Welcome! I am so glad you are here. You are in for a treat, and yes, I know I always say that.
That's because we just have such amazing women on this show, and today is no exception. You're
going to meet Karen Penfold. She is a trauma recovery specialist. I can't wait for you to hear
because I know there's so many women, myself included, who have experienced trauma. So,
I can't wait for her to share with you how she helps busy, stressed out, overwhelmed moms
to completely transform their nervous system, to be calm, to enjoy mothering. It's just an amazing
transformation. I can't wait for you to hear about it. Karen, welcome to the show. I've been so
excited for this show to start. You have so much to share. I've been looking forward to it as well.
Thank you. Let's dive right in. What is a trauma recovery specialist? Tell us.
Well, what I do is that I work with the biology of the trauma and not the psychology of the trauma.
So, trauma affects not just the mind, but it affects the nervous system. And so,
as a somatic practitioner, what I do is work at the base of the body to
regulate the nervous system. And we do that with easy and accessible practices.
Just because they're easy doesn't mean that they're not powerful.
Wow. Isn't that amazing? Sometimes easy or simple, but can make such a huge change. But
if we don't even know about it, it might be easy, but we don't even know. Normally,
if someone experiences trauma, we're told to go to a counselor, go to a psychotherapist,
go to a psychiatrist. How is what you do different from that?
So, that's working at, we call it top down. You're seeing a psychologist, seeing a therapist. You're
dealing with the psychology and maybe verbally processing through it and learning some behavioral
management or some coping skills. And those things are all helpful, but what we find with
trauma and traumatic stress is that people often hit a threshold of how much that's going to help
them because it hasn't addressed the biology of trauma. And so, what trauma affects the nervous
system? God gave us three states of the nervous system. What are the three states? The three
states are the sympathetic, the parasympathetic, and it's also a parasympathetic state, but it's
the shutdown. So, two of them are survival states. I always go like this because it's this top and
this bottom. Those are survival states. And that middle one is the parasympathetic state. And I
call that the state of freedom and flow. I like it already.
Okay. Under normal circumstances, we're going to flow through. We're going to be activated into
some stress and mobility. And then when the danger, the threat is over, the stress is over,
we're going to come down into that calm place, that parasympathetic, that's also called the rest
digest state. Someone who has been in traumatic stress for a long period of time, your body can
only sustain that for so long. Your nervous system can only sustain that for so long. And so then
that's when someone might drop down into shutdown, down into that shutdown place.
And what does shutdown look like?
Shutdown is disconnected from your body, really a very numb state, fatigue, depression. I think
shutdown's depression and anxiety is that mobilized state.
Okay. Wow. So that really brings me to a powerful story that you shared with me. It's one of those
movies that keep playing in my mind. So we go back to a little bit younger Karen, young mommy Karen,
two little boys. And you shared an image that has
not left my mind. They're in a bathtub. Tell me about that. Well, I was going through being a
young mom and a lot of trauma in my family dynamics. My dad was mentally ill. Now I might
understand it more differently, more as his own trauma, but he was suicidal and it was just,
it was a constant state of anxiety for me. Every time that phone rang, what does that,
what's my mom going to be saying next? What's coming up next? And I was, I think I had dropped
into numb. And I remember sitting at the bathtub with these two little boys, angelic faces, just
beaming light. And I, and I looked at them and I felt nothing. I felt nothing.
And that's, that's something I think in what you're doing, you probably see a lot, just this,
this disconnect. I know I went, I went through a lot of trauma in my life too. And before I
understood, you know, a lot of what you're teaching, I, I lived from the neck up. I was
very mental, completely disconnected from my body. And so I think that, you know, the more I talk to
women, the more, what you're talking about is so common. So you had this stress and, and, and you
found yourself disconnected and then you end up with breast cancer. Yes. That was a good 15 years
later. Okay. Okay. And I was 46 years old and I was diagnosed with a, a severe case of breast
cancer. And what happened was I, I went through that, the experience of it with a lot of hope.
I was in the fact that the Lord gave me the word hope when I was diagnosed, I had amazing
support around me and, and, and I was seeing a counselor for the stress of it. And that was
helping me deal with the stress. And, and we kind of started to peel back some layers and as well
during that time. And what happened was, was when I was done with two years of treatment,
surgeries, and I also broke my pelvis in a car accident while I was going through the same time.
Yes. And and again, I went through all of that with with an amazing amount of hope.
Okay. But what happened was when it was over, when, you know, it's just like this time of just
celebration, oh my goodness, you're done with all of this. And I'm supposed to be, you know,
joyful and, and just be, and I was, I was grateful and all of that. But what, what happened was I
started to feel this visceral feeling of anxiety roar through my body. It, it was like people,
oh, well, you were worried that it was coming back. Like, no, it wasn't a worry. It wasn't in
my mind. What I was feeling was, was in my body. I was, there was this anxiety just
roaring through my body. So physical sensations,
like your body was just really taken over by this anxiety.
Yes. Yes. All right. And I told my oncologist about it and she recommended I see a social
worker and the social worker said, well, you know, it's actually very common with.
This is normal or whatever, right?
She says you're experiencing post-traumatic stress.
Okay. Okay.
And I was like, okay. And so I, I set out to learn everything I could about healing
from post-traumatic stress. I've set out to learn it for myself. And then as years went by and, and
things would, would change. I changed professions.
Amazing. Amazing.
And now I, now I get to help other women.
You know it sounds cliche. You hear it, but how real that your test becomes your testimony.
Your mess becomes your message, right? I mean, how, how beautiful that the things that you
needed to learn to help yourself is the gift you bring to the world now is tied in with like
your unique purpose. How like, that's where I see God, like only God, right? Only God,
you know, Romans 8, 28, working everything together.
Beauty from ashes.
From Ashes, so you talk about, big words sometimes,
so help us lay people, a regulated nervous system.
What the heck is a regulated nervous system?
A regulated nervous system.
People probably don't even know
what their nervous system is in some ways.
So the nervous system is our autonomic system.
It works without us having to think about it
to take care of all of the functions of our body.
And when we're in health or in a regulated,
we're gonna have ebbs and flow in life.
It's kind of like stress resilience is when you're regulated.
Things are gonna happen and we're gonna mobilize.
Our body's gonna, adrenaline's gonna flow.
And that's the way God made it.
He gave us these survival systems.
And so we're going to activate
and be able to run and do what we need to do for this threat.
But then, we're supposed to, then come down,
dip back into that parasympathetic state.
And it's called the rest-digest state.
So we can rest, we can recover.
And that's when we do,
that's when our digestion's working just the way it should.
But, in a chronically stressed,
I call it, it's like people living a lifestyle
of chronic stress.
There was already that.
And then we have COVID.
And so people are just in this very quickly triggered place.
But you asked me what is a,
so a regulated system is one that ebbs and flows.
And a dysregulated system is one that's kind of stuck.
It's stuck, you're stuck in mobilization.
You're stuck in that sympathetic go, go, go, go.
Sometimes we create it.
We create that go, go, go, go, go.
Because that's what we're comfortable with.
That's what we know.
And it also brings us that go, go, go, go, go
can bring us up out of that state of numb,
that state of shutdown.
Okay, okay.
And so getting it regulated where it's intended to be.
Because it's as if, you know, God has given us this,
you know, a wolf is suddenly chasing us,
a tiger, a lion, whatever, you know.
The whole body adjusts, right?
The blood leaves the extremities,
everything goes into the center.
And we're able to just fight or flight.
We can run, we can.
And yet when you do that day in and day out,
and day in and day out leads to dis-ease.
It does.
Leads to, yeah, all of these things.
And so you're helping it to be able to go
where it needs to go when it needs to
and then get in a regulated state.
Let's take it a little further.
Wanna ask you a little,
some of the things are a little dicey maybe,
but let's get into something.
So you had this anxiety and it was very chronic.
And it also led you to have a little bit of a temper
or something like that.
You wanna tell me about that a little bit?
Well, I tell the stories
that I was a very dysregulated mom.
Dysregulated mom, that's a nice way to say it.
Yeah, and I'm not talking about my digestion.
Okay, okay.
As a dysregulated mother.
Okay.
And I was also a new Christian.
I was a baby Christian when my kids were young.
And I just remember feeling like,
feeling so much guilt and shame
that I couldn't control my temper.
I read that I was a new creation in Christ.
I read that the old was gone and the new had come,
but I couldn't, I didn't feel that.
And there was a lot of guilt and shame with that.
Guilt and shame.
And...
You said something to me, not to interrupt you,
but this is where I say it gets dicey.
I know how much you love God
and what a praying woman you are.
But you make a sentence that in this situation,
you couldn't even pray your way.
You wanted to will your way
out of this anxiety and depression.
You wanted to will yourself out of this temper.
You had a strong desire to be a great mom, a great wife.
I mean, you were full on engaged.
And yet you said,
I couldn't pray myself out of this mess.
No.
That might stir some people,
but I know your heart.
I know how much you believe in prayer and God.
Tell me about that.
Why?
Why couldn't you pray your way?
Because we can't think our way to calm.
We can't think.
And I dare say under traumatic situ,
under when your system is dysregulated.
Yeah.
It's like, it's biological.
Okay.
It's biological.
like, you know, like in illnesses. Okay. And yes, God can perform miracles. Sure.
And he does. Right. But we can't, we can't think ourselves calm. And so
what we need to do is go to the body. We use the body, we calm the body to calm
the mind. And I'm not taking God and his power out of this. Of course. I'm inserting it
with something I call embodied truth. Oh, tell me. Embodied truth. Embodied truth.
Tell me about that. Well, God made us body, mind, and soul. Okay. And I believe he
intends for us to experience his promises and his truth, body, mind, and
soul. So we, you know, we believe with our mind. I mean, we know in our mind. So we
can take a scripture and we can know in our mind that be still and know that I
am God. Right, right. We can believe that in our heart. Okay. I believe we can embody
that. We need to feel that in our body. I love that. The dysregulated nervous
system is, you know, it's like, I know you're there, Lord. Yeah. I know you're
always with me. You'll never desert me. I believe that. Yeah. But my, someone tell
my body that. It's like someone please, someone please tell my body that. And so
we can use practices, somatic practices that calm the body. I help people find
and feel calm, feel those things that God promises. Rest, stability, security, peace.
Our body is the container of all feeling, sensation, and emotion. Dr. Peter Levine.
Yeah. And so how do we experience peace, calm, stability, security? We feel it as a
sensation. Yeah. Trauma cuts us off from feelings and sensations. Wow. And so this
work is about finding safe ways to feel back into that body. And that has been
your source of perhaps pain, torture, discomfort. Yeah. It's just, I get, I was
so excited to have you on the show and I get so passionate about this. And for
someone that, yeah, I mean, for someone who's had trauma from very young, I mean,
bipolar parents, alcoholic, domestic violence. I mean, I've experienced a lot
in my life. When you are going through your life, you don't know what you don't
know. Right. And so, like I say, I was completely disconnected from my body. I
was, I was operating mentally. What, what we now know science wise though, that's
so amazing about what you're doing. And it's so deep in terms of total healing
and restoration is that every emotion has a neuro peptide. We release this
whole cascade of chemicals into our body. So like you said, you could just be, I
believe in God and I've got it in our heart, but this chemical stew is going on,
you know, on its own way. And it's leading to dis ease. And it's, I mean, the
entire body is being affected. It can manifest as cancer. It can manifest as so
many things. So what you're doing is, um, it's so, like you said, it's Christ
centered, embodied truth. And so there's so many things that are affected by what
you're doing. The peace, the balancing of the emotions, the, the, and, and I love
the way in your vision of how this affects generations to come. Tell us
about that. I mean, this is affecting every aspect of our life, what you're
doing. Yes. And my, my passion is, is to, um, work with young moms or moms. Yeah.
Because to have the blessing to impact or help transform the life of a mother,
think of all of the lives that a mother touches and none, perhaps more than her
children. And so to impact or transform the life and transform her legacy, that
mother's legacy, one, one nervous system at a time, one regulated, one regulated.
nervous system at a time. What a beautiful, what a beautiful work you're doing. So the women that
are watching you right now, maybe she's a young mommy and she's relating to everything and she's
overwhelmed, she's guilty, she's stressed out, she especially now during COVID, stuck at home,
lots of stuff, everything changing, right? She's just right now, this is tough. What would you say
to her? What would you say to that young mommy? Well, I would say that you're not alone and that
it's not your fault. And it perhaps isn't even your mental health, but it's the state of your
nervous system. And you're not powerless against that, that God gave us this amazing body and
we have the power within us from God to affect the states of our nervous system. And you can
learn to do that. And so that feeling of, why can't I just stop? And why can't I will my way
out of this? And why can't I pray my way out of this? You can affect and have control. What the
moms say to me and the women say to me is that they feel like they're going through life reacting
and reacting. And we all are, aren't we? Aren't we a society of just quick reactions?
Yeah. And with this work, I believe because I've seen it, we can create within our nervous system
calm, stable control. It's going to flow, but we can respond in the fruits of the spirit. And
isn't that what we want? Yes. And with a regulated nervous system, we can respond
in the fruits of the spirit. And even if we, a little anger, it's not, we're going to flow.
We're going to have that flow, but we're not going to get stuck. And instead of reacting,
and for me, this is me talking, instead of reacting in my filthy flesh, we can learn to create,
to bring ourselves into a state where we feel, where we do have control over our temper and
control over our tongues, not to perfection or anything like that, but to a place where you're
like, Oh, this is me. You get to be free to be you, the God, the you, the mom that God
made you to be. Wow. So tell me, how long does it take working with you to get results like this,
to have this piece, to have regulated nervous system? How long do you have to do this for
years, like counseling and psychotherapy? How long does it take for them to feel a difference?
Well, to answer that part, to feel a difference in one session, we can shift the state of our
nervous system, even if it's just a glimmer, even if it's just a little shift to feel just
a little bit of stability or calm or peace. That's our glimmer of hope because trauma,
trauma tells a lie. And I also believe it's a lie from the pit of hell that you will always feel
this way. It'll never get better. This is as good as it's going to get, and it might get worse.
And, and that's a lie. And so when I can help a woman feel even just a glimmer of calm or a
glimmer of, um, ease, maybe ease in the face that just to feel sometimes it's just to feel something,
anything other than the chronic pain, then the chronic anxiety, then the, um, the horrors
of what, of what they feel just to feel something different. That's, that's the start. And that's
the glimmer of hope. And thus the name of your company full of hope, trauma recovery. And so
it's that it's letting them begin to see, Hey, you don't have to stay this way forever. There's.
There's hope. There is hope and there is healing. Wow. I believe God has hope and
healing for trauma survivors, not just coping and management. Not just
surviving. Not just surviving. Thriving. Thriving. Yes. So you brought up
something really powerful that I hadn't really connected till just now. You
talked about pain and a lot of women, well people right now, I mean pain is a
huge issue in our society. Right. So is what you're doing somehow tied to pain
and is this trauma recovery also some kind of pain relief? Absolutely. I see a
lot of people for chronic pain or chronic illness. I call it you know the
chronics. Chronic stress creates chronic, can create chronic illness and chronic
pain. And the reason is is that when you're under that traumatic stress for
a long period of time, then again you're in that sympathetic state of your
nervous system or you're in the shutdown state of your nervous system. And it's in
that parasympathetic state where we rest and digest and recover. And so when
you're under and also when you're in a lot of pain, that it's a cycle. It creates,
it creates tension and stress and so you feel you can't sleep. It's just,
it just creates one. It all builds on itself. So the chronic stress creates
pain, the pain creates more stress. It's kind of a cycle thing where it's all
feeding. And so there's this always just being in that sympathetic state of the
nervous system where you cannot rest, digest, recover and just actually feel
and be relaxed. And this is so huge because being in the sympathetic state
is dis-ease. I mean it's it's affects longevity, it affects your immune system,
you know all of these things. How we age, the pain factor, how often we get sick. So
like I said it's just so multi-pronged and and that you're able to make a
difference that way. So they can see, they can experience things in even one
session. I know that you offer a mini session. Tell us about that and how can
they get that, how can they get started experiencing this peace and joy and
healing and hope and all these wonderful things. Sure. All you need to do is go to
fullofhopetraumarecovery.com and there's just a quick little form there for you
to fill out. Put in your email address and you'll receive something from me
immediately that'll have something that you can already begin to put to to
practice with. And then I'll, we'll have a session. I'll, we'll set it up and we'll
do a 30-minute session either in person or virtually. That is amazing. You know
scripture says tastes and know that the Lord is good. Taste of full of hope
trauma recovery and know that your life can be good. Yes. Beautiful. It's just been
awesome to have you on this show. Thank you for having me. What a gift you're bringing like you said for
generations. Thank you for for going through these things in a way that
actually goes beyond you and changes the lives of many, many, many people. It's a
blessing for me to do it. I wake up every morning grateful and
thrilled that I get to do this work.