EP 176: Smart, Strong, and Still Crashing? Why Regulation Matters — 3 Women's StoriesEP 176: Smart, Strong, and Still Crashing? Why Regulation Matters — 3 Women's Stories
The Biology of Trauma™ With Dr. Aimie
Three women share how understanding their biology, nervous system states and parts work shifted years of crashes, pain and confusion into greater safety and cautious expansion. Their stories focus on the sequence of safety, support and expansion, and how simple tools like pausing and naming states can bring hope and self-acceptance.
35:23•2 Jun 2026
Smart, Strong and Still Crashing? Three Women Rethink Trauma, Health and Hope
Episode Overview
- Information alone does not change nervous system patterns; the body shifts through a specific order of safety, support and expansion.
- Naming states like sympathetic activation and freeze can replace shame with understanding and open the door to a kinder relationship with the body.
- Combining biology, parts work and somatic tools helps bridge gaps left by focusing only on psychology or only on medical treatment.
- Simple practices such as pausing and respecting personal pace support better boundaries, reduce crashes and increase self-compassion.
- Recognising stress and trauma responses in real time can prevent overwhelm and support both oneself and loved ones through intense experiences.
“I feel like I was living as a jigsaw puzzle... and what I've learned in the biology of trauma is they're all related and they all make a picture.”
How do people manage co-occurring mental and physical health issues while recovering? This conversation with Dr. Aimie Apigian follows three women who thought they were "smart, strong" yet kept crashing with fatigue, pain and mysterious diagnoses. Trisha grew up active but spent her teens in a scoliosis brace that left her numb from neck to hips. Years later, spinal injuries, grief and chronic pain left her "becoming one with the bed" for almost three years.
Through Biology of Trauma® work, she starts feeling her body again, naming states like sympathetic activation instead of just "anxiety", and learning to advocate for her genetics and needs. Alexia, an early childhood specialist from Peru, shares how tachycardia, POTS and thyroid cancer pushed her to search for answers beyond pills. She connects lifelong sympathetic arousal and functional freeze to her health issues and finds relief in combining biology, parts work and somatic tools.
A recent building fire became a real-time test: instead of collapsing afterwards, she supported herself and her daughters through the full stress cycle. Sherry, a clinical psychologist, describes a lifetime pattern of illness, dismissal and crashing after big pushes like completing her doctorate. Hearing that biology, mental health and the body are deeply linked is a turning point.
Learning to pause, understand her under-methylation and lack of copper access, and set boundaries around her nervous system leads to more agency, connection and—at 53—her first real sense of a future. Throughout, you’ll hear simple but powerful themes: the three-step sequence of safety, support and expansion, the magic of the pause, and how having language for freeze, sympathetic and parts work can turn chaos into a coherent story.
If you’ve ever felt "too much" or "too broken", these stories might leave you wondering what could shift for you if your body finally got what it needs, in the order it needs it. Which of these three stories feels closest to your own right now?
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