Women's Health: Trauma-Informed Health and Self-Regulation with Kymber Maulden

In part 2 of this episode Kimber and Kristina  discuss self regulation techniques, the complexities of complex PTSD (CPTSD),  the physical and emotional impacts of loneliness, and the importance of human connection for healing. Kymber provides practical advice on understanding and addressing these deeply interconnected issues, offering valuable guidance for women on their journey to better health and well-being.

About Kymber Maulden:
Kymber Maulden is a women's nutrition consultant and Somatic trauma coach who takes a dynamic approach to women's health. She integrates somatic parts work and attachment coaching, NARM principles for addressing CPTSD, and applied neurology into her private nutrition work to offer women a well-rounded and deep set of tools for addressing their long-term health & lifestyle needs. Her healing philosophy also caters to women as biologically distinct from men, which she believes to be crucially important in today's climate, which lacks female-driven research in health sciences and, in the name of equality, often pressure women into behaviors and lifestyles that don't serve their unique female physiology or psycho-spiritual needs.

Connect with Kymber Maulden:
www.kymbermaulden.com

https://www.instagram.com/kymbermaulden/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kymber-maulden-346a4578/

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Transcript

 

 📍 Hey everyone. It's Kristina Driscoll, host of the She's Brave podcast. Let's go. 

Part two with Kimber Malden, she's a nutritional consultant and a women's health coach who takes a somatic and trauma informed approach to women's health. If you haven't yet, you guys go back and listen to part one. It is  Freakin fascinating. We ended on a note of talking about  CPTSD  and you were saying that it's shame based and that it's more common. You think it's actually more common.  I want to dig in today about a couple of different topics. Number one, I love all your work on learning how to self regulate.

So I want to go there. And then I also really, really love some of the work you've done on loneliness and helping women in that way interplays with, with self regulation and positive mental health  sound good. Yeah, for sure. 

 What are some other things that we can do besides nutrition, as far as this whole thing of like not being regulated and, or being stuck in that self regulation space? 

 I think even just  understanding the concepts of regulation of nervous system. support and is important. So just having that language and seeing yourself through that lens, I think learning about the nervous system and also like forming relationships with other women that are doing this work has been profoundly empowering for me because it gives me a language that's not personal.

So I think that a lot of illnesses, mental illness,  illnesses, specifically in behavioral illnesses, like they're so stigmatized or there's so much, it just reinforces shame because you're diagnosed with something and you don't have control over certain things or you feel a certain way and you don't know why. 

And so just being able to understand that like, Oh, I'm dysregulated right now. That's why I'm behaving this way. That's why I feel this way. Or my thoughts are racing. And you start to see that more and more just in general with people like, So, so what I'm hearing also is what's a really beautiful first step is noticing.

Hey, I'm feeling dysregulated because like, how often do we do that? Most of us don't do that. We simply become dysregulated and then start acting really dysfunctional, right? Yeah. Yeah. Again, this is like practice, right? It takes time. But like the more you practice something, the more you do something, the better you get at it.

The brain is like, this is what we do. And so I would even say just like self reflection is a big part of. Looking at trauma and working with trauma, just being like, and not self reflection, just in the sense of what am I thinking and what, but like, how does my body feel? What's happening right now? Like,  is really helpful to be kind of an ongoing practice.

It can take us out of thought loops that we get stuck in. And so, For a lot of us who have some amount of CPTSD, whether we're aware of it or gaining awareness of it, we can get stuck in like emotional flashbacks, which is where you get triggered and then your reality can change. You start to relate to reality differently, start to relate to yourself differently.

So being able to like actually just check in and be like, what am I feeling right now? What am I thinking right now? How do my feet feel? Right now, like, am I in my body? Those little things just to start to make that a daily practice can be really, really helpful for helping us become aware of what our actual experience of life is. 

And I think a lot of us,  we freeze or we shut down or we speed up or we disassociate. We don't even know it.  And so just becoming more aware of these patterns, despite all the work I've done with myself, it wasn't until I started working with CPTSD and the nervous system that I realized, Oh, I've been in a flight state most of my life.

That's what that is. Like even the diagnosis for the ADHD, like for those of us that are, uh, You know, more  neurodivergent or have some different brain functions like there's a nervous system component to all that as well.  And so being able to become aware of what's happening is I would say the first step. 

Part of that too is understanding that we're taking in information all the time. So that's really, really helpful to know, like the brain works in loops, like humans are pretty predictable and we're creatures of pattern. So we take in inputs, environmental, cognitive, sensory, the brain interprets those inputs and then it gives us outputs. 

It's going to give us performance outputs, which is like,  Put your shoe on, brush your teeth, or like a higher performance, um, or it's going to give us protection, which is a contraction, a symptom, a maladaptive behavior, right? So that's always happening all the time.  And so the idea is that we can start to like look at our inputs  and start to recognize this process that's playing out. 

Wow. Yeah. So good. Something that I've read about as well. Yeah. And I read that about you too, how you were in flight and like, you looked back at the patterns in your life and you were like, Oh my gosh, like I've been in flight. I just like as my go to and that was so cool. Interesting to me, but one thing also, and I, I think you mentioned this somewhere in your social media, just like decision fatigue.

It's like, I'm starting to really notice it too. So, because if we're on our phones for too long, you know, Even if we're just scrolling on social media, most of social media or a lot of it is a call to action. And so then we have to make a decision like that's literally making a decision. Oh, I'm going to scroll by it or I'm gonna like tap on it and read more about it.

And basically like we have decision fatigue every day because we're trying to make too many decisions.  Yeah. One hundred percent. I would even say like just the amount of information we're taking in alone, like just reading something, you're telling the brain to do something  right. So like I moved from like a smaller coastal area at the end of 2022 and I'm going to be moving back there in the near future, but I'm in a city, more urban environment.

And I noticed what a difference, like the amount of information I'm taking in through billboards, through signs, you're just taking in more information, therefore your brain has more to do.  And then if you give yourself constant decision, like you need to start to streamline some aspects of your life so that you can have less.

Yeah,  like I just found that I was a part of like too many little groups and little chat groups and stuff. And I got myself off of them because it's just like too many things popping up, popping up, popping up.  Yeah. And even like, we often overly rely on our ocular systems or eyes to take in information.

A lot of us have deficits in like balance or in our vestibular, which is like our inner ear, our breathing, we're like over breathers or we're asthmatic or we hold our breath. I fall into that category. So we overly rely on our eyes. And I know this cause like in my neuro program, we would do drills, neuro drills, and then we would do the same drills with our eyes closed and we would see, we would test them and see the difference in the stress response.

And as a result of that, like we need to give our eyes a break. And so I will actually take like on really long, busy days, I take like brain breaks and I've started to get my clients on board with this as well, where like you literally set a timer and you go outside and you stare at the sky. And so you're just taking in, you're not taking in the same amount of information and you're using your divergent ocular functions, which is like when you're looking at something really broad versus like convergent, which is where we're looking at a screen, we're taking in a lot of information in a small space, you're upregulating your brain every time you do that.

So you could be looking at puppies and you're still stressing yourself out, right? So that's super like, and, and some of the stuff I just sort of have intuitively figured out this part of why my husband and I moved out to the country outside of Seattle. We live in a very small town. We have trees, we have half an acre. 

And we go outside, we have a huge deck that looks out into our woods. And I mean, I intuitively know, thank God we have a dog too. So the dog has to be walked, but sometimes I just need to go outside. Like even if it's just five minutes and sometimes I'm like, why am I just staring at the sky? Like, I don't know why this helps me, but I'm just like staring at the sky and maybe a couple of trees and it somehow like resets my brain or something.

It does. It puts you, I think when we think of calming ourselves down, we think of doing things intentionally like meditating actually can be very critical of meditation. Um, yeah. Okay. Well, we can beat ourselves up because we're not doing it. Right. Yeah. And also like, if you're someone who, and I was in this, I meditated a lot in my twenties and.

In some ways, you know, everything's a trade off, right? So there's benefits and there's also like costs. But I do think that if you're someone who's really stressed out, forcing yourself to sit still and close your eyes,  like your brain is not necessarily going to calm down when you do that. Like you need to actually have things, external cues and things that you can use that will quite literally send a signal to your brain that you're okay.

And stare, anything that induces a sense of awe. Like, there's a reason that feeling is like such a, there's a relief in that feeling of like, Oh,  and the staring at things that are much bigger than us, like the difference between like staring at a building, a large building where there's lots of movement and stimulation and things to look at versus like staring at some hills,  creating a completely different experience neurologically. 

And so I think there are a lot of things that we do that we just intuitively are like, that  feels really good. I don't know why, but yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I do think taking.  Yeah. Yeah. I want to ask you about meditation though. Cause I mean, people just really, I mean, there's studies like saying, yeah, that changes the brain.

It's so good for you. But if you have a tendency towards anxiety, sometimes like what you said, like meditation can sometimes make it. Worse or something, or like, it's not as beneficial. I have a question around whether, and you may or may not have any experience in this, but I actually do a like anxiety relief meditation.

And it's like a guided meditation. And it goes back like 15 years. I've actually have a CD of it and it's a medical doctor who studied anxiety and he goes through like his three guided image meditations  and I find them to be extremely effective for anxiety, but I guess they're not like a traditional meditation in that sense that they're guided. 

What are your thoughts around that? Yeah. I mean, again, it's not black and white. So I definitely think there is a lot of data that shows us that meditation can benefit a lot of people's brains. And I think that what you're talking about too, there is a difference between having a guided meditation versus sitting in silence. 

And so there's something called interoceptive stress. That stress is coming from inside. So that's coming from your thoughts, but it's also coming from actual, like,  ways that we hold in our bodies that we're not even aware of. So you could have a digestive issue and that's a stress to the brain. You could be holding your breath or not breathing properly and that's a stress to the brain.

And so a lot of people have interoceptive stress. They could be on like a tropical island, like in a really beautiful, and they could still be stressed out. And so I do think, like, I stopped. After like years of pushing myself and long retreats, I started meditating with my eyes open. No one told me to do that.

I just intuitively knew that that was helpful. And I noticed I started sleeping better. Yeah. And so I think again, I think guided meditation, I also have been really, really helped by guided meditations, especially if it's someone that I really like a voice that I really trust. Yeah. So it does have to be a voice that you trust.

And somebody gave me feedback one time about this particular. One that I use and they were like, Oh, I could never use that because I don't trust men. And it's a man's voice. And I thought, Oh, wow, that's a valid point. Like, but for me, my father, who's 90, but he's an end in excellent health. He was an amazing parent and has always been an amazing father figure.

So for me, that's very comforting. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And I have the same thing. I actually look, I was raised by a single father and I like crave male authority. Like I love male structure. Like I respond really well to actually have better experiences with male leadership than female leadership. So I also didn't have a problem with that.

But again, it goes to the external cue. Like you are using an external cue to help you structure your internal experience.  And that can be an immense source of relief for someone who is struggling internally.  And that's just a big concept. The external cue is a big concept that I use a lot. Love it. Oh my gosh.

So Kimber, you have an Instagram post that I absolutely adore that I really, really want to talk to you about. And it's called the health effects of loneliness and why relationships may be more important than diet. Because in our previous episode, part one, which you guys need to go back and listen to if you haven't.

We talk in depth about nutrition and diet. Okay. And she brings in some really important angles that I have never heard before. And I think they are so freaking good. So go back and do that. But I want to read this to you guys because, and then I want to discuss it because I feel like it's so freaking important.

Here's what she writes. After having worked and consulted with hundreds of women at this point, I've had the chance to recognize patterns and common threads that run through all of the struggles of these unique women's lives. And one of these patterns is the fact that many women who struggle with their health Are also very lonely, many of them aren't even fully aware of it until we start to look at their social lives or lack thereof for many of us, various degrees of loneliness, isolation and connection deficits are so normal and familiar to us that it is.

It's the water that we swim in. Since we live in a culture that often reinforces loneliness and isolation through modern technology, nuclear family structures, and an emphasis on rugged individuality, I love that term by the way, and I feel like we Americans do have that, and I have too much of it too. I have way too much rugged individuality.

Me too. Okay, I digress. Okay, let me say that again. And since we live in a culture that often reinforces loneliness and isolation through modern technology, nuclear family structures, and emphasis on rugged individuality, it may be much harder to unpack our relationship to other humans than it is to unpack our relationship to food.

So. We diet, restrict, exercise, take supplements, work on a bedtime routine, and seek to have a healthier relationship with the protector parts that exist solely to worry about our health.  Those protector parts often get louder in response to our connection deficits and loneliness. This is a pattern I see.

Since we're not designed by nature to go it alone, preparing and eating all our meals alone, rarely getting touched, receiving limited emotional depth from others, our brain will create the narrative that something is wrong with us, with our health, and with our life. And suddenly, we have these loud, overbearing voices telling us 

I'm not saying that our struggles and symptoms will vanish if we're in relationships or that our illnesses are only the result of loneliness. What I'm saying is that healing and regulation cannot be sustained without regular number one, human connection, number two, touch. Number three, physical intimacy, number four, emotional support, number five, play, and number six, creative collaboration.

And we may need to take these things more seriously than we take our diets, especially if we have. C PTSD, which is complex PTSD, and which we discussed a lot more in the previous episode.  This is what I work on with my private clients. I'm here to support any woman who feels she's ready to create the connection she needs and deserves.

We're not meant to be lonely all the time and the body needs others to heal. Oh, M G Timber.  I had to like, just read that. I had to freaking read that.  I mean, wow.  So good.  Yeah, it's a difficult topic too, because as I mentioned in the post, it's a lot harder for us to develop relationships with other people, which are a lot less controllable.

They trigger a lot more than food. And you know, a lot of the stuff that I work on and then I write about are things that I've struggled with, themes that I also have struggled with. So I know what it's like to  isolate yourself or to feel too independent. And it's been a big component to of like learning and working with CPTSD because again, it's a relational issue.

Like it's trauma patterns that are relational, that are attachment oriented, and they tend to come up in relationship. You may not even know you have these things if you avoid relationship.  Or you have very difficult relationships.  And I think  for a lot of people, a lot of women, especially if you have health issues or sensitivities,  adding relationships to the pot, just, it can feel like too much.

We live in a culture where a lot of us just, we have default relationships. I think this is not just this culture. I think this is in general. Like we have friends that we develop when we're younger and friendships are easier to develop.  Working with children, you take them to the park and next thing you know, they have like five best friends.

They just met. I love it. Yes. And it's so sweet. Like I do think for me, like working with children for the first, from starting at 17 until has been so helpful all through my twenties and early thirties because they have so much agency and  They have so much confidence in their ability to connect and if they don't, it's obvious and it's usually linked to something a little bit more obvious.

And so  you see them  feel confident asking someone to hang out with them and be their friend and play with them. And then as we get older, we lose that skill that and there's less opportunities for it. So you have a lot of women in their even twenties, as early as twenties, but thirties and forties who don't really have  healthy relationships. 

Or they don't feel connected to the people that they do have in their lives.  And so I do think, like, addressing loneliness, first, just understanding that that's a component that humans, number one, need is to connect. Like, as soon as we come out of the womb, we need to feel connected, like, we need to know that we're meant to be here, that we're accepted, that we came into an environment that's not hostile towards us. 

And so that can be disrupted. It's a very early developmental need and there's lots of ways to disrupt that. And so you can go about the world kind of just not really sure if you're meant to be here and then that ability to connect can become harder.  And so first you'd have to, I think one of the number one things is just acknowledging that that's there,  that if you have any level of CPTSD  or stress patterns that drive you towards contraction.

You may not be getting the levels of connection that you need, and that can actually be driving your stress patterns and making your health issues a lot worse. Wow.  So good.  And I mean, it's hard to make those connections, but on the one hand, but on the other hand, like it's such a fixable solution. It's such a powerful, fixable solution. 

It is. And I also have a questionnaire that I have new clients fill out an intake form and one of them, a few of the questions are about relationships. Like, how do you feel about your current sense of community, sense of connection, relationships in general? And I have a lot of like, and there's a scoring like zeros.

It's horrible. Ten is great. Most of my clients score five or less.  A lot of them do. And if you're someone who's in your 30s or 40s, that's not, the action steps to change that, um, can be difficult.  And it's one thing to acknowledge that's there, that's real. It's another thing to say, like, how do I meet people at this point in my life? 

And I think, like, I noticed two things with myself that have been, like, really obvious and kind of teachers for me throughout my life. One of them is that I don't have a difficulty in connecting. Like, I've done a lot of work on the different stages of development that can be disrupted. And like, which ones do I struggle with and which ones seem to be pretty strong and disconnection is not one for me.

So I actually have the capacity to connect very deeply, fairly easily with people.  That being said, I also have the capacity to isolate myself and be too autonomous,  which those things seem like they contradict each other, but they don't. Like one is more behavioral. Like, the autonomy one is more behavioral, but a lot of my clients don't have the connection piece down.

Like, they genuinely don't know how to connect deeply with people. And they don't even know where to go to find that. And so the step number one is  connecting with themselves.  Wow. Yeah. Because if you don't know what you need or you want out of human interaction or human connection or you don't feel confident or you don't feel in touch with your personal agency, to where you could even consider that.

a human right, then how are you going to go about getting that from other people?  And so what I find is that a lot of times if we don't feel it's a human right, or we don't feel connected to our agency around developing connection, or we don't know what feels good,  we don't feel safe with people, then we tend to create relationships that are either very superficial or abusive  or just misattuned.

Like we're not getting our needs met through them, we don't feel heard.  We're not being touched.  And so that's a real thing is like actually looking at in NARM, which stands for neuroaffective relational model. It's the form of therapy that I've been trained in for working with CPTSD. We go through  what we call the five adaptive survival strategies, which is like the five developmental. 

needs that we have throughout our early life, that if we don't have those met, well, we adapt to them  to survive. We set kind of sever ourselves from them. We adapt to not having them and create almost like  coping mechanisms around not having them. So the first one's connection. The second one's attunement.

Third one's trust. The fourth one's autonomy. And the last one is love and sexuality. So feeling like we have a right to be loved And as we develop ourselves sexually, that's something that's safe for us to do.  And I think a lot of people have that early like connection, especially the higher a score you have. 

The more that early connection one can be disrupted to where you have a hard time making connection with people.  Right. Again, you go down the line, you can have all of those. So like attunement, like, do you feel like you can attune to your own needs? Do you know when you're tired? Do you know when you're hungry?

Do you know when you need to be touched? Yeah.  And then the trust one is the one I, I would say that I have had the biggest struggle with because I can connect with people, but trusting that they're not going to disappear. Like if you had people disappear a lot in your life or you've had a lot of loss, if you have abandonment trauma, then that can be a difficult one. 

But yeah, so you can have issues in any of these and it's important. I think it's important not to diagnose. This isn't about like diagnosing or pathologizing. It's about understanding patterns.  And  just like we would understand, again, as a nutritionist, I teach clients to understand their blood sugar, like, when do you feel like your blood sugar is low?

Like, how often do you need to eat? How much do you need? Same thing applies to all of these, like, are you connected? Are you attuned to, are you trusting? Are you able to do things on your own because you feel like you have agency over your own autonomy?  And do you feel like you're worthy of love and relation, sexual connection? 

So using those as kind of a framework, we can start to look at what are your relationships like?  And do you have these things met? And if they're not met, is it because you've adapted to not having them met and you don't even know  how to have those things?  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So getting back to that, you touched on that.

You yourself feel like you were able to develop good connection skills. Can you give us  a little bit, but a lot of people like they're literally stuck at that very first thing. Like they don't even know how to connect. Can you give us. A few tips on that. Like if a listener out there is saying, Oh my gosh, that's me.

Like, I don't know how to connect with people. What advice would you give that person?  Yeah, that's a great question.  I think first of all, understanding that you, you desire connection, like it's there and we are constantly moving in between states of connection and disconnection.  So when we're working with trauma, especially like somatic trauma, that's kind of a little bit slower and deeper, we're observing like, when do we go into disconnection?

When do we come back into connection? What do we go? So what is it that pulls you out? And what is it that brings you back? So just starting to observe that. And so if you have difficulty with connection and you know that, then safety is going to be really important for you. So there are certain environments and certain circumstances, certain kinds of relationships that are just not going to be  great connectors for you. 

Like I've learned. And this is, again, a lot of this was unconscious and then I'm like, Oh, that's what that is. I've learned that like, I like to go really deep that, you know, there's a place for group events and for parties and gather, but I really love one on one time cause I can like drop in deep with someone and that's how I feel connected to people. 

And so knowing that, knowing environments that are going to be good for you, that are going to support you and feeling more connected. I don't drink and I'm not really interested in drinking culture. I don't go to a, a party where everyone's drinking with a high expectation of deep connection.  Right. That doesn't mean that I, that that's good.

Yeah. And that doesn't mean I can't connect with people there. It just means I give myself permission to not feel like I have to, like if I wanna leave early, yeah. And I've been doing this for years, I'll just leave early because it's just not a place that I feel like it's really  energetically worth it for me.

Well, yeah, because with the alcohol, then we're not going to go to a place of deep connection really, right? Like, I mean, it usually, you know, alcohol parties are, they're fun, but they're not necessarily where we're going to form deep connections.  Yeah. And if you want to be like attuned. To each other and like in rapport with someone then you as a non drinker.

I used to drink a lot events just to be in attunement and rapport with people and then it would be fun in the moment and then it wouldn't feel good after. And so since then, I've just noticed that that's just not something that I want.  So I think it's important to start to, to know, Oh, I want connection.

It's not that I don't want connection. It might seem like I don't want connection. I want connection. I just don't know how to get it. What do I need? Like what's standing in the way? What's keeping me from the thing that my, my heart needs, wants. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. And then you can start to curate that.

Like you can start to think about like, well, where might I find certain people or what it might be. What things do I like to do, for example, like, or am I comfortable and happy, like in my case, like I love hiking. I'm widowed and remarried and my late husband, we met hiking. We met on Mount Rainier and doing something you love and you connect.

You just have that connection with you're doing something you love and you're with somebody else and they also love the same thing. You can really form a deep connection pretty quick. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And also giving yourself permission to not feel connected. Like, I think that one thing that I've noticed with some of my clients that have a really hard time with connection is that they feel like a shame around the fact that they don't feel connected.

Okay. Like there's something that there, there's some secret thing that they should be doing and then they would feel more connected and then they will force themselves to go to social events being like, I just need to socialize more because that's healthy for me. My therapist told me or Yeah. Yeah.

Internet told me and I think like forcing yourself isn't the answer understanding you want connection. It's not happening. Let's explore why it's not happening as opposed to forcing yourself  thinking that if I fake it till I make it, then eventually it'll work. But I think that again, if you've got a lot of internal barriers. 

To feeling connected to other people, there's a reason for that. Yeah. And you can't just force yourself out of that. Yeah. Yeah. You want to try to figure out the why behind it too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was something I was gonna  mention when you were talking about hiking, but I can't remember. I can't remember what it was.

Yeah. Came up and then it left. Oh, it might've had to do with, well, I don't know, you have an Instagram video where it shows your feet and you're walking in the woods or something. That was kind of, kind of a cool one. Yeah. Maybe it was. Yeah. I, I do think that like there's. Experiences like I also love being in nature.

It's a big thing for me. I naturally regulate. I naturally feel like more in touch with what we call in parts work, my true self, less defensive, less contracted. And so I think that choosing to connect with people, choosing to be with people or spend time with people in, in environments and things where you.

You're more likely to feel connected in general. So it takes the pressure off of just the two people and it makes it more about the general experience you're able to have together  can make a difference.  I just had an idea like being like, that's how I met my late husband was through a hiking club. So it's like you, yeah, like you're in nature, everybody. 

Is kind of putting their defenses down, like people are more relaxed than they normally are. Conversations flow way more easily. Like, I think the endorphins are kicking in because you're climbing like you're getting your heart rate up. You're, you're hiking up a hill or whatever, like interesting. You're also moving your body.

So that's another one. Like I have found that because I have a hard time with dating and dates and I tend to do walks. Okay. Like hikes or walks. I love that because I don't drink and then you're sitting still, and I find this someone who has a history of flight mode that if I'm nervous about something, I need to be able to have the capacity to move through it.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's also something about trauma too. Like we generally will feel safer if we feel like, again, in touch with our agency in a situation. And a lot of times movement, even gentle movement, like walking can remind us like there's something that the brain, oh, I'm able to move, therefore I'm okay.

Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm.  . I love that so much. Oh my gosh. Kimber. This whole conversation, I mean, these two conversations, I mean, I, I cannot believe how much I've learned and what a gift you are to the world. You, you are freaking incredible girlfriend. I mean, wow. And I feel like so many of the things that you address and there are things that you are, you're like, I've experienced this.

I did this. This is, and like, it's so relatable. I think we're all going through many. If not most of the things that you brought up today, and then you brought in the tools to help us start down the right path and how interconnected it all is. And it's incredible this work that you're doing. So that being said, tell us more about how we can find you, how we can connect with you.

I even want to go further. I don't normally do this, but. Yeah, like tell us a little bit about your programs. Like maybe you have some group programs. I really hope you have some programs that are financially accessible for people who maybe don't have the best financial resources because I think the world needs you, Kimber.

Hmm. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Unfortunately, at the moment, I don't actually have a lot as far as like programs. I have a women's health course that I built in 2020, and that's like self paced. That is actually a low investment. I did launch that before I did a lot of somatic stuff. So that doesn't really cover.

much nervous system stuff. It goes through a lot of metabolic stuff. Okay. And it definitely does talk about stress.  I think that I haven't been actively promoting that because I've shifted quite a bit in my focus to work more with the nervous system and do more somatics and CPTSD work. So I'm actually right now I've been on somewhat of a hiatus with my business, like slowed down quite a bit, trying to figure out how to promote the stuff that I'm talking about right now online.

Yeah. And so I do work one on one with women, so that's definitely, that's not an option for everyone. Obviously, not everyone can afford that, but I'm starting to kind of think about ways that I can work more with a larger amount of women for less money and integrate a lot of the stuff that I have. I don't currently, and that's definitely in the future, like for sure.

Yeah, we'll be offering that. Yeah, for sure. I'm not there yet.  So I would say like, just for anyone listening that's interested, I would say, like, just bear with me because I am in this process of kind of like, most of my business was honestly, like, I was promoting my work organically on Instagram and then through podcasts.

Like I scaled my business Very quickly just doing that  and then in the beginning of 2023, I just kind of crashed. I think I worked way too hard working one on one with clients running my health course and I learned a lot about my own nervous system's capacity running a full time business. And so, yeah, so, so I think like all of the somatic stuff was really important for me to kind of integrate more of that to be like, Oh, I have a limit to how much I can work.

I love this. I love how transparent you are about all this. Yeah. I mean, running a business, especially if you are, if you genuinely want to help people and that's, you're a coach or something, it's a crash course in your own shit, like all of your patterns will come up. And so really easy to burn out to really easy to burn out.

Yeah. Really easy to burn out. You have to learn how to, you basically have to relearn how to pace yourself. And step back sometimes and just say  done is better than perfect, which is sometimes what I have to say. Like I, I can go on and on and on, but I've got to let it go and just. Get it done.  Yeah. Yeah, totally.

And I think being a woman too, like to go back to the differences between men and women, like I do think that a lot of the business advice that I got early on in my business and just like people I was following, it was very masculine in being able to build a business that actually caters to the feminine, that takes care of the feminine, that allows you to be soft and move slow and to have all of the, like the feeling content, the feeling tone, the felt sense of your life actually  honored and respected. 

As it's something that we're not taught. We have to learn that or actively choose to seek it.  And so, yeah, so right now I'm doing one on ones. I'm actually just started a podcast as well. And that's called nourishing our sanity, women's health through the lens of CPTSD physiology and culture. Checking that out.

I just launched it. I just launched it for you. Yeah, and I think that I'm also going to be rebranding potentially and labeling my business as well, like nourishing our sanity to help women kind of come back to themselves and find tools, whether that's relational, nutritional, self regulatory, that help them feel more sane, more grounded.

More connected to their true self because we have so many things in this culture, including the wellness space that can leave us feeling very disorganized. Oh, yeah. And helpless.  Yeah. Like even just the whole thing where I think a lot of us in an attempt to regulate ourself, we're feeling dysregulated, right?

And then. One of the easiest ways to try to fix that is to just be like, Oh, let me try this nutritional supplement. Let me try it. Like there's like a million supplements out there, different probiotics that make your mood better. And like, it's like this quick fix where you could literally just spend your entire paycheck on supplements thinking that that'll help me self regulate. 

Totally. Yeah. Also just taking in information.  Is not the same thing as actually integrating it.  And so we do live in a culture that's like blasting us with information. This is another reason I pulled back and I took like some serious time away from social media and short form communication in general, like pretty much only talking on podcasts because  I felt like every time I would go on, my nervous system would get upregulated.

And suddenly there's like five new things I need to be doing  in order to be healthy. And this is someone who's like, Works on all these things herself has a lot plethora of her own information And I still was feeling that when I was going on  and then I was noticing that my clients were coming to me and they Were like I saw this Instagram post.

What do you think of this? What do you think this? and I was like, that's how  for a lot of us that's the go to for dealing with our  Our stress and feeling again, it goes back to working with trauma. We look at helplessness, like a lot of us are in states, various states of helplessness. How can we reconnect to our own agency  and doing more stuff?

Buying more stuff is often not the answer. Not those things can be helpful. Yeah, those that can be helpful. Yeah, they can be helpful. Yeah.  But like there's a lot more deeper work that needs to be done. So Yeah. So my, as I said before, like how one-on-one is so important for me. I have been told for quite some time I need to have a group course, not just because it's more affordable for women, but also you're getting constant messages that you need to scale  as a coach.

But I have found as of right now that with the somatic stuff that I do,  I really shine in the one-on-one. And so that's.  Where I've been placing my focus. There you go. You have to listen to your heart and like, same thing with podcasting. People were telling me, Oh, you need to do solo episodes. And it didn't feel right.

And I was like, it's not really me. So for a year and a half, I never did solo episodes. I think I've done two. So sometimes now I am starting to do a few here and there, but. We're not all cookie cutters. We don't have to do things the same way. I mean, I just, I love dialogues because like I learned so much.

I can't believe how much I've learned from you, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm really happy that I was able to be here and yeah, we were able to talk through all this stuff. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Kimber, for being willing to take time out of your very busy life and come on my podcast and spend this significant amount of time with me.

I'm super excited to watch your journey and see you grow. And so we'll have all of those links, you guys for Kimber's website and her Instagram and whatever else she wants us to put in there. We will have it in the show notes for you guys, because. I'm so, I don't know about you guys, but I'm super excited to see where Kimber's going.

She's on a great path already. And I think, I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg.  Thank you so much. Yeah. And I really love to hear from women who listen to me on a podcast. Like if there's something that I say  that shifts something for you or that touches you, then resonates, please let me know.

Yeah. It's so rewarding to hear from people.  Thank you so much, Kimber. Thank you so much.  Thank you for joining us on the She's Brave podcast with Christina Driscoll. I hope today's episode inspired you to embrace your courage and step boldly into your own journey. If you enjoy the show, we'd love to hear from you.

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