Cathleen King- Primal Trust: you're really describing the journey that a lot of people go on. They start to learn a tool to turn off the extreme limbic system danger. And they're like, okay, great. That helped my symptoms. And it does because these things do shift your biochemistry. But when you use the tool to get rid of the symptom, what you're teaching yourself is that you have this first reaction, which is the symptom. And that your only way of being okay is to get rid of the symptom. And it's this quick fix issue. it's like a holistic Xanax pill. It works, it gets rid of the discomfort of the symptom a lot of the time. But the underlying thing that's causing the immune system, the nervous system to be overreactive in the first place wasn't attended to, which is that you're unable to be okay unless you have a sense of control and certainty. And the symptoms really represent this thing to control. And usually at some point, a lot of us grew up in an environment where things happen that were hurtful, scary, whatever, and we couldn't control them and we didn't have certainty. And so we end up in this perpetuating cycle through our life of trying to grasp for certainty and control, chasing relief. before chronic illness, it might have been perfectionism at work or overdrive here or, hypervigilance as a mother. these are the same underlying thing, which is I'm not okay unless everything else is okay.
Aubree Felderhoff: today I have an incredible guest, someone that was really imperative for my own recovery, Dr. Kathleen King. She's a DPT and is a physical therapist and neuroscience based mind-body practitioner. Her professional focus is on the chronic illness and trauma healing. She is the founder and CEO of the Primal Trust Academy and Community. a rapidly growing global platform that helps others unlock their self-healing. Her online program combines brain retraining, vagus nerve toning, somatics, and trauma-informed practices. So I am so excited. Welcome, Dr. Kat.
Cathleen: Thank you for having me.
Aubree: I would love for you to share with the listeners how you even got started into this and what led you to develop Primal Trust.
Cathleen: Yeah, well, many of your listeners, I had lots of weird symptoms and felt terrible. And I just remember feeling like, gosh, what is this? Nobody especially when you go to conventional doctors and you do all these tests, they're like, You're fine, I ended up discovering that I did indeed have mold illness and Lyme disease and co infections. And over time I became incredibly ill, many, many, many years debilitated. And at the time it was honestly the treatments available were too aggressive for me. I mean, this was like 10, 15 years ago. I just I was just someone who couldn't tolerate treatments. And I needed to find another way to gain function. I also didn't have the money to move or even like we were renting, we couldn't even find another rental. so I was living in mold. we cleaned, up what I could, but I couldn't afford anything. We were living off from church welfare, honestly, like even just for groceries. So by this point, I had nothing and I couldn't afford the expensive treatments. I couldn't even tolerate them. I had to find another way. and eventually I started understanding more about the nervous system and the brain and how. Much impact it has on things like your detoxification system, on mast cell activation syndrome, on your immune function, digestive function. And that was something that was really free that I could do because I had a background as a physical therapist that understood the nervous system. I did a bunch of self-study. This was before Instagram tools were all over the place for the nervous system. And I put together my own protocol, And I got my function back while living in mold. And that's when I realized this can really help people, even if they do have cleanup to do, and if they do have need treatment, that there's a possibility of getting a significant amount of function by just addressing the nervous system alone. and it's free once you learn how to do it. So That's what led me to creating Primal Trust, which is a nervous system rehabilitation protocol. It's not just some tools. It's a it's a very sequenced process that I put together based on how I think as a physical therapist, where there's correct timing for certain types of tools and there are times where some of them are not ideal and strung them all together into a full program, and that's what I do now.
Aubree: It's incredible. And you have helped so many at this point. I've been one of the lucky ones that got into your program and just reaped such benefits. And it's interesting, you said that it's not always the right time for the tools, even within your program. can you give me an example of what that looks like as far as something that's not appropriate at certain times
Cathleen: So most commonly, especially with a lot of people with mold illness, is they may have a history of adverse childhood events or childhood trauma or relational trauma. Because those kind of things do set up the immune system to end up having this dysregulatory, overreactive response to mold and mast cell. It's just a Common part of the puzzle. So if that's you and you hear, somatic work is really good for your nervous system, which means like body-based feeling practices. Well, that is true, it is good for the nervous system. If you're somebody who hasn't built a container to process emotions or to feel some of that trauma, as you start to do these practices that are Supposed to be good for your nervous system, you might start to dislodge a lot of old memory and emotional response. And it can actually flare things. It can make mast cell worse. It can make your immune system worse because your limbic system doesn't have the capacity to process quick enough what you what we're going through. Your vagus nerve tone might not be online enough to. regulate the autonomic nervous system after a sympathetic or a an activation spike. And so I learned the hard way because that was me. I was the case study of one who I tried things like EMDR. I tried things like parts work. I'm actually trained as a somatic therapist, even though I was sick and these practices did not work for me early on. They backfired and frankly increased what I would call a mast cell response. And so I had to learn how to carefully tiptoe into the nervous system when I had a minefield of trauma and learn what practices to use when. And then I, worked with thousands of people and kind of watched what worked and what didn't and created a sequence. Aubree Felderhoff | Mold Fr...: if you or someone that you love is dealing with mold illness or symptoms that look like they could be related to mold, and you're not sure where to start, you're feeling overwhelmed with even the thought of what to do next, you don't have to keep piecing this together alone. I offer a free discovery call where we can talk through where you are right now and what would actually help you get unstuck and move towards healing. Head over to moldfreemom.com and grab a free discovery call. See you there.
Aubree: Yeah. Yeah. It's very similar to my experience. I like to say I did everything wrong as I recovered from mold. A lot of the families that I work with, they have already moved away from mold and they expect that, and sometimes it is, but they expect that to be the answer, right? To get out of mold, to feel better. They're no longer stuck in, an environment that was making them sick. And yet they seem to continue to react. And for those people in particular, it can be very traumatic because they're thinking, I didn't fix the problem, we lost our home. We lost all of our possessions. That was my experience with our first home that had mold. and I continue to stay sick. And so can you speak a little bit to what is going on there nervous system wise? And even if you're no longer in an exposure or or actively breathing in those toxins, why
Cathleen: Yeah, yeah.
Aubree: the nervous system seems to stay stuck?
Cathleen: Yeah, yeah. I know this can be a maddening part of the thing. Like you go through these huge changes and you still don't feel well. You've done all the treatments. And unfortunately for some of you, your brain and your nervous system have become habituated into a type of we often call it a chronic cell danger response where the immune system is overreactive. It is even reacting to the smallest chemical still, even though you're out of mold. It's been trained that. That chemicals are dangerous, but it's also been trained that there's a there's a war going on in the body that it hasn't gotten the message that the war is over, we've moved out of mold and we don't need to overreact. And so it's an ongoing brain and nervous system miscommunication all the way down to the cellular level. meaning even the mast cells that are always like sitting on your nerves, listening, and are we okay? Are we not okay? They're still overreactive because they haven't gotten the signal from the brain and the autonomic nervous system that it's time to clean up and it's time to move on. And so this is more of a communication issue at this point, where there's just this ongoing what we call a cell danger response and ongoing mast cell overactivation and ongoing limbic system impairment. And that is, another journey. And it's honestly. It's the best journey because this is where you come home to yourself to learn how to consciously self-regulate your own biology through attending to the body, to the nervous system, to the cues it's picking up, where it starts to flare, and you're like, look, we are not in a dangerous place. This was an old, this is a almost like a memory reactivation. Body, I know you're throwing this massive flare just with that little bit of food. I'm not in the mold anymore. We don't have to flare to everything. So there's a lot of communication of learning how to be with this comfort and send a signal of safety at the same time, which is gonna feel very counterintuitive when you've been through the war of mold illness.
Aubree: absolutely. And I'm gonna ask you an impossible question, but
Cathleen: Okay.
Aubree: how do you, differentiate between the real and the false alarms that are going off because of course we don't wanna stay somewhere, you
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: know, if it's causing illness, but we have to be able to differentiate, it feels impossible.
Cathleen: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, there's obviously there's different layers of this. If this is your home, get a mold test and get some proof in the pudding of the levels. Okay. when you're traveling, sometimes you can't know. But here's the deal. I'm now at the point where I can stay in a moldy Airbnb and be okay. I can tell, but my system doesn't turn on the five alarm fire. So The first thing is obviously checking things. once you've checked things and you're still reacting, and sometimes when you're traveling, there's not there's nothing you can do. In primal trust, we have this whole concept called the second reaction that you need to learn how to modify. And what do I mean by that? Your first reaction is that you're having some type of flair. You can't, you don't know why, you don't know if it's real. You don't know if it's your immune system with just replaying a memory structure. You don't know if it's just an emotional surge. You have no idea what's causing that first reaction. That is outside of your control. And that is the reaction that over time you learn that no matter if it is a real mold exposure or if it's not, you still have to learn how to tend to that first reaction and bring a sense of ease and calm and presence, even if there's mold, because You want to help your system dampen down the war. And some people are like, but it's real. But it's, I want to say it's not helping you to react with that five alarm fire, even if there's real mold. So you have to attend to this first reaction differently. How you attend is called the second reaction. The second reaction is in your conscious control. And whether you are staying in an Airbnb with mold and there's nothing you can do. Or you're at home and there isn't mold and it's been tested, your second reaction is about learning how to bring in cues of safety, bringing in a regulated breath, a regulated focus, bringing your attention outside of things just other than mold, bringing your attention to life so that your immune system, your nervous system, your brain get a message that I'm sensing something. But it doesn't need to be the five alarm fire that it used to be. Or this is a temporary situation in this Airbnb for two nights and will pass. And I have things I can do to help clean up. So it's the second reaction. And this is like we have this 40-day daily regulate. Every day for 40 days, I teach you how to attend to the second reaction and retrain that entire response. So it's not something you can usually do at once. So I'm saying it needs to be repetitive day after day after day to help you break that vicious cycle of overreacting to that first reaction, which is usually out of your control.
Aubree: wow. Yeah, that makes so much sense. we are constantly going to be exposed, just in the environment, not just to mold, but to every
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: sort of thing. And so just learning how to take yourself out of that. I'm in an emergency. I have to get out panic mode so that you can continue to heal. It's almost, I envision it almost as like a motherly hug, you know, just kind of wrapping
Cathleen: It's yeah.
Aubree: it up and saying it's okay. You're okay. Even if you're in the exposure, even if you're here, you're gonna be okay so that your body can then go back to neutral.
Cathleen: Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's it's parenting yourself through it.
Aubree: Yeah, yeah. So I want to circle back because this is a huge thing right now that I know has been around for a long time, but it's just now starting to come out more and more on that cell danger response. And I've had a lot of clients talking to me about that and asking, you know, about the research behind it. what exactly is cell danger response. How do we get in that and how do we get out?
Cathleen: Yeah. Yeah. So the cell danger response model that was developed by Dr. Robert Navio is the model that really helped me to piece together why addressing the the nervous system in particular when you have chronic illness is one of the most direct paths to regulating your immune response, your mast cell response, your digestive system. because your cells are. Constantly getting signals from your nervous system of we have pathogens in the environment to protect from, or we have toxins in the environment, or there's this physical injury. The cells are always on the lookout to do we need to protect ourselves? And when there is signaling of pathogens, toxins, chemical injury, and it's reached a certain threshold, the cells are going to go into a cell. danger response, they will harden the outside, the outer layer of the cell wall to protect from further invaders, also just to make sure that they, you know, stay alive. It's a way of self-preservation. The mitochondria have a lot to do with what's happening here. And I'm not going to fully go into that, but the point is is if you had a mold exposure, Or a pathogen exposure like Lyme, eventually those cells need to get a signal that we can come out of protection. And why do we need to do that? Because that cell wall is not letting nutrients in and it's not letting toxins out when it's in the hunker-down mode. And there's a time and place for that. But then there's a time and a place where if you do that too long, you're gonna have nutrient deficiencies, you're gonna have toxicities. The cellular communication will cause things like digestion to be slow slowed, detox to be slowed. The immune system stays overreactive. So you get this excessive amount of immune cells circulating. You're not going through something called autophagy, which is immune cleanup. And that just creates a really toxic environment full of inflammatory cytokines and other chemicals, which is why you feel so crappy when you are stuck in an ongoing cell danger response. Ongoing is the key word. The cell danger response is supposed to ramp up and go away. How do you get the cell danger response to stop the ongoing thing? Well, of course, cleaning up pathogens and toxins are part of it. But I'm finding with this population that maybe even more importantly is getting a nervous system signal from the brain and the autonomic nervous system that there's some safety here and we don't need to be in the five-alarm fire. Maybe it just needs to be like a two-alarm fire. it doesn't need to be the five alarm fire, which means there's still some cleanup to do and things to protect, but we don't need to hunker down quite so much. So that is the the gist of the cell danger response and why autonomic nervous system rebalancing and brain retraining are a crucial piece of recovering from chronic illness.
Aubree: Yeah, explains so much of, my personal journey of doing so many supplements and so many different natural things. And yet it's probably not even getting in the cell at that point. People when they're moving into cell danger response, my understanding is it typically is an ongoing exposure. But do you find just through primal trust that you can still be an ongoing exposure, but get out of that cell danger response? and maybe it's not a zero, but like you said, from a five to a two, is that moving out and making your cell walls
Cathleen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Aubree: more permeable?
Cathleen: Yeah. that's what I did. Like I said, I wasn't able to move for years. And many of my many, many of our members don't have the funds and resourcing to be able to move. So we do see people gain more tolerance. And for many of you, think about it, probably some of you grew up in mold and you weren't sick. I did. When people are like, it's not possible for me to heal while in mold, and I have the HLA gene, so do I. So do many of us. Okay. But some of you
Aubree: Same.
Cathleen: did live in mold and were not sick. Some of you have family members with the same genetics and are not sick in mold. So it can't be true that it's impossible to heal while while in mold. Does it make it more difficult once you've already had the flare? Absolutely. And that means you're gonna have to attend. To these first and second reactions that I'm talking about, you're gonna have to attend to your brain state, your nervous system, your emotional processing, your relationships, your self-care diligently. You know, you're gonna have to really attend to these things if you have to live and mold. But it's possible at the very least to get a a good amount of your function back, in my experience. Now, it might not mean that you're gonna be free and that you won't have to treat. Some people can get function back, but they still test high levels of mycotoxins and they have to treat. But here's the cool thing. When you get your nervous system on board, the ability to handle the treatments is so much better. So you're gonna get a lot more bang for your buck. I mean, treatments weren't working for me. I couldn't like you, I I wasn't tolerating supplements. Binders weren't doing much because I was just locked down. and it's also true that it is harder to retrain your nervous system while living in mold because you have a constant irritation. It's like living in a, a a constant irritating environment while trying to find calm. Yes, absolutely. It is harder. And I empathize with that, but it's still possible. It's still possible.
Aubree: Yeah, I love that. it gives people hope because it's so hard. Like you said, there are so many that can't get out. And mold is a a very common problem. And I was able to go from bedbound to completely functioning and being a mom again to my three boys. I wasn't completely healed, but I was really very, very functional and living a a good life just with nervous system retraining before I ever did anything with the mold piece, So it it was huge for me. So I wanna ask a question that I know is in everyone's, back of mind if they haven't done a primal trust or looked at brain retraining. And that is something that I dealt with at the beginning. When I started looking into brain rewiring and and different programs, I thought, isn't this just like a glass half fool type mentality, right? Like a think it and and you become it type of
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: program. And so can you speak to that? Because I know a lot of people when I bring this up to them, like, hey, I really think you're missing this. They're like, no, I'm a very positive thinker. And I'm like, well, that's not exactly what we're doing here. And so maybe
Cathleen: Yeah. Yeah.
Aubree: you could speak a little bit more to you know, this isn't just an all-in-your-head type of program, but what
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: it's actually physically doing and chemically doing within our body.
Cathleen: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So in part of the reason why Primal Trust doesn't just do brain retraining is because the truth is brain retraining isn't for everyone. And there are lots of different ways of doing it. some of it might involve looking for like creating positive or or calming states, but sometimes brain retraining involves creating courageous states and it involves atten like discerning your needs and actually following through. It's retraining the habitual ways you live that might be contributing to your dysfunction. Sometimes brain retraining is about looking for the the ways to connect in your relationships, even though you have suffering going on, because that's going to help raise oxytocin levels and other things. So just want to say that about brain retraining that yes, there are certain like programs that like really teach this. Positive calming state. I don't teach that way. I I teach a lot of different state changes with brain retraining. But primal trust in particular, we have 40 different main tools in our level one program alone, brain retraining being just one of them. And that is because attending to the nervous system is multifaceted. Sometimes it's about literally learning how to actually feel your emotions because some of you. Are numbed out and are so focused on symptoms that you're not actually even able to feel underlying emotional states that are contributing, especially to like mast cell flares and things like that. Some are so stuck in a in a shutdown state, you don't know how to help your nervous system get back into life, feeling able to safely connect and move. And that's also a nervous system practice. Some of you are avoiding things like anxiety and insomnia and not actually learning how to tend to the states of anxiety and insomnia through various nervous system tools. on a chemical level, for example, we do a lot of vagus nerve toning practices. The vagus nerve directly affects the immune system with something known as the anti-cholinergic pathway, It's basically changing the inflammatory signaling that the immune system is dealing with. It's affecting your HPA access that's gonna affect how your hormones and other neurochemistry is being produced. It's going to affect your digestion, your motility, even your metabolic function, like your insulin and glucose levels. So On a very chemical level. Vagus nerve toning, for example, has a lot of research showing that it's affecting a lot of brain to body communication in all sorts of systems that are very physical, very chemical. So it does shift your chemical state. It's not just about a positive thought. it's fascinating that we have this arsenal of tools within our own our psyche and our in within our own ability to access just with vagus nerve toning that can change our biochemistry.
Aubree: with the vagal nerve toning, number one, how do we, lose our vagal nerve toning? Is that just more of a trauma response or living, you know, sick for a long time? Or do some people just not have the toning? Like, because I don't I don't remember as a child having to tone my vagal nerve, but being healthy. And so what
Cathleen: No, yeah.
Aubree: happens to cause that? and then second to the question is. Do you have some examples of what we can do to begin working on our our vagal nerve toning?
Cathleen: Yeah. So the vagus nerve is the access point to help you go into rest and digest. It's it's really helping you to get into a parasympathetic nervous system state. So there's a couple reasons why vagal tone can go offline. One of the things honestly develop is is based on our development. Our vagus nerve is developed through even the the voice and the pitch around what we hear, facial expression. So if we are around flat. numbed out adults or adults that are negative with children if we grow up in highly fight or flight type environments that are very stressful having a constant sympathetic overdrive is going to affect our vagal tone our vagus nerve runs right down through our neck, our posture, our upper cervical alignment, our tone, our somatic fascial tightness. All of these things can contribute to a poor vagal tone. so we we didn't grow up having to exercise them, but as adults, if we've gotten into highly stressed dysfunctional environments, we might need to do that.
Aubree: what are the signs that our vagus nerve has gone offline or the toning is is really low.
Cathleen: digestive issues. If you have ex especially just like the bloating and the constipation, things like that, it lets you know that your motility is slowed. Your vagus nerve and your gut are highly related. So digestive issues is one of the first ones. Brain fog is another common one. the inability to Actually shift into rest and digest. that if you're going, going, going all day and you go to like sit on the couch and you just like your brain can't stop going, or you wake up and your brain is just going, it's showing that you're not like tipping
Aubree: Me? Yeah.
Cathleen: into that parasympathetic phase. Also, on the flip side, sometimes we can have so much stress that we go into deep shutdown and you're just overwhelmed by everything, you feel frozen. That's also a nervous system issue on the on the reverse. So there's the fight or flight and then there's the shutdown. So that extreme fatigue and extreme lethargy and almost like numb to the world, that's also a sign that you're you're having some issues.
Aubree: So what can we do when we when we find we're dealing with a lot of those? What would you suggest?
Cathleen: Yeah, well, obviously we have primal trust, which will walk you through
Aubree: Yes.
Cathleen: a whole bunch of different things. because you have your vagus nerve that runs down both sides of your neck, just humming and singing it's important to change the pitch of your voice into almost like Disneyland, Disney song type, higher and talking like this and and singing like this and humming like this, this change, like a like a happy kindergarten mom, kind of like that kind of voice can be really helpful. low pitch toning as well. in yoga they use the word om in somatic experiencing, they use the word vo, vo-o, where you take a deep breath in. And then you exhale and you just say the word voo VO VU. Exhale and repeatedly doing that. Even just one, I could feel my system go. So that is one of the quickest ways in even how we talk to ourselves. I love going for a walk and singing to myself, soothing messages or messages of hearing myself with whatever's going on. Almost like I'm I'm using my toning, my voice to sing. in a pleasant way, a song about whatever I'm going through as a way of just expressing and moving emotion out of me. that always feels really good and seems to be addressed part of this too.
Aubree: I love that idea of singing to yourself while you're walking. That's so fun. So
Cathleen: Yeah. Yeah.
Aubree: I want to ask some specific questions now, Dr. Kat, about primal trust and what the differentiator is. I know you talked a little bit about you combine, you know, not just one piece, but really all the different pieces. But one thing that struck me when I went through primal trust is that you do tend to combine a top. down work so the brain retraining, but then also the bottom up work with the semantics. and in previous programs that I had done, I had not experienced that. And I just thought, wow, that was fantastic, you know, to really have this all encompassing type of program. I'm curious, A, what inspired that? I know that you said, you know, went through everything, but it was just training or or how you knew to combine and why
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: that is a big part of the program.
Cathleen: Yeah. Well, again, I have a background as a physical therapist and I worked a lot with chronic pain. So I was used to addressing structure and the brain already, meaning bottom up, which is the body and top down with the brain. And when you look at anatomy, if you're looking at what causes the nervous system to do what it does, it is the brain and the autonomic nervous system and vagus nerve and the feedback loop. It is not just the brain and it is not just the body. And it never ever made sense to me to use one tool to address the entire thing. It's it's it's it's actually impossible. And what I also saw is that brain retraining early on was this huge fad. And as I would work with some of those people that were just doing brain retraining, I noticed that they were very much in I'm gonna call it distraction mode, which was helpful to them. But if anything real happened in their relationship life or a job change or something that required deep emotional presence, they did not have the capacity for. They didn't have the capacity in their autonomic nervous system to shift between states. They only had the capacity of shifting into a positive limbic state, which it's great, but it's not the same as processing trauma and doing somatic work. And I also understand that rehabilitation of any system is a multifaceted process. It's not a one-size-fits-all tool. It's not how things usually work with the body. And so I studied to create this physical therapy for the nervous system protocol that what that weaves together various pieces because, to change the nervous system, it's not going to just happen by addressing the limbic system. And it's not going to just happen by doing some somatic practices.
Aubree: You know what I found fascinating when I went through the program was I had done a previous just mind to body, nervous system retraining and it was super, super helpful. However, I had not done the bottom up type of practice. And so when I got into primal trust, I didn't get into it for this reason of dealing with things that had happened in the past and patterns that were, repeating. But what I noticed was that even though I was well for the most part, symptom-wise, I had a lot of the same habits and same patterns repeating, but they just look different. it's a different outside cover, but the same thing underneath it that was that was going on. And it was because I had previously done programs to get well. and get rid of the symptoms. But what you talked a lot about in your trainings was that we're not, just looking to get rid of symptoms, but to actually fix the root behind it and find out why we're, reacting this way and why it's become a pattern. and teaching ourselves and learning to value ourselves and Create safety internally, I didn't have mold symptoms anymore, but I had a lot of the behaviors that had stemmed, at the same time that now look different. I wanna know, if you see that commonly with people that struggle
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: with chronic illness and what do you think causes that? Is that just a missed piece of the puzzle or is that deep rooted pain or something we haven't uncovered? I
Cathleen: you're really describing the journey that a lot of people go on. They start to learn a tool to turn off the extreme limbic system danger. And they're like, okay, great. That helped my symptoms. And it does because these things do shift your biochemistry. But when you use the tool to get rid of the symptom, what you're teaching yourself is that you have this first reaction, which is the symptom. And that your only way of being okay is to get rid of the symptom. And it's this quick fix issue. it's like a holistic Xanax pill. It works, it gets rid of the discomfort of the symptom a lot of the time. But the underlying thing that's causing the immune system, the nervous system to be overreactive in the first place wasn't attended to, which is that you're unable to be okay unless you have a sense of control and certainty. And the symptoms really represent this thing to control. And usually at some point, a lot of us grew up in an environment where things happen that were hurtful, scary, whatever, and we couldn't control them and we didn't have certainty. And so we end up in this perpetuating cycle through our life of trying to grasp for certainty and control, chasing relief. before chronic illness, it might have been perfectionism at work or overdrive here or, hypervigilance as a mother. these are the same underlying thing, which is I'm not okay unless everything else is okay. I don't have an innate okayness inside of me. I don't have access to primal trust, that's what I call it, inside of me. Unless everything that's going on in my life is going on exactly like I want it to. And so primal trust over time, it was an evolution for me too. I mean, initially I'm like, yeah, I want my symptoms gone. And then I realized, like, whoa, I am repeating
Aubree: Yeah.
Cathleen: these patterns in all their aspects of my life. I mean, it became like even running a business and my relationship
Aubree: Yes.
Cathleen: and mothering. I'm like, it's the same thing. It's like an unwanted symptom that I want to control in other people and other things.
Aubree: Yes.
Cathleen: And instead, I needed to learn how to tend to my own nervous system while things were outside of my control and find and access a place of safety within to allow life to unfold a little bit without my grasping and needing it to be the way I want it to be. And that is an ongoing journey. And I am still in it as a mother and as a business owner, right? But
Aubree: Thank you.
Cathleen: it is the journey that I think has brought me way more. Freedom and more balance in my nervous system and in my body by being able to do that. Otherwise, what ends up happening with your situation, you might notice, you take care of symptoms in one way, but it's like playing whack-a-mole. new things emerge. all of a sudden there's hormone issues or sleep issues. It's just a constant game of whack-a-mole when you're using the tool. to quench the symptom versus using the tool to attend to you as a being and as a person to be able to hold space for the uncertainty of life.
Aubree: it's essentially going to the root instead of the symptoms, it sounds like you are still working through it, even now. And I know I am, but how many people along the journey do you see the the same pattern where they're coming in because we're miserable and we're clearly experiencing things that we don't want to experience, symptoms or sickness or whatever. and then as they start to heal. Recognizing, the symptoms are for the most part moving on, yet I'm still experiencing similar, issues. Is that common? Is that just human beings? Is that moms or females? I know you have males in the program too, but is
Cathleen: Yeah. Yeah.
Aubree: that just our personality type or
Cathleen: No, I would I haven't met one yet that hasn't found that there's more
Aubree: Okay.
Cathleen: to their symptoms than, you know, there are people who are very securely attached and have a pretty good resiliency. There's someone who might get a mold exposure, a pathogen, they go in on a danger response cell danger response and they come out of it and they come back into their life. The people who have ongoing, unresolving symptoms are the ones that I'm talking to and that we're we're discussing because they their system just it's one thing after another after another after another. Those are the ones that usually have some underlying stress pattern that hasn't been addressed fully.
Aubree: So practicality wise, how long does it take for that type of person, Dr. Kat,
Cathleen: That's good.
Aubree: to go, from coming in just one to 10, probably at a level one, just feeling horrible,
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: barely functioning. I don't know if 10 is possible or if it's an ongoing thing,
Cathleen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Aubree: but you know, to really loving life and having connection
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: again and feeling secure and safe no matter what. Because what we're really after, yes, we want the symptoms crap, but what we're really after is just getting our lives back, right? And being able to enjoy
Cathleen: Yeah. Yeah.
Aubree: life and being safe and secure no matter what is thrown at us. and it's fully
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: possible with primal trust. But how long typically do you see that that takes on
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: an average?
Cathleen: we have people who maybe they have been ill for one or two years or less. So meaning that's not been a long period of time. They had kind of a a concrete, you know, I had this mold exposure, I had this. Some of them go through our 40-day program, 40 days of just rerouting every day, and they're they're doing okay. And I think it's because It wasn't like a deep-seated thing. They might have had a pretty decent enough upbringing, maybe not perfect, but enough where there was resourcing and stability in their life, and they just had so had to develop some new ways of attending to themselves. And so, a couple months and they're like, wow, I feel a lot better. And then there are those who have had a lot more childhood trauma. they haven't had secure attachment, meaning they don't feel very safe in relationship. And they've had a lot of things. Those ones I usually say I would plan on six months or more. we just launched a process where you can be guided in small groups at no extra charge for at least six to nine months for those who have this kind of history because it is a journey. And we and a lot of the research shows, like the neuroplasticity research shows to practice for at least six months because you're rerouting neural pathways that have been. Carved for years. But again, if you think about it, like the amount of time you've been sick, six months, nine months, it's nothing. And in a lot of times, that's not feeling terrible the entire time. Like for me, after about four months, I had a huge gain of function and I was sick for many, many, many, many years. So you're doing well and you're doing primal trust because it's still helping to optimize even more and more. So while the journey might be a little longer, it can be beautiful. And I highly recommend that if you're in more of a a a debilitated condition for longer term, these small guided groups that we have is such a better way to go through it than on your own, just self-study figuring it out. So I would recommend that for those those kind of folks.
Aubree: Yeah, I love that. The self-guided, I'm assuming that's a virtual where you can join
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: from anywhere. And is that where they're teaching the 40 days of daily regulate, or is that they're teaching a small set every is it daily or weekly,
Cathleen: Yeah. we're taking you through the entire primal trust journey. So level one and level two and level three if you want. And so you meet weekly for seventy-five minutes and you're kind of told, Okay, here's the big idea, here's what to focus on. You're learning from, a train guide. you have peers that are going through the same thing. So it's very clear each week of what you should be focusing on in in this program that's quite comprehensive. So yeah.
Aubree: Okay. Yeah, because it is very comprehensive. And I remember when I first got into it, I was overwhelmed, which I tend to overwhelm easily. But there is so much information.
Cathleen: Yeah. Yeah.
Aubree: I mean, it is truly a wealth that you could spend a decade in and probably not get enough. So it sounds like what you're talking about, the study guide is amazing because it's essentially not a tutor, but you know, a small group that's that's telling you here's what we're doing this time, now we're gonna do this and holding you accountable, but also supporting you and and pouring into you. So I love that.
Cathleen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Aubree: I would love for you really quick since you mentioned it, the three levels of your program,
Cathleen: Mm-hmm.
Aubree: can you speak a little bit into what those are, like what the three levels are and and what is encompassed in each of those and why you do the order that you do.
Cathleen: Yeah. So most of you would probably come into the program saying, I want my symptoms to be better now. I want to feel better now. And I found that the most direct way to do that is to teach you the various nervous system tools to help shifting your biochemistry. So level one, you are learning the basics of nervous system toolkits, like limbic system retraining or brain retraining, vagus nerve toning, somatic work, breath work, and you're learning how to start building more resiliency in the nervous system right away. That's all level one. You're gonna learn how to self-regulate in all sorts of situations. And that usually causes quite a significant symptom shift as well. Level two is where you actually start addressing underlying, I call them often call them trauma patterns, emotional processing patterns, resistance patterns that have been feeding the issue in the first place. So while you might clear up a lot of the symptoms in level one, like you learn. Aubree,, that there are these other patterns that you were doing in the rest of your life, like you were behaving with your symptoms, feeling out of control, grasping, stressing out, things like that. What is all of that about? Because it's really the same fire that lit the fire in your immune system, when you had mold. It's the same underlying fire that if you let the way that you're reacting in life, the way that you are showing up for yourself, How you're living your values, the way that you're living your purpose, your parenting, things like that. If you're not addressing what's driving you, you can still have a lot of suffering in your life. So we work on that in level two and in level three. And that's my favorite part of the program. It's actually why I created primal trust. I started primal trust as the level two, level three program, which was originally for brain retrainers that didn't know how to address the rest of their life.
Aubree: Yeah.
Cathleen: it's a rich, beautiful journey of people why are just like you, who you're learning from, I'm now learning what it is to have this inner regulated adult presence. So a lot of us didn't have an inner regulated mother father example. And you're learning what your value systems are. It's really fun. I love our level two and three programs.
Aubree: Yes, it is a lot of fun. It's fascinating to see, there's a reason that I'm responding this way and I never
Cathleen: Mm-hmm.
Aubree: sat back and thought about it, And I'm curious how many people, because you have had thousands go through the program, do you see that are coming from childhood trauma? Because you keep bringing that up. And I know for myself that I was one of those, and I know from your story, you know, that you had. you had a difficult childhood, is that almost a precursor? it just seems very, very, very common, at least in the mold community. You weren't safe at home as a child and then
Cathleen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Aubree: you're not safe at home with mold, you're not safe at home now. And so it seems connected to me.
Cathleen: Yeah, it's a huge thing. there's a test called the ACES test, ACE test by Kaiser Permanente. I would take the test, it's 10 questions, and it kind of gives you a score as to what your level of childhood adverse events were. And there's a statistic that really if you score two or more, there's a statistic that you're you might not be doing well, but four or more, especially, like you're really set up for chronic illness. And I had a score of nine out of ten. And so, you know, I was set up for this. So it's definitely a big part of it. And a lot of times we don't think of certain things as traumatic. Like sometimes trauma is just being neglected. Sometimes trauma is being pushed too hard. It's it's really independent on how you've interpreted. How you were parented, not exactly the things that were done, but how it impacted you and how it set up certain coping behaviors ongoing. And it's not always childhood. Sometimes we have a huge loss, earlier in our life or even in our 20s and 30s that really impacted us. And we didn't have the support that we needed to grieve, to go through it or whatever, because our culture, frankly, stinks at grief work. And so these kind of things can create an ongoing trauma response in the body too. It doesn't always need to be childhood.
Aubree: Dr. Kat, I want to give you the floor. If you just want to speak to someone that's listening right now and they're feeling just overwhelmed and don't know where to start and they're, speaking from my own experience, feeling as if they're never gonna heal, as if they're hopeless and they
Cathleen: Yeah.
Aubree: don't know what to do. What do you what do you recommend and what do you want to tell them?
Cathleen: Well, I feel like we're at a different time than when I went through this. When I went through this, there was no answers, there wasn't programs, there wasn't Instagram full of self-help ticks and tri tips and biohacks, etc. So people right now almost are getting flooded with information overload. I mean, there's a million nervous system hacks on Instagram. There's all of these different methods for treating mold. And here's what I would say: find a process and just that has a full ideal protocol, whether it's a mold protocol, a nervous system protocol, and follow the whole process. Because I'm finding that people that come in and out of primal trust and trying tools and they're back and forth with different programs versus just sticking to, okay, I'm gonna do this for six to nine months. I'm gonna do I'm gonna join the study pod and complete this process. I'm gonna do this mold protocol. I'm gonna stick with this person. And when it gets a little bumpy, we're gonna work through it. Try to stay in the process with someone and try to see it through. We have too much coming at us right now. So pick someone. it doesn't need to be my program, it could be a book or or or even like a practitioner that resonates with you and you know, say, I'm gonna show up for this for whatever the next six to nine months, even if it's bumpy, I'm gonna stay with it. I'm not gonna just jump ship and go back to Instagram and look for the latest hack. That's really important right now. So I'll I'll leave you with that.
Aubree: Yeah, I love that. I was someone that in that boat of it's not working. I've got to go to the next thing and the next thing because I was so desperate and I never gave a lot of it a fair chance. And I think that's probably nervous system dysregulation too, of trying to fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it. So great
Cathleen: Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
Aubree: advice. And I would like to plug for her to go do Primal Trust because it's fantastic. It is life changing, it is life giving. yeah, it's an amazing, amazing program. I will link all of that at the bottom of the show notes. But I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and spending an hour with us today. I really appreciate it.
Cathleen: Thank you for having me.
Aubree: Thanks for listening to Mold Free Mom. If this episode has helped you make sense of some of your symptoms, diagnoses, or why nothing has worked in the past, please make sure to follow the show and leave a quick review so others who are struggling can find it quicker. If this episode brought someone struggling with unexplained sickness or mold to mind, please share it so they don't have to waste years of their life chasing the wrong answers like I did. Remember, you're not broken. You can get your life back. You just need to be shown how.
