating. And, and specifically, I mean, the gut, the gut one, I hear a lot from people, right? They'll often say, well, I don't have intuition, or I'm not intuitive or whatnot. Yes. And then when I dig a little bit with them, it's, it's exactly that. They've made a decision at some point where they thought they were trusting their gut.

It actually didn't pan out the way that they thought it would, and so therefore they can't trust it anymore. Either they picked the wrong relationship or they went down a business path that wasn't aligned or turned out to be traumatic or whatever it might be, career path, that sort of thing, and they're.

They're going, I'm not intuitive. And I'm like, but actually you are very intuitive. And I think the other one, I mean, I think a lot of my clients live cerebrally. They live in the brain, so disconnected from the heart, what, what really matters, values, emotions, and then really not trusting that gut intuition anymore.

So. Just talk us through a little bit 'cause it is very fascinating [00:17:00] how to, like, how to reconnect those or what are some ways to reconnect those or what is your process of reconnecting those? Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Guest: A really quick way of doing it is just, and you will have, you'll know what this is and a lot of people will go, but I already do that is what I call a body scan.

Kathryn Thompson: So 

Guest: you just sit quietly, close your eyes and just, and if anyone's listening and they're driving, please don't close your eyes while you're listening to this and driving. Um, just throw that one in there, but more just starting to sit in the quiet and just go from the top of your head right through. And, and take your time.

Just go. Don't go. Oh. Head right down to your feet. Straight away. Just sit with it and go, okay. Go through your forehead, write down your face, your neck, your shoulders, your chest. Write down through your stomach, your abdomen. Write [00:18:00] down through your pelvis, your hips. Abdominal area, right down your legs through those thighs, knees, your dodgy knees, check all those pains and aches and pains, all of those things.

Feel all of them right down the ankles and to your toes. And I want you to go through all of that and just notice where you feel some pain or something, or where you might feel nothing. And sometimes that's as much of a clue as anything else. Oh, I haven't got anything. And I think, well, that's a sign that you might be disconnected.

So you can just sit with that and you can picture the light from outside coming in. And just imagine it like a ray of sunshine coming in through you and letting it come in through your heart space. Even though people might have shut down their heart to protect themselves, they can usually picture that.

[00:19:00] If it doesn't feel like it could come through your heart, bring it in somewhere else through your body that feels comfortable and have it flow through you. And notice the color. Notice it, the sound. It's making swooshing through your body as if it's like your blood flowing through, and then change the color.

Change the shape. Notice the shape it is and and watch and let it morph through you. And then when you're ready, just notice the warmth as it feels your body and feels beautiful. And then just let it flow right through you. And then when you're ready, you can let it go out. And that's one way of just being in the moment, allowing yourself to feel and just starting to awaken all parts of you.

And that's, that's just a really quick version of it. But what I can do is, um, we tend to do the emotional release, then we do this really cool thing that I know we talked about, which is [00:20:00] my somatic healing process that I'm almost fully certified into train, is what we call TRE. So it's a trauma intention release exercises.

What we know is that when some, as human beings, we go through stress may not be significant trauma, but any sort of stress, we know that the body's natural response, if you get a scare, if someone scares you, is, is you'll notice shaking, won't you? Yeah. Yeah. So if you go through something that scares you, you'll, you'll feel a bit shaky or you see an animal.

That, you know, dogs, something happens and the dogs just get up, shake themselves off and off they go. They're fine and they move on. But as humans, we're not really good at doing that. We can notice the shaking and, and if something significance happened or you've had a, you've had, um, a surgery [00:21:00] and you wake up outta the anesthetic and your body's often shaking.

Yeah. What's the first thing that someone does when someone's shaking? I. Like gets 'em to stop. Yeah. Yeah. Put an arm around them or get a warm blanket. Yeah. To stop the shaking. Yeah. But what we know is that shaking is the body's natural response to processing the stress or the trauma. And whenever we interrupt that, we are keeping it stuck in our nervous system.

So the TRE process. Take people through some really gentle stretching exercises that even I can do with my dodgy ankles and my dodgy knees that you could do as well just to stretch and fatigue the muscles. And then we can do the TRE process in standing, or usually I do it lying down, so like on a yoga mat, lie down and, and you go through a process to [00:22:00] gently evoke.

Those tremors. Yeah. And we just allow that and that's a way of processing and letting the stress go. And I'll, I'll send you a link to A-A-T-R-E-A free TRE course that you can put in the show notes for your listeners if that's helpful. It's an amazing process. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. Amazing. I'd love to add that in the show notes for everybody 'cause I just think it's such a cool.

Process of, and how you described it right is, and it's so true. We, we, when we get shaken, we get scared, traumatized, stress, whatever. The natural, like you said, the natural tendency is for our bodies to shake similar to emotions, right. When we get heightened emotions, yes. It, the, in the instance, the instinct is to stop people from feeling.

Don't cry, don't hurt, and don't this and don't right. And don't shake. And so it's just, it's such a cool process because that trauma that's trapped there, we actually don't even know it's really trapped there. [00:23:00] Exactly. 

Guest: And one way, you know, one way as a. Person who's trained in it that I could notice it.

Yeah. And you, when I say this, you'll probably go, ah, yeah, okay. I can see that. And a client when they come in is they might be clenching their jaw. Yeah. Or they might be bracing, so you can see that they're holding them. They're wound up like a, you know, so tight, like a spring, and you need to just unwind them.

And you can see that, oh my goodness, you're holding yourself. It's so tense and you're not even aware of it. Sometimes people will be holding their breath. Yeah. And not even aware of it. So it's about just allowing ourselves to feel. To be in our body and reconnect with our body, and then when we are safe enough, we can do it.

It might be that you just, you could probably do it yourself at a basic level, not, you know, fully trained TRE, but just stand there and shake, shake it [00:24:00] out, and move yourself around. And just that releases a layer of tension. So before you go to bed, you could stand there and have a good shake, shake it out, and then just release the day.

Whatever's happened for the day. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. Such a cool, um, just a, a cool and easy way to do it. Like you said, very basic, and obviously, you know, if you have any sort of trauma or whatnot, having a practitioner or somebody that can walk you through that in a safe way is, is so, so, so important. But if, but just for the daily stress.

Right? The daily stress that we care that we don't even know it. And it's interesting because, and, and I know you know this, but it's like things are to manifest. Physically, or at least they do for me, right? When I'm like, oh yes, got this right knee pain, what the heck's going on there? Right? Like outta nowhere or tight jaw, right?

Tight jaw for me. Or like shoulders that start to go like this. Shoulders, yes. And not [00:25:00] breathing. That's another one for me. And I notice this at the gym when I'm working out or if I'm doing any sort of workout at all. Like my trainer is always like breeze, Catherine. Like, just breathe. But I, that's, I know that's where I get disconnected is from my own breath, and so yeah, it's, it's such a cool, I, I'm just fascinated by the process.

And so do, have you noticed like specific patterns for trauma or that, that you've seen amongst high achievers go-getters, ambitious people? Great question. Yes. 

Guest: I wouldn't know anything about that. Yeah. The old high achiever Yes. Type A personality. Not at all. Yeah. I'm not one of them. Absolutely. Just that going into our head.

Yeah. Cognitively and, and really [00:26:00] processing things at that level and shutting off. The feeling is really, really common. Often, as you said, the shoulders going up. We hold ourselves, we brace ourselves, and we are just on that. That's that fight or flight mode constantly without us even recognizing it. So used to functioning at that high level and that expectation that that's how we'll be where all things to all people and.

Push, push, push, push, push. When really in order to function at a safe level, emotionally, physically, psychologically, we need to stop. Mm-hmm. We need to just be, not do. Yeah. And they're the sorts of things that often present that go, go, go. And it's like, okay, how about you stop? Oh, I can't do that. What would happen if you stopped?

What would be the worst [00:27:00] thing that would happen? And of course the worst thing would be, oh my God, I'd feel I'd have to deal with it. Yeah. So we're really good at avoiding. Yeah. So those things that I've talked about are really good ways to just help you just start to connect and know that, you know, by doing that and giving yourself five minutes of quiet time to just be.

The world won't blow up by allowing ourselves to do that. Yeah. And really we have to do that work. We've gotta do the inner work if, if we want to. And it's not necessarily that your listeners might have major things that they have to heal, that there's something wrong with them. Yeah. It's just being in this day and age, it's so busy, there's so much going on that our body and our nervous system store everything.

If we don't have a way to process it. And one of the things [00:28:00] that became really obvious to me was that there seemed to be these people coming in with very clear, what I call archetypes. And you know, archetypes has come from Carl Jung and. There's lots of that, and I never thought I would be doing that sort of work.

It's like, hmm, okay. I was very much a cognitive behavior therapist and this is how you do it and it's thoughts and behaviors, but. I know that I was missing this whole part of possible healing. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. 

Guest: And it wasn't until, like I said, I had to do the deeper healing though. Okay. I really have to go there. Oh, I don't wanna go there.

Yeah. So don't make me, yeah, no, don't make me, I don't wanna have a little Tandy spa, my dummy and Hello. Yeah. I know that by doing the work. It really has changed and shaped who I am and always a work in progress. It's always a journey and I don't think we're ever there, but I've come up with [00:29:00] these seven archetypes and they allow us to really look at the unique profile.

'cause not many people will be the same three archetypes, so there's seven of them. Do we have time for me to just do a quick run through? Yeah. Yeah. I'd love for you to share it. Yeah. So the first one, and this is often, I'll be honest, where high achieving professionals sit. Yeah. The Phoenix riser is the one who rises from the ashes of devastation as reborn with fist strength and renewed purpose.

So this is after you've been through trauma, this is how you cope with the trauma. So that's often what I will see in those high achievers. World gets burnt down and you just come back. Yeah. I I also stay with that one a lot. Yeah, me too. Yeah. I'm a Phoenix riser. Yeah. And then we have the resilience sage, and [00:30:00] that's that.

And we'll all know some of those. I, I'm not this naturally, but we all, we all have, let me start with, we all have all seven archetypes within us. Yeah. It's just that there will be three. That are more prominent, but we can draw on the strengths of each one to heal from our trauma. So the resilience, sage is that wise soul who transforms their pain into profound insight and guides others, and they're always grounded that wise sage person that will give you advice, but they're always calm and their nervous system is pretty well regulated, often not.

Yeah, the high achiever because we are just so busy doing, not being, yeah. Then we have the empowered trailblazer, and that's that bold pathfinder who forges new directions and they're fueled by [00:31:00] courage because of what they've been through. They push through no matter what, and they'll blaze that trail before other people.

Then there's the authentic warrior, and you'll probably relate to this one, this Braveheart who sheds the mask and leads with their vulnerability and their truth and emotional strength. And they're the ones we really look, look to, to guide us because they will be open, honest, to a fault, blunt. They, they will be the one that say it like it is.

But are respected in doing that, then we have, and this one's like so not in my comfort zone, reflective orchestrator, the deep thinker who has a lot of introspection and they transform their pain through going deep within and finding order in the chaos. [00:32:00] Mm. So that was not where I sat. Early on when I found all these and, and came up with the concept.

Then we have the Radiant Alchemist, and I reckon you might sit here. That's someone who transforms. Creatively. Mm-hmm. So they tap into, and I would think someone who runs creatively owned Yeah. Would be this for sure. Yeah. Turning emotional wounds into beauty, meaning, and personal magic. So you'll find your creativity through art, drawing, writing, that sort of stuff.

Yeah. And then the last one is the Liberated Voyager, and that's someone who. And it might be that when they're doing it in a negative, unhelpful way, that they are running away and avoiding. Hmm. But the reality is they're the freedom seeker who can break generational cycles, embrace a life and expand and look at what matters.

So they're [00:33:00] the seven archetypes. And what I found over and over again from doing this work with people was that we all have. Each archetype has strengths and challenges. Mm-hmm. So when you know what your archetype is, you know that these are the challenges that I'm gonna have. Yeah. This is how I work, so you're already fore worn, so you know, this is what I need to do.

And you can borrow the strengths from one of the other archetypes and build on that and learn how they would do it. That's their area of strength and maybe our challenge. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. So fascinating. I'm definitely, I'm definitely resonate obviously with the fi phoenix rising where you know, either I'm burning stuff down and then rebuilding, or I'm caught in the fire of things burning down and rising.

Rising from that stronger, more fierce soul of things. Definitely the creative. [00:34:00] Yeah. Yes, totally. And the liberation one, which is interesting because I never really found myself as an avoidant. Mm-hmm. But the more I did the work, the more I realized that there was an avoidant tendency. I always felt like, oh, I, I hit things straight on.

I take, you know, the challenge as it comes, yada, yada, yada. But there, there is that avoid, see, that will happen. I. For sure, which I was never aware of. And now as you say it, I'm like, oh yeah, like definitely, definitely. Yeah. 

Guest: Yeah. And it's really important that, you know, there's none that are good or bad.

Yeah. They just are. Yeah. We have all of them within us and it's just which ones are we leaning into most? What I love is at certain times as we go through, you know, the turmoils of life, we will find. One become more prominent and as [00:35:00] we heal. Yeah. And start to process things. The other one, like for me, the resilience age comes in more now.

Yeah. Because I allow it. Because I can sit and just be, and I regulate my nervous system using my TRE. Yeah. A lot better. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there's so many ways. Yeah. To look at this, and I love that I'm now applying it with professionals in their, um, businesses. So how are you responding in your business?

Well, hang on. You're doing this, so you're actually acting. From this space. What if you built the muscle around here? And they're like, oh, yeah. So it's a really good way to guide people. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah, and I love that. It's like there, there is the, like the archetypes and the awareness, the understanding, again, I. Like you get the archetype, but then the work that you do somatically.

'cause I think that's where often a lot of the work [00:36:00] stops. It's like, okay, I have the awareness, I have like, you know, you look at human design frameworks or gene keys or you know, these other frameworks out there and it's like, okay, now I understand. Cool. But like. I can't change it because it, there's stuff stuck in my system that I'm not even aware of that's causing me to be avoidant, that's causing me not to open my heart, but I thought I processed all that.

You know, if you go, you have a bad relationship and a breakup, it's like. Well, that was two decades ago. Why? You know, am I still carrying that? But but you do and carry it as remnants. And so, and I've, I've had lots of clients come into my world where it's like, I didn't even think I should still be dealing with that issue I dealt with in my twenties or early thirties.

Now I'm in my forties and you're telling me that it still might be there. And it's like, well, it looks like it 'cause I can see it. And obviously I'm not trained. In supporting them through that, which is why I'm loving having you on the show and, and wanting people to connect with you because it's like [00:37:00] we, we can only get so far through the awareness part of it there is that obviously the integration, the embodiment, the healing that has to come with it.

So I just love your approach. I think it's so fascinating, so unique, and I just love how you came from the world of cognitive psychology and then went through your own trauma and on the other side of it was like, I, I don't want to. Identify with. I don't want to be on the other side of the coach. Right. I don't want to be that.

Yeah. No, I certainly didn't like that one. That was not comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's like that flip of the script, you know, it's like, wait a minute, I, I don't wanna be here. Yeah. 

Guest: And I think, uh, and then, you know, then you go through the whole, oh my goodness. How was I when the others were on the other side of the couch?

Did I do this right? So then you go through this whole spiral of, oh my goodness, I could have done this better, and you can't stay stuck there. So that's why finding TRE has really been [00:38:00] really powerful for me in that. There's ways to let that stuff go and it's, you can do it. Like some people I've seen doing it and they have full on tremors and you go, oh my gosh.

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. 

Guest: But we just start gentle and slow. It's like peeling off the layers of an onion. We only peel back what You are safe to peel back. Yeah. So you are always in control and you just let it go. Yeah. And we know that our brain and our, you know, our head, our heart and our gut brain will only allow us to see what we are ready to see.

Yeah. And heal what? We're ready to heal. It's all at a subconscious level. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. And so just a a a clarifying question, 'cause I know for some experiences is like, you revisit like the actual trauma, right? You go back to that event or that time and almost relive it. Is this what this is, or you, or is it a [00:39:00] different approach altogether?

Guest: When I'm taking someone through, using my, um, emotional release process, it's, it's like, it's like timeline therapy. Yeah. You had a timeline therapy in NLP? Yeah, it's like that, but with a bit of a twist, like made up my own sort of one. So you. Go above. You see what happened. You go into the event very quickly.

Yeah. But you look at the resources that you built from that and the learnings from that, and then you let it go. So, and what I love is when I'm taking someone through that, I don't even know what their event was. You don't have to talk about it. Okay. And that's what I love. Yeah. Because I've done years of talk therapy.

That was where I came from. You get them to talk about it and all my training in trauma exposure therapy, I look back now and I go, oh my God, I wish I'd known this. But you don't know what you don't know. [00:40:00] And making people talk about what happened and go over and over and over, it keeps it stuck in your nervous system.

Yeah. And back then when I was trained, all the polyvagal theory and stuff didn't exist. It wasn't talked about. So we do the best we can, but now we know there's another way. I can never go back to that. Yeah. That's, that's the reality of why I'm now doing coaching because I now I know what I know now. I can't go back.

Yeah. And I feel like I can't keep doing that in the same way because. I found another way to do it. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. Yeah. And the way that, um, like you said, talk therapy is great for what it is, but there's this method that, like you said, you don't necessarily, you don't even know what the trauma is that they're, I.

They're go, that they don't even have to talk about it, and then that release out of the body, which is um, so, so powerful. So powerful. [00:41:00] Yeah. 

Guest: And that release from the body, they, they won't even know what it is. Sometimes they might have. I had a lady I was doing the TRE process with, and suddenly we were there and she was processing things and, and they all say, this feels really relaxing.

I feel calm, I feel afterwards, more aware, more alert. But as we're doing it, these tears just started rolling down her face. And as, as the person running the thing, I have to hold everyone's nervous systems. Yeah. So there's a risk of me. Taking on all their stuff and their vicarious stuff through my nervous system.

So it's really important that I practice it on myself. Yeah. So this tear rolls down and I just let it roll. And you don't want to draw attention to it because then it's like, oh my God, no, I can't feel or, so we just let it happen. And afterwards I said, what happened for you? And she [00:42:00] said, oh, I don't know.

But it was a. Trigger. It was obviously a past memory. She didn't know the memory, but her body knew the memory. Uh, and she was safe enough then to release the emotion attached to it. And she said she could feel almost like her head and her heart reconnected. Wow. It was weird. And I, I never question it. I go, it is what it is.

Yeah. And that's where she got to. And it's different for everyone. Yeah. So you never question it and never then go into it. Why did that happen? What happened? What? Yeah, like we would've done in cognitive therapy, we'd wanna know what was going on. But what I love is you don't have to know. I don't want to know because I, not being awful, but I don't need to carry that in my nervous system and I want to respect her nervous system and we don't have to talk about it.

Just let it out. Yeah. [00:43:00] And let it be. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. And such a beautiful process in that one, I think, you know, not having to know and just, just knowing that whatever it was, it was positive and for growth and, and all of that, right? And, but I think as a, again, when we think cognitively, we all want to know our, you know, our life purpose and our meaning, and what does that mean?

What does that mean and what does that mean? But. You get so stuck in overprocessing what the thing means that sometimes things don't even have a meaning. It's like I, I don't know what, I don't know what it was, but I just trust that whatever it was, it was meant to be released and I'm just gonna leave it at that and not revisit and try to analyze it to death.

Right. Which I think a lot of the people that come into my world are like the over analyzer, over processor. Absolutely. And it's just, and I was one of those people too, where it got to a point where I'd give myself headaches, and I've shared this before, like I'd be so processing every situation, [00:44:00] everything, my decisions, all the things to a point that I would get sick.

I would get migraines and headaches because I was thinking too much. 

Guest: Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. And. And when we look like there's, there's a whole other field, and it's not my area of expertise, but where we have our aches and our pains and our challenges, there's so many messages in that for us, aren't there that somatically.

It's like, oh, no wonder I have that. Yeah. Hmm. Yes. That's would be exactly why I have that problem. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. When I. Yeah, when I was in corporate, the very, I, I mean, it was at the very, very end, I got this weird rash on my left eye and Oh, I know. And everyone was like, it's your makeup. And I was like, okay, I'm not wearing mascara or eyeshadow done.

But I was like, but if it was my makeup, but have it on both eyes. No. Is it shingles? It wasn't shingles. Oh. And you know what's wild about the whole thing was that I was [00:45:00] contemplating leaving corporate and I was in this, I hated it. I was. Sick, all the things, and outta nowhere. I decided to go to a walk-in clinic, not even to see my doctor.

And I remember sitting out and calling my mom going like, should I go in? And she's like, just go in, like your eyes, literally peeling off your face, like go in. And I ended up with a little Chinese doctor who was on call that day. And he said to me, he goes, my, my Western doctors won't be happy with what I have to say to you.

And I said. Okay. And he said, I can prescribe you the cream that will get rid of your eye thing that's going on. But I will say, my Eastern doctors want me to tell you that there's something emotionally happening within you and you need to navigate it. And I was like, and I went, and a week later I quit my job and the rash was gone, and I've never gotten it since.

Wow. You just gave me goosebumps. Right. And it came, it was like, 

Guest: yeah, go ahead. [00:46:00] It's just that we don't have all the answers and you know, like you just said, Western medicine does not have all the answers. The same as cognitive behavior therapy works so well for lots of things, but doesn't have all the answers.

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. 

Guest: And we need to be prepared to look outside ourselves and outside the norm. I think to start when we've got things that are going on that. Don't seem to have an explanation. We need to be prepared to be open. Yeah. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. To the unexplained things that, that yeah. That it, that it's showing us. And of course he prescribed the cream, and so that was the practical Western year ago, treating the symptom.

And then he is like, but he opened the door for me to go. Well, I was wrestling emotionally with should I quit? Should I not quit? What should I do? Why am I never happy? Why isn't this right? I was just wrestling so much with the decision that it, [00:47:00] it actually. Manifested in my left eye of having a rash that was unexplained.

Yeah. Mm. But wasn't unexplained once you sit with it, right? 

Guest: Yeah, exactly. And you know, again, the body keeps the score. Totally. The body, you weren't listening. Yeah. It did that for you to see and listen. Yeah. And do something different. So for me, I had allergic reactions and allergic reactions, and I was, I became so sick and so unwell that I almost died.

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. 

Guest: Because I wasn't listening to all the signs along the way. Yeah. Something significant had to happen for me to stop, otherwise, I'd still be going and f. If I even existed anymore. Like it was crazy. Right? High achieving do, do, do is just ridiculous 

Kathryn Thompson: and it catches up to us. And I think that's the one thing that I wanna really preface here is that a lot of [00:48:00] people who might be in this like overly ambitious go-getter state, they're like, yeah, that won't happen to me.

Or, and I thought the same thing. I thought the same thing in my thirties. And then it was like I hit a wall and it was like I could not. One, physically things started to manifest, right? And then two, I like, my system actually just couldn't do it. Like I just couldn't do it anymore. I hit that rock bottom burnout that it just, there was nothing.

And I remember my husband at the time, and I've shared this before, said to me, I. I'm worried. And I said, worried about what? He's like, I'm worried I'm gonna come home one day and you're gonna be dead. I'm gonna find you dead. And I was like, oh man, I'm mentally okay. Like, do you think I'm depressed? And he goes, I'm not talking about that.

I don't think you're depressed or mentally unwell. I think you're working too hard and the stress of it is gonna kill you. And I was like, he was a mirror. I was getting these rashes. Right? Like it was just Mm. [00:49:00] Yeah. Big wake up. Should catch up. Yeah. 

Guest: Yeah. It's, it's, it really never ceases to amaze me. It shouldn't amaze me, but it still does every time.

And I go, oh yeah, that is in your nervous system somewhere. Yeah. It can't not be if you haven't done the work to process it. Totally. And most of us won't do the work because we're not aware of it. We just keep going. Yeah. So, you know, thankfully more and more this is being talked about these days. Yeah.

Nervous system work and regulating things and, and I know we've talked before, you love the EFT tapping. It's been a godsend for you. And again, that's another way. There's EMDR, there's so many different ways. It's about finding the thing that works for you. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. No one size fits all. No one size fits all.

But I will say somatically, like I needed some sort of somatic practice. Mm. [00:50:00] It got to a point that somatically, I, I couldn't intellectually process it anymore, and because it wasn't actually doing the work that I needed to do to actually fully process it, I needed to go somatically, which is so, so key I think.

Yeah. 

Guest: I agree, and I think as high achieving professionals, we will avoid the somatic stuff as long as we can. Let's be honest. Totally. Because it's uncomfortable. Yeah, because we don't wanna feel, yeah, because that would mean we have to listen and to our body and we have to stop. Yeah. We don't wanna do that.

So once you do that though, it doesn't mean you stop and you're broken. It means everything can change and you can show up in the world so differently and you can live a life in, what I would say post-traumatic growth. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. 

Guest: Being able to thrive and live the life that [00:51:00] you, you can love. Yeah. And you can show up fully as yourself, whatever identity you wanna take on for that rather than.

Who you used to be before the trauma or after the trauma, you'll never get back to that because you're fundamentally changed. Yeah. Which is a good thing. 

Kathryn Thompson: Yeah. Yeah. So fascinating. I've loved chatting with you today. I know our listeners are gonna love this episode. They're gonna wanna know where they can find you.

Okay. 

Guest: So. As much as I'm not a huge fan of social media, I found that people dunno about you unless you're out there. So I am on Instagram as Dr. Nat Green on Facebook because that does show my age that where us older people hang out is Dr. Natalie Green and my website is just Doctor as in dr natalie green.com au because [00:52:00] we're in Australia.

Amazing. See? Pictures of me sitting by the beach enjoying a coffee, which is me. And I know people would say, you shouldn't have coffee to regulate your nervous system, but I do. Yeah. Two coffees a day by the beach is my go-to. And that's where I replenish, where I do a lot of writing. 'cause I love writing books and writing 

Kathryn Thompson: things.

So Amazing. Amazing. And I'm I, um. I envy the beach. I mean, that's probably the one thing that I, that I don't have. But I love my coffee and I love that you said that because a lot of people were like, well, don't drink coffee. You'll be dysregulated. And what's interesting about my coffee is, is that I. I've never actually found that it hin it.

Like I've never found that it hinders me on an I don't get jittery or not me either. That sort of stuff. Yeah, I actually love the TA taste of coffee, so, um, I just have pictures of beaches throughout my house so that I can just visualize like I'm at the beach. But, um, we will just pretend I'll send [00:53:00] you photos 

Guest: next time.

I'm there. 

Kathryn Thompson: I love it. Do, please do, please do. I love the beach. I love the ocean. Um, and we'll link all those links up in the show notes so you guys can easily access those. It's been such a pleasure having you on. Is there any final things you wanna leave our listeners with before we wrap up? 

Guest: It? Just trust yourself.

Trust yourself that you may not have found a way through yet, but it's about continuing. To look for options that will work for you. And really the key is in the somatic side of things, and I'm happy to also send you a link to my trauma archetypes quiz. It's free. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So people can take the quiz and find out which of the archetypes.

That they are so that they can learn the key strategies to help heal and move out of 

Kathryn Thompson: wherever they're sitting at the moment. Amazing. We love a good quiz over here at Creatively Owned and be the Sought [00:54:00] after Entrepreneur, so, um, I know they'll, they'll love that as well. But yes, it's been a pleasure having you on.

I cannot wait for our listeners to hear this episode, so thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. Welcome. Bye-bye. 

INTRO: Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online@creativelyowned.com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.