Kate White: How the birthing process impacts the nervous system and how birth trauma left me in a state of freeze.
episode 154.
In today’s episode, I’m going deep… and I get a little emotional. You ready?!
Today, the wonderful Kate White is hanging out with us to help me unpack my birth trauma and to also help you gain insight into how labor and delivery impacts the birthing parent’s nervous system.
Kate is an award-winning educator and an advanced bodyworker. She is trained in somatic therapies, prenatal and perinatal somatic health, lactation, brain development, infant mental health, and she has specialized in parent-baby dyad care using somatic prevention and trauma healing approaches for 25 years. She's also a mother of two children, holds a BA and MA in Communication, is a Registered Craniosacral Therapist in the Biodynamic Craniosacral method, and is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner. Her work combines somatic trauma healing, energetic therapies, bodywork, pediatric therapies, and education about the nervous system to help give families with babies and small children the best possible start.
She is the Founding Director of Education for the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health where from 2013 to 2019 she created and ran the Prenatal and Perinatal Educator Certificate program, a large online educational program for professionals. She went on to found Prenatal and Perinatal Healing Online and the Prenatal and Perinatal Somatics Institute. She teaches classes online and in person, and offers a training called Integrated Prenatal and Perinatal Dynamics.
She has a private practice in Charlottesville, VA called Belvedere Integrated Healing Arts and offers her own seminars through the Center for Prenatal and Perinatal Programs, ppncenter.com.
In today’s episode, we talk about…
My birth trauma and how it led to nervous system dysregulation postpartum
Why it’s important to educate providers, midwives, and doulas about the freeze state
Why Kate likes to unpack early life traumas when helping you with your birth trauma
How the birth parent’s autonomic response is impacted based on how they're treated during the birthing process
How the vulnerability of labor and delivery tends to lead to pleasing and appeasing
Why we need to normalize nervous system responses during the birthing process
How your baby has a story to tell too
How our need to do things by ourselves is a survival strategy that we relied on as a child
Why new parents need more support postpartum
The impact social media can have on your nervous system
How Kate helps me disrupt locked-up nervous system energy
…and so much more!
You can listen on your favorite podcast app…
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