Our Capacity for Compassion & Nervous System State

Tibby Starks (00:14.882)
Hey y'all, welcome back to Fostering Compassion, the podcast that bridges the gap between sending thoughts and prayers to actually providing the support that people need. I'm Tibby Starkes, your radically compassionate podcast host, and I'm so happy to be back with episode four. Before we get into the episode, if you're not already following the show, we're on most of the socials @Fostering Compassion Pod, so please give me a follow and share with me how you're fostering compassion in your own community by taking a picture or video of what you're doing and tagging the show.

Also, please remember I'm collecting listener questions for a future episode, so if you have a question you'd like to ask me, email me. I'm tibby@fosteringcompassionpod.com, and you can also go to my website fosteringcompassionpod.com, and click on the red leave a voicemail button on the right side of the page.

Today I have another amazing guest for you. Her name is Sarah Buffie. She is the founding director of Soulbird Consulting and a trauma-responsive care trainer. Drawing upon two decades of experience in human services and community building, she channels a deep seated passion for felt safety and belonging into her work. Sarah holds a master's in social work. Her academic journey was marked by a self-directed focus on polyvagal theory, positive psychology, and trauma-sensitive mindfulness practices, solidifying her commitment to innovative and holistic healing approaches. And today she's sharing with us five core convictions that she has distilled throughout her research.

Sarah's work is interesting. I think we can all apply it to our own lives, and she brings it to us in a really accessible way. So I hope you're inspired to apply some of Sarah's teachings to your everyday life to help you grow your compassion for yourself and for others.

Tibby Starks (02:30.466)
All right. Thank you so much, Sarah, for being here with Fostering Compassion today. I wanted to just roll right in with you because I think for context for everybody else, I first was exposed to Soulbird, which is your business, through attending the CASA conference, which is Court Appointed Special Advocates for children in foster care. And I was just really inspired by your work, your passion, and your cause. And I don't know how you came to this work. I've obviously checked you out on LinkedIn and all of that. I took other courses that you provided to CASAs, which thank you. And so anyway, that's the context for how I know about what you're doing in your work. And again, it just was so inspiring to me. I just saw you as this young woman who was doing something she was passionate about and without fear or self-doubt, and I'm sure that is just from the outside looking in. So again, you are just somebody who I really wanted to have you to be because I think we're on a similar mission in our own way to bring awareness to people who maybe with everything the way our society, the direction of our society, it's easy to get off track and kind of lose sight of what other people are going through and to feel disempowered to be able to make a difference and to even just make a difference for one person. And your story and what you are offering to the world and by doing it in your own creative way, the way that nobody else is bringing it to us. I just really wanna talk about that. So without further, maybe you could just help us understand what brings you to this work? Why are you so amazing?

Sarah Buffie (04:22.275)
Wow, well, thank you. I'm really flattered and honored to hear that kind of introduction and invitation. And that I can work backward, actually. This notion of you perceive me as someone with no fear, ready to rock. That's because I've worked on that. And I'm really happy to hear that reflected. That's definitely something that I have grown into over the past couple of years. You know, all of us in any kind of field where we're standing up in front of folks or in a leadership position or trying to share gifts. The notion of imposter syndrome is not immune to anyone, anyone. Oprah talks about it, right? You know, the leaders talk about it. So yeah, I had that as a, in my vocabulary and my personal experience. And then I realized that if I want to empower other people, if I want to help people get over that hump, I have to do that inner work and get over it myself. And it's not about becoming someone; it's about letting go of the notion that there's any arrival point. It really is self-acceptance really is self-compassion which I know you're all about with compassion, and if I want to offer grace and compassion outside it really starts within, so that is a recent evolution of mine. I own it, and I'm happy to say that, yeah, you saw someone who has a regrounded and what it means to just accept who I am and that I do have a medicine for the world, and I want to deliver it, so yeah. So that's where I am. Should I bring you back on how I got there? I suppose.

Tibby Starks
Yeah. Looking at, you know, a little bit into your LinkedIn, it seems like you kind of started with the Peace Corps from an outside perspective. It seems like, wow, she did this thing. And the next thing I see on there, you're doing all these really great, inspiring trauma, resilience, all this. And I'm just like, oh, where did that come from? Was it that experience? Was it your own? Was it both?

Sarah Buffie (6:12)
I guess it even starts before that. I grew up in a family that was really service-focused, really volunteer-heavy. And in that lens, I studied geography and German in college, super random. And then immediately came into an AmeriCorps program in Cincinnati, Ohio, Public Allies, which is where I spent 10 months with 30 other young people in this apprenticeship program. From there, I went to the Peace Corps. And the cool thing about that experience is when I left. Everyone, all my friends and family, said, oh, she's never coming back. She's never coming back. She's gone. She's a traveler, et cetera. But as you might imagine, no matter how long I would stay in one place or be rooted, no matter how deep the relationships were, which I did build deep relationships, I'm always an outsider, and I'm always going to be seen as that outsider. And so it was more important for me to come home and work in my own backyard, in a sense. But two real big pivot points for me. I spent two years in the Peace Corps in Namibia, which is southwestern Africa. It's the second least populated country in the world. It's twice the size of California, but there's only two million people in the whole country. And so my role, I was a health volunteer, but really what I realized is I got to know people is a ton of people with a ton of gifts and their ton of resources, but they weren't always connected. So I was able to be a conduit between those two things. It wasn't necessarily about taking outside resources and bringing them in, it was about saying, hey, this is down the street. This is in another town. Here's how we use local resources.

When I came back from the Peace Corps, I heard about an organization called Starfire, which was essentially a day-hab program for adults with developmental disabilities. How we like to see it is we were doing community organizing with adults with developmental disabilities. And the unique lens that Starfire brought was the same thing I experienced in the Peace Corps. There are people who have that label, but they also have...gifts, passions, and interests. And oftentimes, folks with disabilities are segregated and congregated based on that devalued label. They're not in separate special programs based on what their unique gift is to the world. It's usually about this label. So what I saw is we've got folks who have gifts, passions, and interests, and there are places, people, and places who share those gifts, passions, and interests. And how might I be a conduit to those two? Just like I experienced in the Peace Corps. So again, it was about being a connector. That was amazing work. We kind of built up a program, and then we tore it all down because I realized we were doing some work that wasn't getting to the end outcome of real social capital, real relationship building. But in that, I didn't have language for it. It was through my master's program in social work and then work at a community health agency where I was still doing resilience work where I started to learn about trauma. And trauma...when it comes to how we now understand from a neuroscience perspective, it feels like it was the missing piece for how we were missing the boat with some of our folks at Starfire. Some folks who had a disability label and a complex trauma history, our work wasn't as effective. And it's not because we were bad or wrong or misled; it's because we didn't have this lens. We didn't understand who really was at the root and how to shift our behavior to create long-lasting change. And once I had that other piece, understanding developmental disability, what we're up against, not the experience itself, but what we're up against in society. And then, I started to understand more about how trauma impacts the brain, the body, and behavioral patterns. My brain exploded and realized, oh, all of these things are making sense. And as I did the work on the ground, I was also skilled at talking about it.

I'm actually reading one of Stephen Portis's new books, and he co-authored it with his son, Seth Portis. It's funny, I don't know if you or your folks know about Stephen Portis, but he created the Polyvagal Theory. It's very heady, it's very intellectual. To have his son—it is cool! If it's just with Stephen's lens, a lot of folks are left out because it's so science-based. Seth brings a relational aspect to the book, to the writing, to the theory. It's super accessible. So I feel like that's kind of my niche is how do I take this academic world, this neuroscience world, break it down in a way that's accessible, and we can play with these ideas in a way that again shifts our behavior so we can show up for people in a more whole and full way. So that's kind of the long version there.

Tibby Starks
Yeah, without getting too far away from your story, I do want to acknowledge that going into geography and this whole other path and, you know, we're young, we start out, we do other things. But it's brave to go and, like, all of a sudden become this licensed social worker. I mean, what a shift I can speak to how scary it is to make that shift in your career and I don't know how you navigated it and I don't know your experience, but for me, it has been scary and in our society, I think, or I know that we attach our worth, our self-worth to our work and our careers and it's always producing and what have you done lately. And so I just want to acknowledge that it was brave to make such a shift, but it seems like you have stepped into your passion and, you know, stepped into your power. Um, seems like it was a good shift for you. And so now you have Soulbird, which I kind of read the meaning of Soulbird and everything and what, what brought you to start your own thing? You said you, you had these experiences with other organizations and then now here you are.

Sarah Buffie (12:11)
Yeah, just to name that, I appreciate that. And it did, it was a bit of a leap, but it was also, and I'm gonna forget the, I don't have the quote on me, but my dad was reading this over this last week, that I'm gonna butcher the quote. It's not that we're always about becoming something, but it's not that life is about becoming something, but it could be about unbecoming something so you can become who you were meant to be, or who you already were, or something like that. And the point being, we get on these paths, we get on these tracks, what society says where we should go, right? And we're becoming X, Y, and Z, but then undoing things, unlearning. For me, I feel like it wasn't a leap, it was just where my path was going all along. I'm not very academic, I got a D in my abnormal psych class my first year, I failed stats, right? So I started off as a psychology major, but academic world, it didn't fit for me. Landed in geography, et cetera, et cetera, but. So for me, it wasn't a leap to social work. It was probably a re-homing back into where I was always really meant to be. So just wanted to offer that. And then I just jibber-jabbered off of your question. Oh, Soulbird.

So I've always been a public speaker, I think. I've always kind of enjoyed that role and been good at synthesizing topics and subjects. And so the work I was doing, I was also being asked to train on that work. And everywhere I went to speak, I was asked to come speak more and speak more. And so it really, I wasn't able to keep both orientations, my community, mental health, the job, and these new opportunities. So that was a leap. I really did put my shingle out there and said, Hey, I want to be talking about this more. I want to share this more. And luckily, because I'd been on the ground so much in Cincinnati and in Ohio, I was able to, a lot of word of mouth. Things spread pretty quickly. So with Soulbird, the not-so-interesting, I think, part of the name is I was going to just Sarah Buffie Consulting, that was going to be, you know, the SBC that was going to be it. But then I realized I'm, I'm just more collaborative in nature, I'm more relational in nature. And who wants to work with Sarah Buffie Consulting versus like let's have more of a group kind of name. And so I already had the SBC had a logo going. And so I changed to Soulbird Consulting based on my affinity for birds and what I think that the inner work is what helps us get to the outer work. So that's kind of where our logo is around. So the Soulbird, well, I don't know if it translates so well in the field; it really is kind of more metaphorical. So how do we invite those of us into that inner work? which I also think comes back to your notion about productivity. I really am on a mission to break, that kind of myth, the sexiness of being busy. You know, when we run ourselves ragged, almost to get our own self-worth, you know, to feel good about ourselves, we're not doing anyone a favor; we're giving wrong messages. And from a neuroscience perspective, from a Polyvagal perspective, if I'm showing up in distress...I'm actually not creating a safe relational field for us to do any of this healing work together. So it's not, I think that's something we have to move from this notion of, oh, I'm so busy, I'm so busy. People always say to me, oh, your calendar's full. No, I'm a person like you. I can move things around. Like let's talk, let's make time, let's connect. And how do we start to make it sexy to rest, to recharge, to reprioritize our inner world? So again, we can show up relationally in more grounded ways. So that's what I have a lot of freedom to do. I have a lot of privilege in saying that. I have a lot of freedom to do that because I own my own company. But it's important to me to really keep that message going and to model that for folks.

Tibby Starks (16:01)
Absolutely. With the people that are around you, because you do, you have a team now. And how long was it? 2017? Is that when you started? OK. Awesome. Wow. So you've mentioned a couple of times. Say it again Polyvagal theory. And I've seen you speak on this a couple of times, so I know a little bit about what you're talking about. It's not a new word to me, but probably for a lot of our listeners, it might be a new concept. So what is Polyvagal theory for those of us?

Sarah Buffie (16:35)
So cool. In the simplest of terms, Polyvagal theory describes how safe we feel in our bodies is directly related to how we can show up, how safe we can show up in the world. So when I was thinking about this time with you and compassion, our capacity for compassion is directly determined to our nervous system state. A lot of us know this notion of fight or flight. So traditionally, when we're taught about science or the autonomic nervous system, we're taught fight or flight, we're taught rest and digest. So fight or flight meaning the sympathetic, right? We're out, we have a lot of mobilization. Parasympathetic, we're in that rest and digest state. What the polyvagal theory helps us unpack, one poly, many vagal is the vagus nerve. So the vagus nerve, it's one of our cranial nerves connected to the base of our brainstem and not only goes down, through our vocal cords, hearts, lungs, all the way to our guts. It not only goes down but also goes up. It goes into our face. It connects around our eyes, our ears, our mouth, et cetera. It's bi-directional. And it's the information superhighway between the brain and the body. And 80 to 90% of information flows from our body to our brain. And that's important when we think about parenting, when we think about education, when we think about being in positions of power. We often even command or shout to people when they're behaving in unsafe ways. We say, what were you thinking? When we're in a state of behaving in unsafe ways to ourselves or to others, we're actually not thinking at all. We're sensing in our body, the environment. And if we sense cues of danger, our system for our survival will shoot us up in a fight or flight or all the way down into freeze. If we sense safety in our environment, relation, or internally, our system can be in that safe and social state, which allows us to access things like compassion, empathy, communication, and choice, right? So the polyvagal theory helps us really move from a behaviorist lens that looked at us from an animal perspective, right? It helps us understand what Stephen Porteous calls the intervening variable, and it's our nervous system state behaviorism was stimulus-response. Right? The response is based on the stimulus, and if we just change the stimulus, we're gonna get a new response. But now we know that the stimulus, the event, can happen. The response comes not from the event, but from how your nervous system perceives that event. So small example, if I could just go a little bit further. Is that okay?
Tibby Starks
Yes, please!

Sarah Buffie (19:10)
So if you, let's just take this most recent, even saying the word holiday with Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving was a genocide that happened in our country. And so some folks might hear Thanksgiving and hear, oh, great, lovely time for family. Some folks might hear, yeah, Thanksgiving. Wow, right, we're experiencing that genocide. So depending on if I'm in a nervous system state, if I'm thinking about how this country was founded, perpetuated on wiping people off the land, imposing a genocide on all the indigenous folks that were here for thousands and thousands of years. If I'm thinking about that and the tragedy of that and someone says, Happy Thanksgiving as if that's the stimulus, that interaction if my nervous system is already in a distressed state, my response might be, "screw you!" and "What do you know?!" and "You don't even know about history!" You know, I might, my response might be really, really kind of argumentative or defensive or even if I have that awareness of this is a holiday based on genocide, right? If I'm in a more calm state, if my nervous system is in safe and social, if my rest and digest system is here, right? So that's my nervous system state. And someone says, Happy Thanksgiving! I might be able, my response might be, well, it is connected to that nervous system state. I might be able to say, "Oh, I hope you have a good weekend with your friends and family, and I'd love to talk to you more about what this week means for a lot of people in our world." So that enables us to have conversations and to have connections and is only accessible if my nervous system is in a safe and social state. And that's really what the Polyvagal Theory helps us understand that these behavioral patterns are determined by what's going on inside, not just the event that happens to us. So I'm a little anxious that might have been out of context or kind of wandering for folks, but there's so much to talk about with the theory.

Tibby Starks
I appreciate the explanation and the example because it really does connect for us. I think where my mind was starting to go when you were giving those scenarios was where I think you would go next naturally is trauma and how you're explaining those two different experiences depending on where your mental state is. You have explained in the past that depending on where your mental state is, you can experience trauma or not. So two different people can have the same experience. I don't have quite the language you do, so I'll hand it off to you, but yes, it's just incredible to me that two people can be in the same room or whatever it is and have the same experience and have trauma or no trauma, completely different experiences. So I think that's really valuable for folks to understand when we're trying to deal with the community, the people in our communities that need us to be more patient. So could you help us understand that a little bit?

Sarah Buffie (22:15)
Yes. Yes, and I'm just gonna play with language just to clarify. So two little shifts. One, it's how we experience an event. So trauma, so I think you meant that, but I just wanna get clarified. It's not the event that, in and of itself, creates a trauma; it's how you experience that event. So the event happens and how I experience that event, it'll be either be left over as traumatic residue, or it will be a memory that's in the memory center, and I can think, oh, that was really bad to happen, but then traumatize me, right? And the reason why I named that is because it's not the mental state they're in; it's the physiological state that impacts. So physiology meaning the nervous system state. If it is my nervous, depending on how our system responds or reacts to the event, will have a different kind of outcome. So to your point, two people are in a car wreck, right? You have a car accident happen. One person, they're shot up into fight or flight. You know, all the adrenaline, the endorphins are firing. They are able to escape the scene. They tell someone what happened, that someone believes them. Oh my gosh, that's so awful. I'm so sorry you know, what can I do to help, right? So being believed, being able to mobilize, and having resolution might not have you experience the car wreck in a traumatic way. Still sucks and still be awful; it'll be terrible. But you discharge all those, the adrenaline, the cord is all those neurocouples, they discharge out of your body. So they're not stuck in your body to create that traumatic residue. Versus you have the event, the car wreck, if you experience and you go into freeze, you get stuck. You tell someone and their response is, "Well, what were you doing?" Why weren't you paying attention?" They blame you. So now shame is all incorporated there, right? My experience of that is I, maybe the neurochemicals fired, but I was in freeze. I didn't get to discharge them. When I told someone, I wasn't believed, now my story is, did I do something wrong? I should have, right? And all that shame releases more hormones, cortisol, that stress response, or stress hormone that really erodes our brain and body as well. So I think that that's what we want to learn when we are working with folks who've experienced traumatic events. So either a traumatic event or pervasive toxic stress, right? Depending on your prior relationships, depending on your nervous system state, depending on if you're believed in the moment, all of these are factors on how you're going to heal and how you're going to continue to grow. And what we need at a baseline is to stop blaming and shaming people for the survival strategies that come from these traumatic exposures or traumatic events. Survival strategies meaning fight, flight, freeze, hitting, throwing, kicking, screaming, shutting down, anything that you would perceive as bad or wrong. They're usually normal responses to abnormal events. Abnormal events, abuse, neglect, shock, trauma, natural disaster, et cetera. So again, there's a lot there too. I know we're doing a whole thesis here in a couple minutes, but we misunderstand people. We blame and shame; we misunderstand trauma. We blame and shame people for the survival strategies that come out of those events and those experiences. And then it creates a reenactment, right? And then we just see where the trauma cycles continue, even though the event is long gone.

Tibby Starks (25:50)
And so a lot of things for me are popping into my mind. And when you say this blame and shame, and I'm thinking about the unhoused population, and then my mind goes to the veterans who have experienced PTSD. I just did an interview with Daybreak, and they are a shelter for youth experiencing being unhoused. And so clearly, your theory here is showing up in all of these other interviews or other things we're talking about. So again, bringing it all back. If we can just have more compassion. And what I hear, what kept the word that kept coming to my mind, was validating. I know I feel so much better when I feel validated, whether that's my friends or my therapist, just to feel like, you said, "oh, I'm so sorry that happened to you." Just the simple things that we can offer to people. It doesn't matter what we think about how they got into that situation.
Who cares?

Sarah Buffie (27:00)
Yes, not only who cares, our using our thinking brain, so what you're describing, someone's behaving in ways unsafe to sell for others, they're not thinking through what's going on. So we think about the handbrain, right? They got their front brain here. This is in charge of consciousness, curiosity and empathy, language, et cetera. When you're in distress, you're experiencing stress; it's not online. It's your fear center that's in charge, right? So if you use your logic, meaning your front brain, with me, and I'm offline, it's like throwing jello against the wall. Nothing's gonna stick there. So why did you do that, or what was going on? Interesting questions. They can be saved for later when I'm safe in my body; therefore have my thinking brain online, right? So validation is the bridge. And it's not saying you're right. It's saying your experience is true to you. And I can honor that. I can honor, appreciate, and affirm that what's happening within you is your experience. And when we do that for one another, it's not just nice or kind or compassionate; it's literally healing. It literally moves the experience from I'm alone in my pain, I'm alone in the world, to I'm seen and heard. And that's trauma. I'm unseen, I'm unheard. Unsafe, unseen, unheard. So when I can feel safe, seen and heard, not be safe, being safe and feeling safe are two very different things, which is what the Polyvagal Theory talks about, right? When I feel safe, when I'm seen and heard, that allows my brain and body to get back into homeostasis, which is the only way healing happens. It doesn't happen when I'm in distress, or I'm in freeze. It only happens when I achieve that balance, right? So we can all be healing agents for one another when we validate and affirm, but we can also start to validate and affirm ourselves, which is why I'm so on this push about stop self-deprecating, stop not taking credit for the good things that happen. It's not, oh, it wasn't me, someone else did that, when we dismiss, right? When we don't say, yeah, I did do that, and I did do a good job, or, well, I did have a hard day, and I need a break. When we can develop that relationship with ourselves, that's how we can become more compassionate, more resilient as well. It's hard as hell. I'm not saying it's easy, but that is the work. How do we turn that inward into a validate and affirm ourselves as well? And then learn how to validate and affirm other people too.

Tibby Starks (29:45.858)
What keeps coming up throughout this research and engaging with folks like yourself on this topic is self-first, self-compassion, self-care. And as much as I like would like to say, oh yes, self-care, you know, self-first. I'm not an example of that. Just being completely honest, I know this about myself. It is hard work to make myself put myself first. So anyway, just putting that out there because I know, you know, I wanna be honest. I keep talking about this, but what is really interesting to me is it's just coming back and back and back, and it's not going to leave me alone until, you know, I can preach it all day long, but to actually bring it on board and accept it and practice it in my own life is challenging. And so I want to validate that for everyone else too.

How, if we're so maybe out of touch or caught up in this idea that we need to be producing or we have all the busy reasons that you mentioned, busy, I'm so busy. How do we even identify trauma in ourselves? Because I feel like there's a lot of people walking around with trauma on board that they don't even recognize, don't know about. How can we do better?

Sarah Buffie (31:05)
Two things. It's a great curiosity. It's a great question. I want to work backward from what you mentioned about self-care. When self-care meets capitalism, that's where we, it's where we go wrong, and that's where we shame and blame ourselves. I wanna name that for all of us.

Tibby Starks
Yes, I appreciate that. I wanna clap.

Sarah Buffie
Yes, well, cause self-care isn't taking all the hours off and go buy this or take that vacation to the, self-care, one; it is hard work, right? So we have to take this myth off that it should be easy. And two, it's not meant, in isolation. That's the other thing we get wrong. I have to have time for myself before I can pour in. I don't have time for me. I got to deal with these kids. I got to deal with this class. You are bringing you into every situation you go into. So if that's even a myth. I don't have time for me, I gotta deal with this. Well, you are dealing with this, and by you, I mean your body. Your physical body is the first thing that everyone's reading. Their nervous systems are reading one another before anything comes out of your mouth. So if I want to be a helper, if I want to be a healer, if I want to be a change agent, and I'm bringing distress and fight and fight and fear into the room, I'm already behind the eight ball. So I would say one with how do we stop and do self-care? I mean, it's not what you asked, but I want to answer that real quick. With awareness, we have choices. So if you are aware that you are also saying I don't have time for me. I don't do it. I can't do it. No shame because, again if I don't want you to shame your kids, I don't want you to shame yourself. No shame, but that's awareness. Oh, I'm stuck in capitalism. I'm stuck in this myth. I'm stuck in an unhelpful mythology of individualism. So with that awareness, how might I in a moment, literally I'm doing right now I'm taking my hands and I'm putting into my chest. How might I take a reset breath...before I pick up the phone for that parent-teacher conference. How about I take a reset breath as I'm driving to work so I can show up grounded? How might I, and I'm asking that specifically in curiosity, how might I look at one minute during the week? We're going to look at my calendar, can for one minute, put on my alarm, and I take six deep breaths because that's a nervous system reset. Our autonomic nervous system, that fight, flight, or freeze state, that's happening without us having to think about it. But breath is the bridge. Breath is the only way we can connect our consciousness to our unconsciousness. And we talk about it a lot, therapists, you know, trauma specialists, etc. But it's one of those things that we always have at our disposal. So how do we start to pour into ourselves without having to buy this or take an hour off there? We can connect to our breath.

Your real question around how do we start to understand if we're walking around with trauma, again, with awareness, we have choices. And how aware am I of my internal landscape? Am I on autopilot? Am I waking up and scrolling immediately? No judgment, I do it too. But I'm aware, I'm making a conscious choice that I'm gonna put a bunch of nonsense in my head before I go, right? And so some days I say, I'm not gonna look at the phone first. I am gonna put my legs on the floor, feet on the floor. I am gonna take a breath. I am gonna take my lap around my neighborhood, right? And I'm gonna start to befriend what's in here, what's inside, right? And Deb Dana talks about this. She wrote a book, Befriending the Nervous System. And that's, I think, how we really start to understand what we're up against and what we're bringing into any situation, whether you call it trauma, distress, stress, you know, whatever words you want to use, the more curiosity you can bring to your present moments; that's how we can start to figure out how to navigate and be a choice place in response versus reaction. So on a more technical answer, if you're going through life and you're going, little things like when you get a headache," instead of immediately saying, "oh, I just need Tylenol," or "Oh, it's because I didn't sleep last night. Pause. Hi, headache. Is there a message in there for me? Right? Trauma stored in the body, it manifests physically, right? So when your throat is hurting all the time, maybe ask, hey, throat, is there something I'm not saying? Right, can I get to my journal and say, throat, do you have a message for me? What is left unsaid, right? If my stomach is always upset. Hi, stomach? Is there something, is there some stress happening that I'm not bringing into my consciousness? Am I afraid of something? Is there fear in my life anywhere? Developing the capacity for curiosity will help us get to know what's in our body and how that's manifesting out in our lives, and in our world. So there are a lot of ways to take that, but I think curiosity is one thing I would name. That's the first step in how we can get more in tune with what we're walking around with.

Tibby Starks (36:35.078)
I love that. Thank you. And is that, I keep seeing this word in your work, it's, or this phrase trauma-sensitive mindfulness. Is that what that means? Or can you help us understand that?

Sarah Buffie (36:49)
Great, great, great. So David Trelevin, if you want an amazing leader in trauma-sensitive mindfulness practices and curriculum, look up David Trelevin. I've studied under him, I've read some of his work, and his big aim is to help mindfulness practitioners have a trauma-informed trauma sensitive awareness to their work So I'll back up on breath. Breath is the bridge. It's where we can bring our consciousness to our unconscious systems; however, if you've experienced a lot of body trauma, if you've experienced assault, sexual assault, body ruptures, right? Boundary ruptures with your physical body; tuning in with your breath can be very triggering, and very activating. If this hasn't been a safe vessel to be in, paying attention to the inside can bring a flashback experience, right? And we don't remember trauma; we relive it, right? So we relive it not through words or narrative or linear understanding. We relive it through sensation and fog and uncomfortableness, right? And that can be really scary. So what he realized as a meditation teacher when he was in his courses; well-meaning, soft voice, everyone shut your eyes. Well, somebody would just flip their lid! I don't want to be here, I hate this, and they would start to sweat. Again, have a physiological response to that distress. Until he understood the experience of how trauma impacts the brain and body, he would have said "hey, no shut your eyes, be mindful," right? Not even just David. A lot of people who are in the mindfulness world without understanding trauma would say, just shut your eyes. They wouldn't really give an option. Like, "why are you acting that way?" Right? If we understand trauma, we can have mindfulness practices that are more accessible for all people, not just folks who haven't had traumatic experiences. So the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities invited myself with Soulbird to produce work around trauma-sensitive mindfulness programming, building on years of resilience work we had done with them over the years. I'm a trauma person, right? I'll never say expert, but I'm steeped in it. It's where my passion is. And my partner, Kara, from Kara Michelle Pearson from Lilac and Indigo, she's the mindfulness arm to that. So we together created a six-week program for families who are supported by the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities. She's incredibly trauma-informed in her work. And so if you just want to go to Kara for trauma-sensitive mindfulness work, you know, she's an incredible resource. But it was our partnership together that we brought these tools and these awarenesses to that community. So it's a piece of the puzzle, I would say.

Tibby Starks (39:40)
Yeah. Excellent. I just love that. I don't know. I kind of feel like you're pioneering this new thing. I just haven't come across anybody doing this type of thing of work before and like you said, you're employing all these different disciplines, but I feel like you're a force for bringing this message to the world. And so, what is your ultimate goal? I mean, you've done so many cool things. You've worked with the state of Ohio and all kinds of stuff. What do you see as the next step?

Sarah Buffie
Yeah, well, I'm first to say I am building on the shoulders of so many, so many people before me, so many giants, and not just the trauma-informed world, the mental health space, mindfulness world. I really believe nothing is new underneath the sun, and we're all sharing ideas where we're all teaching and learning and learning from one another, but I do think the unique offering that I have to the world is these five core convictions that I talk about a lot, that this is what you saw at the CASA conference. I tease that I've taken the entire field of trauma-informed care and neuroscience and polyvagal theory and boiled it down to five sentences, and not because I'm smart, but because it's more accessible. And I want us to be able, us meaning the general population, to be able to do something with all this information, all this knowledge. And so I call these the five core convictions because I'm so convicted of their truths that they've completely changed three things. One: how I talk about people and myself. They've changed how I share stories, how I communicate, even distress or challenge. They've completely impacted the stories that I hear. So when I do have a parent or a teacher, a human service professional tell me a challenge I'm filtering through this lens that helps me to get rooted and responsive versus reactive and symptomatic with my offerings back. And then the last thing these convictions have done is they shift not just what I do with people, but how I behave. And that's what I find so often. It's not the challenge itself. It's not the kid throws the chair all the time, the teacher said. That's not the challenge. How we understand that child and understand that experience is going to either make us reactive in our problem-solving or compassionate and responsive in our problem solving. And I see well-meaning teachers, well-meaning parents, hard-working, well-meaning, brilliant-minded people with big hearts at the end of their ropes. And if I can break down these five core convictions, usually a big, big breath comes after that. And now we start to problem solve and their wisdom comes out, their ideas, their creativity, their compassion starts to come out. And that's where I feel like my work is. It's not about changing someone else's behavior. It's how do we change our behavior so we can meet people on the healing journey versus work against them.

So I'll just name those five. Now I keep teasing them:
Trauma stored in the body is the first one. Right. And again, that's not my opinion. That is, that is the eons of work when it comes to psychology and physiology. Bessel Vanerckel's book, The Body Keeps the Score, you can check it out, right? So the first conviction is trauma stored in the body.

Second conviction, regulation is a practice, right? It's not something to just cope in a moment, but regulating over time and community. Regulation is a practice.

The third, both perceived threat and real threat feel the same in the body. If we're convicted of that truth, we will stop telling people, "knock off, everything's fine; why are you acting that way?" We won't come with that kind of orientation. We'll say, "wow, you must be feeling scared. You must be feeling unsafe. How can I help you feel safe?" We'll honor that both perceived threat and real threat can really activate that same fight-or-flight response.

The fourth conviction is trauma symptoms are survival strategies. No one is choosing to behave badly just to get on your nerves. If someone is behaving in ways that are unsafe to self and others, there's a root and their traumatic exposures and their stressful experiences. Right? So how do we stop blaming and shaming people but really honoring those survival strategies?

The last one is the fifth conviction, healing happens in relationship. Trauma doesn't happen in isolation, and neither does healing. They both happen in the context of relationships. And that's where the work, the five core convictions, end and really where the work begins. How do we deepen that relationship with ourselves and us with one another so we can get on that healing journey together?

Tibby Starks
Yes, I love that so much because I think that's a part of my goal as well. You know, I wanted to have you so we could bring this message to other folks because, yes, number five, it happens in community, in relationship. And I don't know, I just feel like we're all out here together and lonely at the same time.

Sarah Buffie
Yes, amen, amen.

Tibby Starks
And yeah, I've talked a couple of times on some of my other episodes with folks about just how, you know, we don't have the space to disagree anymore. You know, one disagreement means that we can't be friends. You know, things are just the stakes are so high, and people just seems like our young people are going through this mental health crisis right now, and I just keep hearing about it, and you know from my experience working with foster youth, of course that's the case, but we are realizing that it is more pervasive than just that, just that population. And that's really scary. And it's, you know, why, what's going on? And how can we make a difference? And so I appreciate you bringing all of that to us so that we can, you know, I just felt like if we could be a little bit more informed about a lot of different things that maybe. Maybe we can make the world a better place together.

Sarah Buffie
We want to try, right? I think that's the effort.

Tibby Starks
I mean, yeah, I mean, all you can do is try and all that. But one thing that also came to mind when you were listing off the five was physical pain and emotional pain, I have read, and I probably heard it from you as well...it's the same...in the brain. Explain that.


Sarah Buffie
Well, so I first heard, uh my mentor Mary Vicario talked about SPOT theory, and then I read a paper on it to understand more SPOT theory meaning a Social Physical Pain Overlap Theory, so the notion is that both social pain and physical pain share the same nerve fibers, right? So when you uh punch me in the arm, that hurts. When you sign on, and you don't acknowledge me, and you're scrolling on your phone, and, "oh, I'll be there in a minute," dismissive, that hurts, right? And it's not hurting on two different wavelengths; it's sharing the same nerve fibers, which actually is really challenging when if you've experienced trauma or specifically developmental trauma complex childhood trauma right when you had a couple of definitions one: something happened too much too fast too soon, right? Foster youth, being pulled from your home, pulled from your foster placement. My friend of mine is it was a foster mom, and she helped her foster daughter get a  suitcase because she was traveling to and from all these homes all the time, right? And when she came back maybe a couple of months later, in and out again, for whatever reason, she came back with a plastic bag. She didn't have a suitcase that was hers for her belongings. So these things happen too much, too fast, too soon, and leave their own traumatic residue. Or not enough for too long, either not getting enough of your needs met, social, emotional physical needs met for too long, right? Those are your experiences of neglect or othering and marginalization, bullying, and being unseen and unheard for long amounts of time create their own distress. When you have these experiences, anything later on in life, a sight, a sound, smell, intonation, how someone says or looks at you, can activate that pain, activate that traumatic memory as if it's happening right here, right now, right? The physical pain of being abused can be activated by a perception of disrespect or othering later on in life. Right? So yes, this understanding helps us stop playing the oppression Olympics, right? Oh, that shouldn't hurt. Oh, that didn't hurt. Oh, it wasn't that bad, right? When we minimize people's experiences, we could be re-wounding, which is another understanding of trauma. It's this constant state of disconnection, this constant woundedness, that happens. So yeah, it's complex. But the main message there is I think, don't dismiss someone else's lived experience. What's true to them is true to them. And to get to another perspective or another story they first have to have their real experience honored and validated like we were talking about before.


Tibby Starks (49:22)
You know, when I was working with, again, with the foster youth as adults, it's easy to see how everyone's trying to run around and logistics and it's easy to lose sight. You know, as a CASA worker, that is your whole goal of being there is to be there with the child, right? And so maybe less so, hopefully from a CASA perspective. But just my observation of the system, it is, to nobody's shock, underfunded, understaffed, all those things. So you've got a bunch of adults running around under-resourced, stressed, probably undertrained in some spaces, especially with the trauma work, I've noticed. It is probably the last of the trainings that they're having time for. And so the child almost becomes the last point of concern. And when that child starts to act out, it's like, "Oh my gosh, if you could just stop being a brat at school, then we could just get the rest of your case figured out. You're making it inconvenient for us. We're trying to get to court right now, and we have to move you homes again because nobody can deal with your attitude." It's just like, well, how about we're all here because this kid is, you know. Oh my god.

Sarah Buffie
Yeah. Oh, I just got a little into sympathetic even here in that anecdote, which is not unfamiliar to me. Yeah.

Tibby Starks
And so if we can all just really realize the purpose in that scenario, but I think it can kind of apply to all, even if you're just dealing with a child, your birth child is having issues and things like that. Recognizing where the initial issue is coming from and validating, going back to that validating for people and youth. And it is in another thing that I've seen is that, "oh, they're just kids. Oh, kids are resilient. Oh, like they're gonna be fine." And I'm like, as a CASA, I'm like, hey, you know, this kid's been in care for about six months now. I noticed that they haven't seen a therapist. Is that something like, we're waiting on, what's going on with that. "Oh, well, you know, they don't, we just don't have enough therapists. And so I don't have time to chase them down." And I'm like, well, that should be the first point of concern is that this child should be in therapy. Again, with the lack of resources and everything and the lack of time. But I just, I see all this, I experienced and saw all of this inside of the foster care system, which in turn brought me full circle back to doing something like this because people aren't seeing it, and they don't realize that this is happening in all of our communities, right? I just, foster care, I think, for a lot of folks is just something that's going on elsewhere. But my whole, one of my goals with this podcast is to bring forward that foster care is happening in all of our communities, it is happening to people indirectly and directly that we know. And there are things that we can do directly, whether that is become a CASA or in a professional sense, but there are things that we can do indirectly, such as supporting a parent who is in poverty, who is in crisis of some sort, who is having a substance abuse problem or dependency problem. All of these different ways that we can become involved, it doesn't just have to be after the youth is in foster care. How can we be there for our community and even in uncomfortable situations, like we have to, it is not comfortable to go insert yourself in somebody's foster care situation and to have to put yourself between that child and their parents and to attend those, to go watch and observe those meetings and report back to the court. It makes you feel like, you know, a little awkward sometimes, depending on the situation especially. And so I just want to bring that to people and arm us with knowledge from the message like you're bringing and just awareness and hopefully inspire more people to become CASAs, to become, to go out and do work like, like yourself to have that bravery to start your own thing and bring this message forward.

Sarah Buffie
Yeah. What, what's striking me as you're sharing is, um, my, my friend and colleague, uh, Amy Rebecca, uh, at restorative somatics, I think if you would go to lovesomatics.org, you can find all of her work, which is just incredible. She says, "if we want to change the system, we have to change the system." And for folks just listening, I don't know if you're watching, but we want to change the system, that outside system that you're talking about, Tibby, the foster care system, the child welfare system, all those types of things. We have to change our nervous system, our internal system. And what she means by that is, like I was saying before, we can be the mitigating antecedent, right? So antecedent, what happens before, right? As we're busy. As we're all stressed, I used to people get lost on what their role is in the push paper here and there. When we have, let's just take it to a team meeting, right? You're focused on Johnny, right? Let's not call him a case. Let's not call him a client, let's call him by his name. Right? We're here to gather around Johnny. If I'm on that team and I'm zooming in, or I'm showing up in person, I can do one of two things that can start to have a ripple effect. One, I can make sure I'm regulated when I show up at that table. Meaning I'm not coming in out of breath and just jumping into the problem. I'm taking my deep breath, and I'm present. You cannot change the past, and you can't really do anything in the future. We're not there yet. We only have the present moment. So how do I show up regulated in the present moment? The other invitation I believe we have is to be the vocal person to say, "Hey, can we start with the check-in? Before we go to crisis, can we breathe together? Can we stretch? Can we take a moment of mindfulness," right? That can shift the meeting to distress and checking out boxes to maybe more ground. And what happens when we're more grounded? We have more capacity for curiosity, focusing on what matters, our compassion, our empathy, our wisdom, et cetera. And it's not the huge policy change, but the system is made up of humans, and humans make sets of decisions. And if the humans are in distress and dysregulated, our policies and our procedures are going to be distressing and dysregulating, right? So I think it's easy to talk about all the problems out there and how we're up against so much, which we are, but where do we have power? It's in the personal and it's in the present moment. And that's where I think our hope is. Even the folks listening on the fence of, maybe I wanna be a CASA, maybe I wanna volunteer here. If even that feels too big, how do you listen to your grandchildren? How do you let your son or daughter off the hook from their bonehead mistakes at 12 or 14, and now they're 40? Can you see them with brand-new eyes? Can you see them with that beginner's mind, which is back to that mindfulness work, right? How do you show up in the grocery store, right? Are you irritated with the line being long, or are you smiling at someone to turn their day around, right? These little micro-moments do have a ripple effect. And I think if we can focus on those, we can feel a little bit more hope versus that thing out there that's too big to even touch. It really starts with what's showing up, what's happening on the inside here.
 
Tibby Starks
I appreciate that so much. I have seen or had these discussions a few times now, and it always comes back to these little moments. You know, for my guest about the Human Rights anniversary of the Human Rights Declaration, we actually had a conversation about how somebody just bought her a coffee in the coffee line because she was crying. And it was those little small gestures. And, with, with daybreak, we spoke about how just giving somebody a piece of candy or a snack, um, just noticing folks makes a difference. And for me coming to this message, this podcast, it is overwhelming. And I'm sitting here trying to, okay, how, how many different ways can I teach people to talk about compassion or how, how many different things can I teach them so that they can. you know, practices and everybody gets, you know, a message that works for them and how, and it's like man, it's the small shit. 

Sarah Buffie 
Yes, exactly. 

Tibby Starks 
All y'all keep telling me it's the small stuff. 

Sarah Buffie 
That's true. Well, let me, one of the last things I'll say is, and this is from Deb Dana, again, this is my work. I'm just reading all these studies of these people. But Deb Dana talks about, so she's the one who really first translated Stephen Portis's work to make it more accessible. Our brains are shaped by our early experiences, and our brains are reshaped by our continual experiences. Meaning, our physiology is laid down early on, right? Our brain is built by and to survive our environments, right? But after you get out of your childhood, adolescence, you know, to that 20 to 29 years old, your brain is continually being rewired and reshaped based on the micro moments of your life. Right? So we all have. I love that because it means the micro-moment I have with you isn't futile. It's not fleeting. It can either continue down a distress pass and confirm all of your fears that people aren't safe and people aren't to be trusted, or it can start to build a new groove. Maybe people are safe. Maybe people can be trusted. And if the next micro-moment affirms it, people are safe; people can be trusted. And the next one, next one, those build, and now I start to have a new neuronal network for what it means to be in relationship. What does it mean to be a person on this planet? So we cannot discount those micro moments that we have to offer to ourselves and to others. So yes, I hope that message keeps getting spread. 

Tibby Starks 
Well, Sarah, I appreciate you doing this so much. I appreciate your time. And the message is so important right now and so perfect for the show and everything that I'm trying to do. So thank you for your work. Thank you for your time. 

Sarah Buffie 
Thanks for having me.

Tibby Starks 
I hope you all enjoyed hearing from Sarah Buffie, and I hope that you apply some of her simple lessons to your everyday life, like considering how you might take a rest by simply implementing her six deep breaths and thinking about how you can start pouring into yourself, especially right now during the holiday season. As always, I appreciate you listening, and if you want to support the show, you can leave a review and you can share it with a friend who might be inspired to employ some of these lessons as well.

If you have feedback for the show, email me. I'm tibby at fosteringcompassionpod.com, and follow me on Instagram at fosteringcompassionpod. Until next time, be kind to each other, y'all.