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Trauma Rewired

Trauma Rewired

By: Elisabeth Kristof & Jennifer Wallace
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 The Podcast that teaches you about your nervous system, how trauma gets stored in the body and what you can do to heal.@2025 Biological Sciences Personal Development Personal Success Science
Episodes
  • Food Freedom: How Your Nervous System Uses Food for Regulation

    Food Freedom: How Your Nervous System Uses Food for Regulation
    Apr 20 2026
    You were not failing at your diet. Your nervous system was doing exactly what it learned to do to survive. In this episode, Jennifer Wallace and Elisabeth Kristof go deep on one of the most personal and most pervasive patterns they have both lived through: the disordered relationship with food and the body. Building on their recent conversation with Luis Mojica, this is the episode where they go further, bringing the neuroscience, the lived experience, and the practical path forward into a single, honest conversation. Both hosts have a long history with binge eating disorder. For decades, food was the primary regulation strategy, the way the nervous system found relief from stress it had no other tools to process, the way the body found pleasure when pleasure felt dangerous, and the way a dysregulated system managed to keep functioning. They are not talking about this from the outside. They are talking about it from the other side. The conversation moves through several layers. First, why food behaviors are regulation strategies, not character flaws, and why disordered eating works, at least until it doesn't. Then into interoception, the brain's ability to sense internal body signals, and how disrupted interoceptive awareness drives everything from not knowing you're full to being unable to feel your own emotional states. They trace how visual processing deficits can distort body image and increase stress load, how the default mode network gets locked into self-referential rumination and body obsession, and how the salience network learns to flag the body itself as a threat. Elisabeth breaks down what is actually happening neurologically when the obsessive loop runs, why insight alone does not stop it, and what actually interrupts it: sensory anchoring, movement, proprioceptive tools, and the slow building of emotional processing capacity over time. Jennifer brings it back to the body and the breath, to shame, to the secret eating and the shame spirals that followed, and to what it actually felt like to slowly, gradually come out of that. The episode closes with one of the most important reframes in the whole conversation: healing your relationship with food and your body is not about getting the food right. It is a portal into self-attunement, emotional processing, and relational capacity that ripples into every area of life. It is post-traumatic growth. In This Episode, You Will Learn: Why food behaviors are nervous system regulation strategies, not willpower failures How the absence of early co-regulation leads to using food as a modulation tool Why diets fail without somatic and nervous system support in place How interoceptive deficits drive disordered eating, emotional disconnection, and body image distortion How visual processing issues can compound stress load and body dysmorphia What the default mode network and salience network have to do with food obsession and body rumination Why psychedelics can soften rigid thought loops temporarily but cannot rewire them without nervous system preparation and integration How to interrupt the rumination loop using sensory anchoring, orienting, movement, and proprioception Why shame is harder to metabolize than any food behavior and how to begin working with it somatically How uncoupling pleasure from shame is a critical and often overlooked part of healing the relationship with food and body Why healing the food relationship is one of the deepest portals to relational health and post-traumatic growth Chapter Markers 0:00 - Food as Energy, Rest, and the High Performer Trap 01:08 - Welcome: Moving From Control to Self-Attunement 03:20 - Six Years of Conversations About Food and How Far We Have Come 06:24 - Every Diet Failed. Here Is Why. 08:31 - Food Behaviors Are Regulation Strategies, Not Character Flaws 11:29 - Safety Has to Come Before Pattern Change 14:19 - Perfectionism, the Inner Critic, and Controlling Appearance as a Stress Response 15:43 - How Vision Training Changed Body Image 19:50 - Interoception: The Missing Piece in Food and Body Healing 23:56 - Physical Hunger vs Emotional Need: Learning to Tell the Difference 28:13 - Interrupting the Pattern in Real Time 30:28 - Building Emotional Processing as a Skill 36:56 - The Default Mode Network and Why the Obsessive Loop Runs 40:05 - The Salience Network: When Your Brain Learns Your Body Is a Threat 41:58 - How to Interrupt the Loop: Sensory Anchoring, Movement, and Proprioception 53:14 - Shame, Secret Eating, and How They Get Woven Together 56:12 - Uncoupling Pleasure From Shame: A Portal Back to the Body 1:01:32 - Food as One of the Deepest Portals to Post-Traumatic Growth Ways to Engage with Neurosomatics Join us inside Rewire: This is where you actually experience the practices Jennifer and Elisabeth talk about on the podcast that brought us freedom, self-attunement, a new relationship with food and our body. rewiretrial.com Explore the neurosomatics of boundaries: ...
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • The Hidden Link Between Trauma, Food, and Your Stress Response

    The Hidden Link Between Trauma, Food, and Your Stress Response
    Apr 13 2026
    Food is not just fuel. It is one of the most powerful ways your nervous system regulates stress, emotion, and survival. In this episode of Trauma Rewired, Jennifer Wallace and Elisabeth Kristof are joined by somatic practitioner and author Luis Mojica to explore the hidden relationship between trauma, cravings, and the nervous system. Together, they unpack why food can become a coping strategy for unprocessed emotion, how certain foods can increase or decrease your stress response, and why cravings are not a lack of discipline—but a signal from the body. This conversation breaks down how stimulants like sugar and caffeine can drive anxiety through adrenaline and blood sugar spikes, while heavier, processed foods can temporarily numb overwhelming emotional states—creating a cycle of activation and shutdown that many people mistake for "addiction." You'll learn how food impacts your nervous system 24/7—often more than any therapy session—and why true healing is not about restriction, but about understanding what your body is trying to regulate. This episode also introduces a new way of relating to food through a nervous system lens—moving beyond "healthy vs. unhealthy" into understanding foods as stimulants, depressants, or balancers that shape your emotional and physiological state. If you've ever felt stuck, ashamed, or confused in your relationship with food, this episode will help you see your patterns through a completely new lens—one rooted in compassion, biology, and nervous system awareness. What You'll Learn: • Why cravings are signals for unmet emotional, relational, or physical needs • How food can activate or calm your stress response • The connection between trauma, emotional repression, and eating patterns • Why willpower fails and nervous system support works • How to begin shifting your relationship with food without restriction This is not about fixing your relationship with food. It's about understanding the nervous system underneath it. #traumarewired #nervoussystem #emotionaleating #traumahealing #mentalhealth Chapter Markers 00:00 - Food Is Not About Eating Less. It Is About Eating Differently. 00:43 - Welcome: Food as a Portal Into the Nervous System 01:56 - Introducing Luis Mojica and the Chocolate at 4 p.m. Story 04:36 - Why Food Belongs in the Trauma Conversation 06:46 - Cravings as a Compass: The Three Unmet Needs Behind Every Food Behavior 08:07 - Why Diets Fail Without Somatics 09:21 - What Happens When You Understand What Your Cravings Actually Mean 14:33 - Food Induced Stress: How What You Eat Can Keep You in Fight or Flight 16:28 - Stimulants, Depressants, and Balancers: The Three Categories 21:55 - Seesaw Regulation: How the Body Unconsciously Alchemizes With Food 28:35 - It Is a Loop. It Was Always a Loop. 32:00 - Food Sobriety and Why Balancers Make You Feel More, Not Less 37:26 - How to Weave Balancers In Without Taking Anything Away 43:18 - The Quiet Diet: Creating Space to Actually Feel Connect with Luis: Get Luis Mojica's new book Food Therapy: A powerful deep dive into how food, trauma, and the nervous system are all connected—and how to work with your body instead of against it. https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/the-book Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holistic.life.navigation/ Ways to Engage with Neurosomatics: Join us inside Rewire: This is where you actually experience the practices Jennifer and Elisabeth talk about on the podcast that brought us freedom, self-attunement, a new relationship with food and our body. rewiretrial.com Introduction to neurosomatics for practitioners, coaches and therapists - The NSI foundations Bundle: https://neurosomaticintelligence.com/workshops/ Wayfinder Journal: Track nervous system patterns and support preparation and integration through Neurosomatic Intelligence: https://stan.store/illuminated Join Jennifer on Sacred Synapse to explore the intersection of neurosomatics and Psychedelic neuroscience:...
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    47 mins
  • The Mother Wound: How It Shapes Your Relationships, Voice, and Emotional Expression

    The Mother Wound: How It Shapes Your Relationships, Voice, and Emotional Expression
    Apr 6 2026
    The mother wound is not just about your mother. It is about the first nervous system that shaped yours—the earliest relational field that told you whether you were safe, wanted, and free to take up space. And it lives in the body long before it lives in the story. In this episode, Jennifer Wallace and Elisabeth Kristof are joined by Brooke Wolfe, somatic voice activation coach, musician of 20 years, and a dear friend of both hosts. Brooke's work lives at the intersection of nervous system safety, vocal expression, and the parts of the feminine that have been suppressed, exiled, and told they are too much. Together, they explore the mother wound as an attachment and nervous system imprint—one that shows up not just in relationships, but in how you breathe, how you move, whether you feel permission to make noise, and whether you have ever truly learned to receive. Brooke brings a perspective that is both poetic and grounded. She shares the pelvis–throat connection as a place where early disconnection shows up physically, how the voice becomes a tool for masking rather than connecting, and how her lifelong asthma reflected a nervous system that never felt safe to exhale. She also speaks to how heroin use in her teenage years neurologically mirrored the flooding and crashing of disorganized attachment. Elisabeth shares how emotional neglect and a mother's absence shaped a deep sense of childhood loneliness, and why co-regulation with other humans became genuinely difficult. Jennifer names the fear of her own power, the experience of moving through life in a quiet tiptoe, and the inner critic that still carries someone else's voice. This conversation expands the mother wound beyond the personal and into the collective—naming how disconnection from the body, voice, and feminine expression is not just individual, but patterned across generations. The episode closes on something both honest and hopeful: healing the mother wound does not always require repairing the external relationship. It requires taking your sovereignty back, learning to mother yourself, and finding the safe spaces and relationships that can hold your depth. What was ruptured in relationship must be repaired in relationship—and sometimes that begins with the earth. In This Episode, You Will Learn: How the mother wound forms as an attachment and nervous system imprint, not a single event but a pattern How prenatal maternal stress can shape fetal stress system development through cortisol and epigenetic mechanisms Why birth is the first moment of separation and how birth trauma shapes early nervous system patterns How rupture in the feminine shows up in the body, the breath, the pelvis, the throat, and the voice Why the voice so often becomes a tool for masking rather than connecting, and how somatic voice work can change that How disorganized attachment patterns in childhood can drive substance use and self-regulation strategies in adolescence and adulthood Why co-regulation with other humans can feel deeply threatening and how to begin building that skill incrementally How the inner critic often carries the voice of a primary caregiver, and what that means neurologically What it looks like to heal the mother wound internally without requiring external repair of the relationship Why the fertile void, the emptiness left by the wound, can become a creative source rather than something to fill Chapter Markers 0:00 - Sending Healing Back Down the Mother Line 1:45 - Welcome: The Mother Wound as Nervous System Imprint 4:00 - Introducing Brooke Wolfe and Why This Work Called Her 7:45 - How Rupture in the Feminine Shows Up in the Body and Voice 13:00 - Birth as the First Separation and the Roots of the Wound 18:00 - Prenatal Stress, Cortisol, and How the Stress System Is Shaped Before Birth 20:00 - The Pelvis, Throat, and Diaphragm: Where Bracing Patterns Live 27:00 - Don't Take Up Space, Don't Be Too Much: The Feminine Conditioning 33:00 - Attachment, Addiction, and the Nervous System Logic Behind It All 49:00 - The Void: What Brooke's Mother Wound Actually Is, and What She Found There 55:00 - The Inner Critic as Internalized Mother Voice 1:01:00 - Healing the Mother Wound From the Inside Out Explore Neurosomatic Voice Activation: Liberate your voice and create somatic safety and self-attunement in the Neurosomatic Voice Activation Course with Brooke and Elisabeth: https://www.brookewolfe.com/trauma-rewired Get 15% off with code: TRAUMAREWIRED Brooke on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brookewolfe_/ Ways to Engage with Neurosomatics: Capacity Gap: Free BrainBased workshop for entrepreneurs, leaders and high-performers: rewirecapacity.com Two week trail of BrainBased membership for neurosomatic practices and nervous system rehabilitation and health: rewiretrial.com Introduction to NSI for practitioners, coaches and therapists - The NSI foundations Bundle: https://neurosomaticintelligence.com/workshops/ Watch Trauma ...
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    1 hr and 11 mins
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