TA Ep. 164 Kymber Maulden - Understanding CPTSD: Patterns, Symptoms, and Pathways to Healing

Leigh Ann: Well, Kymber, welcome to Kymber, Kymber podcast. The community is super, super excited to have you on the show today.

Kymber Maulden: I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for, um, having me on.

Leigh Ann: We were talking, there's so much crossover between, I think the work we're doing, but I also love being able to have guests on who are covering certain areas of healing that I'm not necessarily covering. There's just so many areas. I don't think any one of us could do it all. Um, so there's so many things I'm excited to get into, but I always, always, always love to just start with kind of your origin story and what got you, you know, a little bit ultimately to where you are today.

Um, and I always was

Leigh Ann: I'm already so

Kymber Maulden: yeah, there's a lot of, like, overlap, you know, from doing that work into doing, especially now that, like, the somatics and attachment trauma piece. Um, and then, yeah, I have been interested in health for years. I think long before I actually started a business, I was already, like, studying, had certifications and a science degree.

But it wasn't until like I would say like my 33 ish when I started my business officially and for the first few years. I just worked with anyone which was of course helpful just to get experience, but

Leigh Ann: Mm-Hmm?

And I feel like that really kind of exploded things for me. Um, especially when it comes to like the bioenergetic space, because I had discovered that space unofficially. I don't think it was even called that in like 2011, 2012. And so I was introduced to Ray P. I was, this is like, I was working with some practitioners that introduced me to him and I think it was like, Well over my head at the time, just based on my understanding of health, but felt intuitively right and so kind of stuck with me.

Um, and then it wasn't until I started working with women's health again, after years of getting like, kind of, you know, sucked into, uh, diet fads and health fads, even as like a trained practitioner, it's really easy on the, in the, In the online space to kind of get pulled into like very specific ideological or biased frameworks of health, um, or, you know, like frameworks that are not really geared toward stress.

And then, um, had a few really successful years in my business, like expanded my business and scaled very, very quickly, uh, completely organically. And then had, at the end of 2022, I fell in love and had like a trauma relationship with someone, very traumatic experience, uh, that I'm still working through.

And then I moved. So those two things, I think, um, pushed me into this kind of new state of awareness around my own patterns,

Leigh Ann: Yeah.

And I wasn't, familiar enough with my nervous system to be able to work with it in the ways, the capacity that I wanted to work with it, both with myself and then with clients. And so what I was seeing from all working with clients and doing a lot of like hair tissue, mineral, uh, tests, and is that a lot of my clients were really burnt out.

They were, you know, very dysregulated, kind of stuck in fight or flight state, uh, stuck in that sympathetic dominant state, or even just like downregulated and kind of shut down. And so I think in the last few years is when it really started to, um, my work started to take on like a much deeper, uh, I don't know what the word, but yeah, so, so I went through a bunch of trainings.

2023 was pretty intense because I went through something called NARM, which is Neuro Affective Relational Model for working with CPTSD.

Leigh Ann: Oh,

Leigh Ann: Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's so fascinating. First of all, all the, um, early childhood development things that is so fascinating to me because I actually work with, it has come up on a fair amount of people who had birth trauma, literally when they were born, it was a very traumatic experience in one way or another.

That's super, super fascinating. I think a place I'd really love to start though, is defining CPTSD. Thank you. Maybe this is just me. I do feel like I'm seeing this term come up so much more. And maybe that's just me. Maybe it's always been around, but it does feel like on socials, kind of in the general ethers, I'm seeing it a lot more.

Does that, is that kind of what you're feeling too?

Kymber Maulden: Yeah, I mean, I, I also think that I'm um, experiencing that phenomenon of like, you start studying something or working with something, and then you start following people who are also doing that work, and then suddenly you're like flooded with it. And I like, have to remind myself that most people don't know, you know, what it

Leigh Ann: Right, right.

And so, uh, because of that, it's harder to recognize, it's relational, it's attachment based, those kinds of patterns can be very hard, um, to recognize because they're, they touch so many different aspects of our experience. And so the difference, so PTSD, which is what, like, You know, I've been working actively with my own trauma for years, and in my early 20s I started doing somatic experiencing with a practitioner.

Leigh Ann: hmm.

Kymber Maulden: are, I think, useful for everyone. And I took those with me and have, like, used those throughout my life. But PTSD is survival based. So it tends to be related to a situation, uh, an event. Maybe a series of events, but usually it's like pretty specific that you can kind of pinpoint. And it's, uh, something, an experience that we have where our physical safety is threatened.

And we're not able to really, uh, respond proactively in the moment. And so we end up storing that experience in some way. We have a shock that's Ends up getting stored in our bodies. And then it tends to distort our daily experience of stress. It tends to leave us in kind of like a more up really regulated state all the time.

And. Um, just had some like minor bruises that I walked away with. But what I did notice for like a year after is that crossing the street as a pedestrian would leave me with a racing heart. Um, any cars that would kind of roll towards me, like I think a lot of people just naturally do when they're, when they're looking to make a turn, um, or like maybe stopping at a stop sign, a stop sign, and then going to go once I've passed them would immediately make me angry.

I would feel like the sense of like, my boundaries are being pushed. Um, so that's kind of like a, a more subtle, uh, experience of PTSD. It can happen with a, a car accident, an assault, um, any kind of just like big stressful life threatening event, or being in a war zone, for instance. Um, see PTSD. is developmental.

Leigh Ann: Yeah, I know,

Kymber Maulden: yeah, it's totally crazy.

Leigh Ann: How we've managed to be the dominant species

Kymber Maulden: it's wild. Yeah. And like, even though there's, there's plenty of animals that come out and they're not, you know, they need some support, but it's usually pretty quick that they can kind of get onto their feet and start taking care of themselves.

Whereas humans. Are absolutely 100 percent reliant on our environment for years for everything. So there's, that leaves a lot of room for disruptions. Um, and so in, in the training, the NARM training that I did, we talk a lot about environmental failure, which is like, we have these very specific core needs for development, for developing a sense of self, for feeling safe or feeling valued and connected.

So, it's way, it makes way more sense for our survival and our sense of self to make external, um, environmental failures about us versus it being about our care providers or our environment. Right. So,

Leigh Ann: Yeah. And I also think, well, it makes sense because we can control us. I think probably like at a deep subconscious level, that can sometimes be why we do self blame is if it's them, I can't control them, but if it's my fault.

Um, and so the, what we call in NARM, the five adaptive survival strategies are just like based on core needs that we have throughout developmental years that are, if they're not met, then we have these survival strategies that we, we develop. The first one is connection versus disconnection, um, attunement versus misattunement, trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus, um, I don't know what the opposite of autonomy would be.

Non autonomy or something. And then love and sex, love and sexuality. Um, so any of those, and I would say like for people who have birth trauma, um, connection, my theory, I don't, haven't, you know, seen any data, data on this, but my theory is that the connection one is going to be one of the bigger ones, like the more prolific ones for people because it's, um, it's more subtle, right?

Leigh Ann: Physical touch just

Kymber Maulden: touch, yeah, and just being around adults that also know they belong here.

that aren't disassociating.

Leigh Ann: Yeah,

Kymber Maulden: can miss if they're going through something, if they're stressed or you know, or they're just, they have a really hard time with intimacy themselves. Mm-Hmm.

Leigh Ann: yeah, the connection piece is just bringing it back to the developmental trauma specifically is something I see so often and, and it's not to demonize the parents. I think so often, sometimes things, things happen in birth that the mother herself doesn't have control over. And then the, you know, the system takes over and they have to do whatever they need to do.

They were basically in their little hospital beds in a whole different room and a whole different part of the hospital. They were brought to her like twice a day. For feedings. And then they were sent back to their little isolated beds and we go, let's just think about what your little primal subconscious brain, the first thing it learned in these moments is I never know when my next point of connection, when my next literal meal is coming and wow, like just kind of sitting with how profound that is.

Um, but if you have environmental failure, then you kind of, you disassociate, you shut down. Um, and so development doesn't always happen. So I think CPTSD can also show up as like just various stages of rest of development or like just areas where you're still little, like where there's parts of you that are still five or still eight.

And think because it's so common. Um, viewing health through this lens of just being like, Oh, I have some of this, that's what this is now. Let me stay curious and explore this. Um, is crucial for, I think, you know, for, for healing all kinds of different things, like healing physiological stuff, healing relational stuff.

Um, But I also think that for some people with CPTSD, especially with higher A scores, which is like the adverse child experience, um, scoring, the higher the A score, the more relational stress you often have. So, making sure that you're, you feel connected, making sure that you feel attuned to, making macros are correct.

Arson.

In fact, I have a friend slash client who, um, is experiencing MS. She's kind of a year into an MS diagnosis. She went out to, I can't remember in what state, but this big healing facility, she's going to be there for a week. And, and they basically said like, we need to, we need to get your stress in check before you start all of this stuff, because it is not going to be as impactful if you don't do that first.

And I was like, thank God people are saying this. And obviously people, practitioners like us in the field are seeing that connection. I dream of a day where it's like. Every doctor's office is prioritizing the mental emotional side just as important, you know, just as much where it's like we, we cannot address one without the

It's like how we take in information from our eyes, our ears, our sense of gravity, touch, um, our, our lungs, and we can have deficits in any of these areas. In fact, most people do have some level of deficit where the information, the loop, the, you know, input, output is disrupted or delayed. Information's not clear.

You're not breathing properly, you're not getting touched, you're not getting sunshine. So like, kind of basic things that are telling the brain that you're less safe than you are. Like, consciously you might think, I'm good. Um, and so there's something like called anteroceptive stress, which is like stress that's coming from inside.

Um, so I, so I find it helpful to kind of help clients reconnect to what stress even is. Um, Um, because it's such a vague and ubiquitous concept in this culture that telling someone to lower their stress can feel really condescending if they've, like, done so many things to try to lower their stress.

Leigh Ann: Yeah, and I just, I literally, I, I work with a lot of cancer patients. It's like my joy. It lights me up so much, but on occasion I'll have them come in and their doctors are telling them, yes, you're stressed. You need to lower your stress. And they're like, I don't eat. What does that even mean? Like practically in my day to day, what does that mean?

Cause I do this work on myself, of course, is the breathing. I still have like very, very shallow, slow breathing. That is like, Oh my God, I really, you know, at some point I really, really need to prioritize some kind of intention around changing that, those breathing patterns much, much deeper. But I know it's like that. It doesn't matter how I consciously feel, if I am perpetually breathing in this very shallow, slow way, it is communicating something to my inner

Kymber Maulden: hmm. Yeah. Uh, can I, can I mention something about the breathing? Mm hmm. Like a little tip, because there's, there's, I think there's a lot of people that have breathing problems. Um, I grew up asthmatic. I hold my breath a lot. Like, I, you know, it's, if I get nervous, um, I tend to forget to breathe or don't breathe properly.

So, um, I really love bad breathing and I've noticed that people in the bioenergetic space do it sometimes and promote it. And so I, I remember like years ago, When I was first introduced to Ray Peat, him talking about it, and me not really understanding why. And then once I started studying neuro, you know, neuro, um, intelligence more, I realized, oh, it's because we need that, you know, we need the carrier molecule, we need the carbon dioxide to get the oxygen into our cell.

Um, so that's one thing is because you are actually taking that responsibility away from you and putting it into an external thing where you actually get to see that bag fill up with air. The bag's doing the work. And you don't have to worry about slowing that down. The bag does it for you. If you have a small bag, it can only take in so much air.

And so you're not going to be relying on your own system to have to remember, especially if you're having an anxiety attack or you're just having a stressful busy day. Um, so that's something that I've just noticed my clients have taken to who have a lot of anxiety because it puts the responsibility on something external.

Leigh Ann: Is that something that, like, if someone wanted to YouTube a demo on that, they'd be able to find that?

Kymber Maulden: Honestly, I've never looked on YouTube. So I'm assuming, I mean,

Leigh Ann: I would check. 'cause I already can tell like, if, if it was me, I'm already like, okay. So does the bag go over the mouth and the nose? Is it just the mouth? How, how long do you do

Um, eight to 10 breaths, or when you start to feel air hunger, if you're someone who has a lot of, uh, respiratory deficits, then this might feel really uncomfortable at first. For me, it was very uncomfortable. Cause you're covering. It's kind of like when you're asthmatic, you over breathe, because you constantly feel like you're gasping for breath, so you think you need to take these like deeper, bigger breaths.

Um, but actually, you need to slow down your breathing. Because when you're over breathing, you're, again, you're like, it's like slow grade cellular asphyxiation, you're telling the brain something's wrong. Um, so it can feel a little strange at first, your air hunger might come really quickly, but now I crave it.

So taking that responsibility and putting it into something external does something to your brain, actually lowers that sense of threat that your brain's dealing with.

Leigh Ann: Yeah. Oh, I love that. I'm definitely gonna look into that more. Yeah. What, what's interesting on that thread though, is I. I don't think I ever thought I had breathing issues. I've never would have even come up. And then, you know, as I start to learn more and more and more and you know, just deeper into this world realizing, huh, really don't breathe that often.

Kymber Maulden: hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think, um, really quickly, I just want to say that, like, the ace scoring is helpful. It's, I think it lacks nuance, so that's my criticism, but that's not really a subtle sign, obviously, that's something you can look up. Are you familiar with that?

Leigh Ann: Oh yeah,

Kymber Maulden: Yeah, so that's, that is helpful for people, because, like, I had never, I have an ace score of six, and I had never really looked into that before, so once I understood it, I was like, okay, this actually is a helpful framework because it could just give you an idea of like, okay, if I have this, if I have some ACEs, especially a higher level, then that might come along with some health issues or some relational issues.

Kymber Maulden: you know, what you're asking, but that is, I think that's a great starting point for people. Um, and then as far as like subtle stuff, I would say, look at your attachment patterns. Like that's one way to just kind of like, you know, what are my relationship patterns throughout my life?

Like, have I found myself in a lot of insecure relationships? Have I found myself in a lot of relationships that left me feeling, you know, like I, um, So, PTSD, again, like I had said, it was fear based, it's like survival based. CPTSD is shame based. Because, again, it comes back to all of these bad things that happened to us or unmet needs we had were our fault.

So

Leigh Ann: Mm hmm.

Um, I think the shame piece is really, really crucial because what I've found with myself and many of my clients is that the shame piece is there a lot.

Leigh Ann: Right, like what I hear you saying is, almost, is your default if something goes wrong, whether it's at work, in your relationship, in your friendships, in your home. If something goes wrong and you default to, it's my fault and now I feel shame, that maybe is a really big Q.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah, for sure. And then I also, um, I think, another thing would be like, do you feel like behind in life or do you feel like, um, like things just take longer for you? And in general, and I think a lot of people have this because in this culture, we've got like timeframes that people have to follow. And, and I would even say like, I work with women, I speak to women and my messaging tends to be geared around women.

School took you longer. Um, you know, some maybe basic things might take you longer transitions. are difficult for you. Um, I've found that because having CPTSD does tend to make us more sensitive. And so if you are, if you do have that like higher sensitivity level to, to, to, to life, to stimulus, to, then transitions can be difficult and that can make things that we do transitioning in and out of phases in life.

Like my stress tolerance wasn't super high. Mm

Leigh Ann: Yeah, even as you're saying it, it's interesting because I, I would say, and I, you know, legally, I don't, I can't use labels. I don't work with labels. Um, but Probably almost all of my clients. So many of them could potentially be given this label of CPTSD because the relational component is so often what we're working on.

Impermanent way of

Kymber Maulden: 100%. Yeah. Yeah, but actually as soon as you started talking about the labels, I was like, I had this feeling of um, cause I also am not big on pathologizing. I do feel like once we go down that rabbit hole, we tend to be almost like self fulfilling in the sense that we just create, you know, we get into the cognitive distortions that will create our experience and, and can limit us and contract us.

It's very, it's actually very liberating. Like, I find, like, neuroscience to be some of the most liberating. Um, field, like, field, because you start to understand that they're kind of, that nothing is as solid as we think it is. And if you can approach things with, like, humility and patience and curiosity, you can start to see a lot more possibilities.

And I don't think CPTSD is something that we get locked into. I don't think it's a disease. I think it's a set of patterns that come from developmental years. Similar to, like, You have an overbearing mom and then you end up with certain relational patterns. Is it, you know, that's not like a diagnosis that you have these relational patterns because you had a relationship with your mother.

Um, similar thing, like you're getting, you're becoming familiar with those patterns that you have. It's, um, similar with CPTSD. Yeah.

That's what we're here to workshop. But I love what you're saying too, cause I, it's bringing up this memory Probably a few years ago now, I was driving, driving up the road. And again, like I do this work on myself, this subconscious exploration of what is fueling these patterns I'm stuck in. And I had this thought of, well, who am I once I break or clear or change all these patterns?

Um, but really, I, I really do believe at least. Can we start to ask the question of how much of who I am today is who I am versus who I adapted to be?

Kymber Maulden: Yeah. 100%. I think that that's, that's a great question. And how much of me is an adaptation? Um, humans are so adaptable, especially when they're young. And so just understanding that we actually have a lot more potential to disrupt patterns, change patterns, experience them differently. Um, and I think that's like in, in my neuro program, I, there's a sim, there's a simpleness to, even though humans are incredibly complex, there is a simplicity to this, like, This, um, the fact that we, we're, we, we work in loops, right?

So, I try to help clients start to become aware of like, you're constantly taking in information. Like, and that's like information you're actively seeking through scrolling online or going on Google or reading books, but it's also information you're taking in just by being in the world and taking in signals in your eyes and your ears.

You know, walking around the temperature, what the food you're eating. So when you can start to see yourself in this way, you can realize like, Oh, wow. I have some control, some agency over some of these inputs and the ones I don't feel like I have full control over. What can I do to shift the interpretation of those inputs?

Leigh Ann: Yeah. Yes, because exactly, I say such a similar message, which is, you know, we are always assessing our environment and then making conclusions.

Kymber Maulden: hmm. Mm

Leigh Ann: Making assumptions that we don't even realizing or realize are happening all the time. And I think a lot of my work is bringing their awareness to those beliefs and conclusions that are being made all the time.

And then going, how can we shift some of these if they're not serving us or if they're playing a role in keeping us stuck

Kymber Maulden: Yeah.

Leigh Ann: a little bit. Um, okay. I do really, really want to talk about, I'm pulling up my notes just to make sure I cover some of the big things. I would love to talk about some nervous system stuff, and we've already dipped our toe into this, but something I specifically in this realm, and we'll also see where it takes us is this idea of self regulation, which is fantastic.

We just always need to be like calm, cool, and collected. And so I want to chat about that for a sec.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah, I've been seeing more of that messaging around, like, regulation isn't calm. Like that seems to be like a Like a message that people are getting, or a misunderstanding that like, just to be regulated means you're calm. Um, so the, the concept of regulation in general, it basically means that you can adapt.

Um, then we can get stuck in like a stress state where, where our capacities, our resilience to stress and our capacities to adapt gets disrupted. And I think for a lot of people, um, and I would say definitely like if you're someone who has high stress from childhood or just, you know, some, some A scores, um, Downregulating, like knowing how to self soothe, wasn't something that we may have ever been taught.

And so as a result of that, we may have been in a sympathetic dominant state too often or for too long. So this, this doesn't necessarily just, just mean that we need to learn how to calm down, though. Because for a lot of us, the body will naturally put us, lock us into a, uh, kind of a burnt out or collapsed, frozen state.

So, starting to give your body what it needs to feel safe in a, like a, what we call a minimal effective dose. So, even healthy, positive things need to be Adjusted or introduced in subtle, sustainable ways so that you're not overwhelming your system. I have a long history of flight mode, so moving really fast, kind of not, ADHD kind of behaviors, having a hard time like staying still for too long, and that's, that's been like a micro thing that you would notice in my behavior growing up, but also like in relationships and moving and, um, And so just forcing myself to sit still and meditate, which I did for years in my twenties, actually exasperated [00:39:00] things like insomnia.

And because I was like forcing myself to be still when my brain was convinced that movement was what I needed for safety. So learning how to regulate means, first of all, just under starting to understand just basics of the nervous system, which is that we have this beautiful, um, adaptive, we have a sympathetic system and we have a parasympathetic system, and then we have our baseline.

Which is often somewhere on the spectrum. Um, and we need both. Both are good. Being upregulated is not bad. There's a time and a place to be in a sympathetic dominant state. And, um, the, the point is that we want our baseline to be a little bit more sustainable and a little bit closer to parasympathetic.

So it's put you into like a, you know, uh, kind of a frozen, immobile fatigue state for a reason. You're in a low energy state for a reason to conserve energy. Um, so finding, finding sustainable ways that you can bring your energy back up is going to be important. So again, like for everyone, it's not just calming yourself down.

It's also like being able to create a sense of safety, like lower that threat that the brain is constantly experiencing or interpreting, and then bring yourself up to a place where you can actually experience more highs and lows without. It being so expensive. Does that make sense?

I'm not, you know, from the outside looking in, I don't look stressed. Um, this is my like MO is kind of that collapse, that free state, that just sort of like numbness, disassociation. So I think that's worth noting that anyone listening to this might be going, yeah, no, I, I don't, I don't get the monkey brain.

I don't get the anxious thoughts. I don't get hyperactive. I don't have kind of like the focus issues. Maybe it can be something else, but I also really want to highlight and go a little deep, deeper into that piece that you were talking about, which is sometimes just doing the exact opposite isn't necessarily what's going to soothe us.

And that is something I've had clients kind of come back and report to me is, Hey, I tried. I tried doing this slower breath work and I got even more

Kymber Maulden: hmm.

Leigh Ann: So it's almost kind of like this weird catch 22 where it's like, on the one hand, we want to prove to our brain, actually, if I slow down, I'm still safe.

I'm okay. But then what, what is kind of like your two cents on how you would navigate or in your own experience, you were saying, I was doing that quieting, that meditation to try and counteract this hyperactivity, but it wasn't really working. Where do, where did you go from

And so, this idea that we should be like a rock still, that we should be like a rock and be still, for some people I think that can be really helpful, um, but for a lot of people who have higher, Um, stress inputs, like who have anxiety, who, who are more likely to be in like what we call a pusher pattern and HTMA, which is like, um, low resources, but just still adrenal high adrenal output.

So you touch the wall, you, you know, using your, your senses to allow you to rely on the external world to feel safe can actually lower that sense that you need to move. Um,

Leigh Ann: Hmm. Keep going. Okay, what about the flip side,

Kymber Maulden: yeah,

Leigh Ann: Because sometimes for me when I, I feel myself going into that, right? What, what is my brain telling me it wants to do? Just lay here and stare at the

Kymber Maulden: yeah.

Leigh Ann: Just like lay on the couch and not move. And so sometimes I will try to go, I need to bring in movement.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah, totally. And I, and I, um, Yeah, the frozen, the collapsed state I'm familiar with as well. And I think that, um, there's some overlap in the sense of you do, sometimes it can be really helpful to actually just, like, engage with the external world, um, because you can get really confused and immobile states tend to bring up a lot of shame, like, in this culture.

Like, and I think it's also just, like, naturally when we move, there's something that tells our brain we have agency, we have power, we can move ourselves away from a threat. We can, so when you don't feel like that's an option. Or you're not connected to that option that can bring up a lot of shame. Um, so there can be this, like the cycle that people can get into when we have immobile states where we feel immobile, we don't do, we don't do anything.

So it's. Your body and your brain are supporting you. And so that's like one thing, is just working with the shame piece. And like, you could do that through tapping. You could do that through mirror work. You could do that through using your own voice, like talking to yourself. I, I started like leaving myself voice recordings, um, just to hear my own voice and like, listen to myself kind of talk about what's happening inside to again, externalize that,

Leigh Ann: Mm hmm. Hmm. Yeah,

And when we're in a mobile state, we usually have low energy for a reason, but what can happen is we can start to think, Oh, I have low energy, therefore I can't do anything. And then that just gets recycled.

Leigh Ann: right.

Kymber Maulden: And, and I've been in that place as well, where it's like, I don't even, I'm not going to go out. I'm not going to do anything.

And I mean, not everyone has that option to have friends that do that, but I do think like if there's a way for you to dispel some of that shame by bringing people into your world and allowing them the opportunity to move slowly with you. It reminds your brain, Oh, we're not actually as immobile and frozen and helpless as we thought.

Leigh Ann: Yeah. It's such a, it's such a spiral for me that still, I have a lot of work to do around, and I'm sure this is going to resonate with so many people because to your point, it's, it's so funny. I was just journaling about this this week that I have this like weird, deep scarcity mindset with energy.

Kymber Maulden: I can relate to that.

Leigh Ann: like, Oh my gosh, if I do that, it's going to,

Kymber Maulden: Going to use up all my energy.

Leigh Ann: So I better not.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah. Also, I do think if you're someone who, um, like veers towards burnout, like you, but like just not really, um, like I was never really taught to regulate my energy and I was always high output, lots of ideas, lots of like very creative, moving really fast. It's like pretty cognitive, like be able to articulate my ideas pretty fast and, um, and then push myself into a state where I'm just like burned out because I've expended way too much and not really.

Um, so I do think that like, you know, Allowing ourselves to, to make mistakes, like this goes back to the dysregulation concept, like we're all going to be dysregulated. And a lot of us don't even really know what dysregulates us unless we live our lives. Um, and this like takes me back to the, you know, the, the, the trauma relational piece for me personally, I can.

So I think it's important to know, like, where does dysregulation happen for you? Where, you know, where do you feel so unsafe or you get triggered to where you actually lose energy in a noticeable way? And what can you do, like, how can you set your life up to kind of honor that and work with that?

Leigh Ann: And so when someone, I do want to, I know we're kind of getting down to the wire here, but I do have a couple other questions on some of the pieces that you bring into this work. So someone comes to you. My thought would be that they don't necessarily, they're not coming to you saying, Hey, I have CPTSD.

But when someone comes to you, what is sort of that bigger picture process of, yeah, you're stuck in some of these CPTSD patterns. Here's a little bit of the journey we're going to walk to try and shift, release, clear those patterns. And, you know, bioenergetic nutrition, which I've never heard that term before.

So I'm excited to hear about that. You integrate somatics, but yeah, tell us a little bit, just kind of about that overall process.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah, so I have a thorough intake form that I have clients fill out, um, and then we definitely go over kind of what their, their questions are. What they're looking for, what they think their needs are, in an initial call that I have, I offer for free. Um, before we even start. Um, decide to work together, um, and when we do decide to work together, they do fill out this intake form.

What do you feel is the most important thing in your life? And like, and then we start to look at what's in the way of that. And so I do tend to start sessions with asking, we do like some embodiment work, and then I ask them, like, what, what is it that we want to address today? And so I leave it very open ended.

It's to some extent. You know, because I am integrating like more coaching consulting, which is kind of like protocol and action and goal oriented with this like deeper trauma work that's usually a lot more slow and we're not focusing on very specific outcomes because that's not really the point of the work.

Leigh Ann: Even

Kymber Maulden: yeah, yeah, that's usually why they feel called to work with me is because they have, they tend to have like stress patterns, relational patterns, um, a sense of just disconnection from those in their life, uh, so I think like helping them kind of look at what it is they actually want for themselves and then helping them navigate and organize their internal experience.

But that's, I would say that's the biggest thing is helping clients become familiar with their internal experience. Bye. Which, if you have struggled with stress patterns, dysregulation, trauma, whatever, you know, you want to label it, for years, there's a good chance you're not even, you haven't had the safety or the support to even, to, to really look at this stuff.

To be able to fully experience your internal world and be like, oh, I'm disorganized. Like, you know, there's, there's so many things that could be going on inside and you're just not even aware of it and it shows up as eczema or insomnia or something.

Leigh Ann: Exactly. And to your point, they might know, like, they might not even know that's an option to not have.

Kymber Maulden: hmm.

So if you have less anxiety, then, then what, what is it you want on the other side of that? But I also think when we have some of these patterns, like I'll use the breathing as such a simple, simple pattern. Before doing any of this work, that's not even something that would have clocked on my radar of, Oh, you mean, you mean I, my breathing could be different.

You mean that could like have all these benefits for me. And so I totally see the impact of having someone be able to go, Oh yeah, no, that, that thing, that's not necessarily, I don't know if normal is the right word, but, um, yeah, that's an adaptive pattern that you don't necessarily have to live with the rest of your life.

And they might, that might be the first time they ever

We all want dis, we all want connection. Like, it's like a deep human drive for most of us. Um, but if you have, you know, disruptive patterns, maladaptive patterns, then you may move into disconnection behaviors. Uh, if you have these maladaptive patterns, you may move into disconnection behaviors quite often.

without even realizing that you do it. So pushing people away, judging, creating narratives that disconnect you from others, self protect, just various self protection, um, behaviors, patterns, and then I self isolation. So I see that a lot, like a lot of my clients, I have a question in my questionnaire about relationships, like how satisfied are you with your relationships?

We socialize more, we tend to spend more time together, we get more of our like identity signals from each other. Um, but I do think more and more women are really, really lonely. And if you're dealing with health issues, then you will often, or energy, you know, energy scarcity issues, then you often underschedule relationships, or your relationships might not be that deep, or that safe, um, they might be totally misattuned, or they're circumstantial.

Leigh Ann: Yeah. Oh my gosh. And it just, it, to your point, it's, is why it's a process because, and I see this all the time with my own work as well is, yeah, you, you realize they're not aligned. Um, and then to your point, now this grief comes up and now that's something we need to sit with, you know, for a week or two or longer, whatever that looks like.

And then we get through that and then we move on to the next piece, which is maybe what do aligned relationships look like? And sometimes there's a whole crisis there of, I have no idea. I don't even know what I want. I don't even know what I want because I never have actually had the autonomy to fully have it.

So yeah, it's just such a, such a process. And so often we uncover a layer that, that we need to spend time with before we can go to the next layer.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah, 100%. It's not linear either. So sometimes we, we think that, uh, you know, a pattern is complete or we've moved through it and then we realize there's actually more there for us to feel or, um, and again, I think it comes back to, Uh, working with people around their internal, internal experience, like how we structure and organize our internal experience of the world and of ourselves.

That makes a huge difference. It affects our ability to regulate stress, how we manage stress and how we manage our own energy, um, how we relate, whether we have friendships, whether we don't, whether we're sexually satisfied, like all of these things tie back into how we structure and and organize our internal experience.

Leigh Ann: mm,

Kymber Maulden: And some elements of that I offer, because I do, you know, NARM is a therapeutic model. If you have, if you have a, you know, license, you can go to like next levels that I can't go to as a non licensed practitioner.

Um, but that's kind of a big part of it is like, uh, I have this, this belief, this strong belief that, um, just being able to come home to ourselves, to be able to be with ourselves is, uh, resolves a lot, a lot, because we actually come back to our own agency. We realize that life is not black and white. A lot of the cognitive distortions.

Leigh Ann: Yeah.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah,

Leigh Ann: you know, in deeper ways before, in some ways, still my relationship with me, myself, and I was not a safe relationship. I did not see me, hear me, protect me, honor me, nourish me, you know?

And I think in so many ways, if we were to look at it as like an external relationship, like if I was my own caretaker, or I would be an abusive caretaker of myself. And, and again, like I use that term, the second wound, because it's, I am showing up for myself in this way, probably because of trauma and wounding I experienced.

Who's super toxic. He's going to be like, why the fuck would I do that for you? When you've been neglecting me all these years, you don't care for me. Well, it's kind of like if we have that foundation, everything else we want to do is going to be so much more fluid and graceful and easy and convicted.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah. It's funny, I just had that, um, had that theme come up in a client session earlier today where, um, there was a story of being a burden. So not wanting to tell her boss about health issues, and we had to like, look at her being a burden for herself. Like, are you a burden to yourself?

And so we always kind of have to start there. And sometimes it really is very easy to get the food stuff. Like, for some of my clients, it's, I would say this for myself as well, like, food has been a low hanging fruit in my life, where I'm like, oh, I can change my diet, I can eat that thing, I can take that supplement.

Um, the relational stuff has, is often more work, because it involves other people, and it involves our various parts that have been accumulating for years. So it's a little bit more complicated than just, you know, offering nutritional guidance.

Are you, um, do you know anything about human design?

Kymber Maulden: Yeah, you know, it's so funny, I keep getting that up, like, come up, uh, recently and it's on my, it's on my list of, I, I've been told by a few different people that I'm a projector and again, like, I don't have the full context so I just don't know if that's true. Um, but I, I feel like I

Leigh Ann: yeah, well because there's like these I'm a Yeah, it's, it's been fascinating. I, I really found it super fascinating. I'm a manifesting generator, but there's a component of that, that piece that is very, like, we are born to be multifaceted. We are born to like bring in and blend together so many different pieces.

That's why I'm like, Hmm, no wonder she's a, a Manny Jen. Um, and yeah, it's, it's just like a fun thing. It's not like a dogma that I abide by my whole life, but I think it did give me some interesting information, but.

Kymber Maulden: Nice.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah, so I'm actually in the process of rebranding. I took a good hiatus off of the internet, off of social media. So you're definitely, you know, you can find me at Kymber Maldon on Instagram. That's where I, as far as social media goes, that's the only platform I've really used. But I haven't, you won't see a lot of up, like a most recent post, because I have not been on there.

I've been intentionally taking a break from it. Um, I also just started my own podcast. And that's called Nourishing Our Sanity, um, Women's Health through the Lens of CPTSD, Physiology, and Culture. And so I'm really excited about that. I'm working with, right now, um, a branding team and an editing team for, for that.

So more controversial stuff as well. Um, my thoughts on censorship and how that ties in with, um, trauma. Yeah. So definitely check that out. You can also check out my website.

Leigh Ann: That sounds juicy. Yeah.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah.

Leigh Ann: Amazing. I will make sure it's all linked in the show notes. Thank you so much for giving all of us your time. That was, this is the first time I've had anyone on to talk about CPTSD. So I think that was a really, really good kind of introductory conversation on it.

Kymber Maulden: Yeah, you're so welcome. And I'm, I'm really excited to be the first person, hopefully not the last to talk about it. Um, and of course, you know, anyone that wants to learn more can reach out and.