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The Biology of Trauma — A Best-Seller! Get the Book + Interactive Toolkit →
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700K+ DOWNLOADS | 4.9/5 STAR REVIEW
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WHO THIS PODCAST SERVES
People feel stuck in stress, overwhelm, or shutdown
Traditional therapy helps, but something still feels "off"
There's a need to understand why the body reacts the way it does
Get out of survival mode and into truly living
We all seek trauma tools that actually heal—not just help
THE PODCAST THAT CHANGES THE TRAUMA CONVERSATION
Dr. Aimie Apigian exposes how trauma lives in the body and offers a new, science-backed roadmap for real healing
People are done dancing around the topic of trauma—they’re ready to face it head-on. Traditional systems often miss the root cause: trauma changes biology at the cellular level, creating barriers to the healing work people strive to do.
This Podcast is the missing piece of the puzzle—a practical living manual for navigating the human body in today’s modern, traumatizing world.
Join your host, physician and trauma expert Dr. Aimie Apigian, as she challenges outdated models of trauma and introduces a new, science-backed framework for true healing.
Discover the Science of Trauma Healing with Dr. Aimie Apigian
podcast
Episode 149: Mind-Body Trauma Research: The Truth with Dr. Gabor Maté
Listen to Dr. Gabor Maté discuss The Myth of Normal journey. Learn why writing for critics made him sick. Harvard's 1939 buried truth about emotional factors equaling physical factors. PTSD doubling ovarian cancer risk that gynecologists never read. Why people are ready but systems aren't for this conversation. New York Times bestseller doesn't equal happiness or inner peace.
5 min read
Episode 148: Why You Can't Sit Still: The Hidden Biology of Busyness
Learn why a "good childhood" doesn't guarantee nervous system safety. How Jess's busyness and exhaustion were signs of stored trauma. Why stillness feels unsafe when body equates pausing with overwhelm. How living in your head blocks somatic trauma healing completely. The real definition of trauma as overwhelm inside body, not just events. The trauma response sequence from startle to stress to freeze to shutdown. How the vagus nerve turns overwhelm into whole-body shutdown re
4 min read
Episode 147: The Hidden Biology of Holding On: Toxins, Trauma & True Freedom
Listen to my bathtub breaking point story after third collarbone break. Finding myself in depression and chronic fatigue despite all treatments. Realizing my body wasn't broken but scared to let go. Learn the hidden connection between emotional toxins, psychological toxins, and biochemical toxins. Understanding the body trauma loop where nervous systems loop between stress and overwhelm without reaching calm aliveness creating holding biology.
6 min read
Episode 146: How Attachment Affects Us For Life: 6 Childhood Pains and How to Repair
Listen to Dr. Aimie share the rocking chair moment with Miguel who said he would kill her tomorrow, revealing survival meant protecting his heart. Learn how attachment trauma lives in your body's cells and immune system. The three critical elements creating secure or insecure attachment foundation. The Rope Test revealing whether you pull close, push away, or feel confused. Six sequential attachment pains from birth through age seven creating patterns.
5 min read
Episode 145: Essential Oils and Nervous System Regulation: Using Smell to Heal Grief and Trauma with Jodi Cohen
Listen to Jodi Cohen share how losing her son led to discovering smell as the most accessible pathway to nervous system regulation. Understanding why of the five senses smell connects most directly to limbic system. How rose essential oil counteracts fear response in the brain specifically. Why your stories follow your state making state-shifting easier than changing thoughts.
6 min read
Episode 144: The Perimenopause Revolution: Trauma, Transitions and Tools with Dr. Mariza Snyder
Listen to Dr. Mariza Snyder explain perimenopause as brain remodeling. Learn why blood sugar stability is pillar one stabilizing cellular energy. How perimenopause is a neuroendocrine transition with neuroinflammation from hormones. Why executive function falters making the "hundred-tab brain" unable to multitask. How stored trauma amplifies symptoms because change feels more dangerous. Why everything comes up for review forcing discernment about draining relationships.
6 min read
Episode 143: Fear From Breast Cancer: How Two Mothers Reject 'Normal' & Find Freedom with Dirci Souza and Melanie
Listen to Dirci and Melanie's stories of developing breast cancer after years of nervous system dysregulation accumulated over time creating conditions. Learn how sister's death, twins' therapy sessions, and daily overwhelm preceded diagnosis. Why oncologists saying "return to normal" felt wrong since normal created illness. How the two trauma patterns combined over years to manifest as cancer. Why traditional cancer support groups kept them in fear while trauma healing offer
6 min read
Episode 142: Why Stress Isn't Trauma: How to Spot Overwhelm and Start Healing Your Nervous System
Listen to understand the critical distinction between stress and trauma. Learn that if something made you sick 20 years later it was trauma. The three nervous system states and the critical line of overwhelm. Why brain inflammation during freeze is protective survival strategy. How dysregulation multiplied by time becomes disease with autoimmunity taking 20 years.
5 min read
Episode 141: Can Trauma Make Genetic Disease Worse? The Role of the Nervous System with Lizzie Dunn
Listen to Lizzie Dunn's story of living with MEN1 genetic condition. Learn why the nervous system sees genetic mutations as vulnerabilities, triggering faster trauma responses to protect already vulnerable systems. How stored trauma creates dysregulation amplifying all symptoms of conditions. Why so many people with chronic illness live disconnected from bodies as survival mechanism to avoid overwhelming pain and powerlessness. How paradox and vulnerability are essential for
6 min read
Episode 140: Why Does My Body Hold Trauma? How Chronic Fatigue, Autoimmunity & Weight Gain Have An Emotional Trigger with Dr. Partha Nandi
Listen to Dr. Aimie explain how chronic symptoms have emotional triggers. Learn the five key insights including why trauma is an internal response. The five-step sequence of startle, stress, powerlessness, freeze, and shutdown. The critical line of overwhelm that shifts daily between growth and breakdown. How mitochondria literally change shape during trauma, becoming round and rigid. Switching to survival energy systems creating chronic symptoms persisting over time.
6 min read
Episode 139: Breaking the Body Trauma Loop: Why Healing Takes More Than Willpower (And How to Actually Transform)
Listen to understand the body trauma loop where incomplete responses compound. Learn how neuroception gets programmed to see threats everywhere constantly. Why "neurons that fire together, wire together" applies to healing. Early reader insights about compelling content they wish they'd had sooner. Why consistency over intensity rewires neural pathways through small daily actions. The Seabiscuit story of hope from broken to magnificent transformation.
6 min read
Episode 138: The Biology of Trauma: Why Your Body Holds On When Your Mind Has Healed with Steven Wright
Listen to this special reverse interview where Steven Wright interviews me. Hearing personal stories never shared before including my keto disaster. Why I rewrote the book seven times and discovering all three imbalances. Miguel's heartbreaking adoption story leading to autoimmune diagnosis and this work. Understanding why trauma healing requires all three aspects working together simultaneously. How biology keeps you stuck through inflammation and internal danger signals.
6 min read
Episode 137: Does Somatic Healing Work: How Mind-Body Healing Can Change 30 Years of Chronic Illness In 6 Weeks with Kecia
Listen to Kecia's story of transformation from 30 years on disability. From needing daily three-hour naps and sleeping 16-18 hours daily. To seven weeks without a single nap after the Foundational Journey. Understanding why she never expected to live past 18 years old. How autoimmune disease took everything by age 25 suddenly and completely. The struggle for medical validation and how one doctor's compassion literally changed her physiology signaling safety to her system.
6 min read
Episode 136: Why You Always Feel Responsible for Everything: Hidden Signs of Complex PTSD from Childhood with Dr. Tian Dayton
Listen to Dr. Tian Dayton explain how chaotic childhoods rewire your system. Discover hidden signs of relational trauma and family "project manager" roles. Why "crazy one" or "uptight one" roles persist into adulthood. Understanding thwarted intention creating adult stuckness and sense memory triggers. Why early touch matters for development and nervous systems freeze. Why 12-step programs work through structure and limbic bath co-regulation.
7 min read
Episode 135: The Hidden Difference Between Stress and Trauma In How The Body Keeps Score
Listen to understand the crucial hidden difference between stress and trauma. Between stress with capacity to handle and trauma exceeding capacity creating overwhelm. Discovering the simple question revealing minimized childhood trauma you've dismissed before. How chronic conditions follow predictable trauma patterns in their development over time. What happens during nervous system shifts affecting your whole body's functioning.
7 min read
Episode 134: The Biology of Overwhelm: Why Small Demands Feel Impossible
Listen to understand why your body reacts to stress differently based on available energy, not the event itself. Discovering the nervous system bank account metaphor where every demand withdraws energy from your limited daily reserves. Why small events overwhelm when your account is completely low. The daily invisible drains including poor sleep and difficult relationships. Environmental stress, decision fatigue, and unresolved emotions draining you constantly.
7 min read
Episode 133: Autoimmunity and Childhood Trauma: How Your Immune System Reflects Your Past
Listen to understand why autoimmune conditions often reflect childhood trauma and chronic survival mode affecting your immune system over decades. Discovering the personality traits common in autoimmune patients you'll recognize. High achiever, people-pleaser, perfectionist, highly responsible survival strategies operating beneath awareness. How childhood stress gets stored in the body biologically, creating fatigue, brain fog, and inflammation decades later in adulthood.
6 min read
Episode 132: Do Babies Who Cry It Out Get Anxiety and Addiction Later in Life? with Dr. Darcia Narvaez
Listen to Dr. Darcia Narvaez explain how sleep training and crying it out disrupts developing nervous systems in babies. The link between early separations and later anxiety, depression, and attachment issues showing up in adolescence and adulthood. How your own childhood experiences influence your health now and your parenting patterns with your own children currently. Why the vagus nerve is essential for children's emotional regulation and develops through responsive caregi
6 min read
Episode 131: Why Empaths Get Stuck in Grief and How to Move Through It
Listen to understand why empaths and highly sensitive people experience grief so differently from non-sensitive people around them. Discovering how to tell if you're HSP through signs present. Through emotional intensity, sensory sensitivity, and absorbing others' emotions automatically. Why their nervous systems reach overwhelm faster biologically than others. How to distinguish draining sensitivities from empowering ones that serve.
6 min read
Episode 130: Why Stress Doesn't Cause Chronic Pain and What Really Does
Listen to understand why stress doesn't cause chronic pain but unresolved trauma does at the biological level. Learning the critical line of overwhelm that turns stress into trauma response in your nervous system. What happens when you feel trapped and powerless during injury. Why unresolved trauma keeps your body stuck in danger response maintaining pain as protection. How biochemical imbalances increase pain sensitivity you experience daily.
7 min read
Episode 129: Why You're Still in Survival Mode (Even After Years of Therapy and Healing Work)
Listen to understand why years of therapy might not move you from survival to thriving mode successfully. Discovering why knowing you're safe doesn't make your body feel safe at the level needed. The hidden capacity versus demand equation your nervous system uses. Why high functioning can block healing from progressing forward. The three major roadblocks and why stress-rest cycles matter greatly. And the essential three-phase roadmap working like physical healing does.
5 min read
Episode 128: How Attachment Trauma Drives Anxiety, Autoimmunity & Chronic Illness
Listen to understand how early attachment trauma before words drives adult anxiety, autoimmunity, and chronic illness throughout life. Discovering the six core attachment wounds affecting you deeply. Not safe, not loved, not worthy, not capable, don't belong, not seen wounds. Why the body remembers clearly what the mind forgot completely. How fear becomes stored as inflammation causing illness over time. The surprising link between people-pleasing and chronic pain.
6 min read
Episode 127: Why Your Body Is Wired for Danger: Understanding Trauma's Impact on Your Nervous System
Listen to understand why your body might be wired for danger through early life experiences that programmed your nervous system. Learning the three key elements creating overwhelming experiences. Overwhelmed, powerless, and disbelief together. The critical line of overwhelm we cross daily. The difference between "too much, too fast" and "too little, too long" trauma patterns. How to recognize survival versus safety patterns. Why creating safety must come before processing emo
4 min read
Episode 126: Neuroception Explained: How Your Nervous System Decides What's Safe and Why It Matters for Healing
Listen to understand neuroception—your body's invisible security system that constantly calculates "Can I handle what's happening currently?" Learning why it's not willpower but perceived capacity versus demand that determines if supplements feel overwhelming to your stressed system. Diet changes seem impossible to maintain. Or exercise feels like too much demand on limited resources. Plus the three nervous system modes and how to recognize them.
8 min read
Episode 125: The Forgotten Hormone: Why the Mind & Body Can't Heal Without Oxytocin with Dr. Sue Carter
Listen to Dr. Sue Carter's four decades of oxytocin research revealing why you can understand trauma but still feel unsafe. Learning how this "forgotten hormone" acts as nature's most powerful anti-inflammatory agent throughout your entire body and nervous system. Why vasopressin, not cortisol, is the main stress hormone in trauma, creating constant vigilance and defensive responses to others. The difference between fake and real safety for healing, practical tools to increas
9 min read
Episode 124: Grief and Gut Health: Is It Just Emotional or Something More?
Listen to understand how grief disrupts gut health powerfully and directly through the vagus nerve and enteric nervous system functioning together. Learn about the 3 most difficult types of grief to process. Attachment, absent, and heart shock grief that gets stuck. Discover how unprocessed grief affects diaphragm function and creates inflammation. Understand the difference between stuck grief and active grieving clearly. Learn why your gut literally cannot hold grief permane
7 min read
Episode 123: Light, Sleep and High-Impact Habits To Heal Your Nervous System with Katie Wells
Listen to learn why trauma is actually an energy problem. Discover high-impact habits with light, sleep, and movement daily that support nervous system regulation at the foundational level. Understand how your environment may silently work against healing efforts. Why pushing without safety backfires and creates more trauma response. What your body actually needs—not more, but different foundational support. With practical wisdom from Wellness Mama founder Katie Wells.
7 min read
Episode 122: Shutdown Before Stress: The Misstep in Trauma Healing That Often Gets Missed
Listen to understand the critical misstep in trauma healing. Trying to process trauma while in shutdown state doesn't work. Learn the essential healing sequence of Safety, Support, Expansion order. Why over 90% live "in their heads" disconnected from body. How to tell if your body is in shutdown. And why addressing shutdown responses must happen before stress work.
Your healing frustration might be wrong sequence, not wrong person.
6 min read
Episode 121: Finding Your Why: How to Break Free from Burnout and Build Meaningful Work with Dr. Eric Arzubi
Listen to hear Dr. Eric Arzubi's journey from Wall Street corner office to psychiatry driven by regret. Learning how to distinguish trauma-based fear from healthy caution wisely. Why nervous system safety is key for career changes succeeding. And practical steps for transitioning toward meaningful work while navigating pushback and building trauma-informed solutions to real problems.
Your fear of regret might be stronger than your fear of failure.
6 min read
Episode 120: Why Antidepressants Don't Work for Everyone: The Hidden Role of Trauma in Anxiety and Depression
Learn why antidepressants don't work for everyone through Michelle's story of chronic fatigue, brain fog, and emotional numbness with normal labs that revealed underlying trauma. Plus the five-step trauma response everyone follows when overwhelmed. And why trauma-driven conditions need nervous system approaches, not just medication.
Your treatment resistance might be unaddressed trauma biology, not chemistry.
5 min read
Episode 119: Transforming Trauma Into Joy & Purpose with Gregg Ward
Listen to hear Gregg Ward's profound journey of transformation over decades. How he transformed unbearable regret and moral injury into purpose and joy. Learning how trauma lives in the body for years without releasing naturally. Why physical movement helps when talking isn't enough for trauma release completely. And how honoring what was lost creates meaning and future purpose.
Your unbearable regret can become a force for good through honoring loss.
4 min read
Episode 118: How Practitioners Can Navigate Their Own Chronic Illness and Healing Journey with Helga Byrne
Listen to hear Helga Byrne's decade-long journey navigating her therapy practice with chronic Lyme disease. Learn practical strategies for managing brain fog, extreme fatigue, and limited energy through spoon theory application. Multiple income streams, saying no, and the healing power of accepting illness now instead of waiting to "get better someday" before living.
Your chronic illness doesn't end your capacity to help.
6 min read
Episode 117: How Movement Can Heal Stored Trauma, Grief and Emotions with Paul Denniston
Listen to discover how "emotions need motion" works biologically. And learn Paul Denniston's Grief Yoga approach using movement, breath, and sound to release hidden grief. Plus how to create safe space for expression. And why laughter can access deeper grief layers effectively.
Your chronic tension might be grief needing motion to complete.
6 min read
Episode 116: The Body Keeps Score: How Trauma Rewires Your Nervous System with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
Listen to hear Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explain profoundly. How the body keeps score of trauma through rewiring. And why healing must address basic body functions first. Movement, and the capacity for pleasure that trauma blocks. Plus practical actions to reclaim agency over your responses. And create a life worth living through curiosity collaboration.
Your body keeps score but healing is possible through understanding.
6 min read
Episode 115: The Biochemistry Behind Mood & Mental Health Struggles with Dr. Jason Loken
Listen to understand how under-methylation, copper-zinc imbalance, and pyroluria work. Create depression, anxiety, and behavioral patterns that therapy can't resolve. Plus how to properly test for these hidden imbalances. And address them so you finally feel like yourself.
Your persistent anxiety might be biochemistry not unprocessed trauma alone.
6 min read
Episode 114: The Science Behind Why We Can't 'Get Over' Loss And How to Grieve with Dr. Mary-Frances O'Connor
Listen to understand the neuroscience behind why we can't "get over" loss. Learn how grief is a complex learning process. As your brain adapts to fundamentally changed reality permanently. Discover the crucial distinction between grief and grieving. Why healing isn't about moving on but carrying love forward.
Your yearning isn't weakness but your brain's survival system seeking essential bonds.
6 min read
Episode 113: Hidden Triggers: How Mold and Lyme Create A Sensitive and Reactive Personality with Dr. Neil Nathan
Listen to understand how mold toxicity and Lyme disease create threat. Through "the big three"—limbic activation, vagal dysregulation, and mast cell activation. Why addressing these together is essential when sensitivities persist despite work. Learn why new onset anxiety might indicate physical causes not psychological.
Your unexplained sensitivities might be mold or Lyme creating threat biology.
7 min read
Episode 112: The Survival Paradox: The Protein That Can Cause Disease & What You Can Do About It with Dr. Isaac Eliaz
Listen to understand the survival paradox and how protection becomes disease. Learn how the protein galectin-3 can keep your body stuck indefinitely. Discover practical ways to shift from chronic protection to actual healing. Understand how acceptance works biologically not just psychologically.
Your chronic inflammation might be your survival instinct stuck in overdrive.
6 min read
Episode 111: Clear Your Mind: How to Reduce Brain Fog & Mental Fatigue with Dr. Greg Kelly
Listen to understand the hidden biology of stress beneath surface symptoms. Learn how your brain's prediction systems, energy supply, and oxidative stress affect clarity. Discover practical strategies including supplements like Ashwagandha for building lasting resilience. Understand why stress management techniques fail without biological support.
Your stress might require biological support before psychological strategies can work effectively.
6 min read
Episode 110: Why Isn't My Brain Working? How to Clear the Fog and Fatigue with Dr. Datis Kharrazian
Listen to understand why your brain isn't working at full capacity. Learn Dr. Datis Kharrazian's practical strategies for reducing hidden brain inflammation. Discover how diet, lifestyle, and targeted interventions clear fog effectively. Understand the gut-brain connection and past injury effects on current function.
Your brain fog might be inflammation rather than aging or just stress.
6 min read
Episode 109: End Your Addiction Now: How Pioneer Work Outperforms Traditional Treatment with Dr. Charles Gant
Listen to understand how biology predisposes us to addiction through mechanisms. Learn Dr. Charles Gant's revolutionary approach achieving 83% success rates consistently. Discover how addressing neurotransmitter imbalances, detoxification, and nutrition surpasses conventional methods. Understand why willpower alone fails without biological correction.
Your addiction might require biological correction before willpower can work effectively.
6 min read
Episode 108: How Your Body Stores Emotional Trauma in the Fascia and Lymphatic System with Christine Schaffner
Listen to understand how trauma stores in your fascia and lymphatic system. Why supporting these hidden spaces matters as much as processing memories. Learn why detox triggers emotional releases unexpectedly. Discover simple practices supporting fascial health and lymphatic drainage.
Your chronic pain might be trauma stored in fascia rather than tissue damage.
6 min read
Episode 107: Invisible Adoption and Attachment Pain: When High Achievement Masks Childhood Wounds with JJ Virgin
Listen to hear JJ Virgin's vulnerable story about how adoption wounds drove success. Learn how recognizing these patterns creates possibilities for genuine connection. Discover why self-reliance limits intimacy despite creating strength. Understand how to build trust when your nervous system learned it's not safe.
Your drive to achieve might be masking unhealed attachment wounds from childhood.
7 min read
Episode 106: How Mast Cell Activation, Histamines & Mold Toxicity Place You in a High-Risk Trauma Category with Beth O'Hara
Listen to understand how mast cell activation and mold toxicity create trauma responses. Why addressing these biological triggers is essential when trauma work isn't progressing. Learn to recognize histamine-driven anxiety versus psychological anxiety. Understand why you're in a high-risk trauma category with these conditions.
Your trauma responses might be driven by mast cells rather than unprocessed memories.
7 min read
Episode 105: How Anxiety, Depression & Trauma Reactions May Be From Mold and Heavy Metals with Kirkland Newman
Listen to understand how mold and Lyme create feedback cycles with trauma. Why addressing all three—biological toxins, infection, and nervous system dysregulation—is essential. Learn how to recognize mold or Lyme as possible causes. Discover why your depression might be inflammation rather than just psychological.
Your mental health symptoms might be driven by mold or Lyme inflammation.
7 min read
Episode 104: How Trauma Fuels Addiction & The 4 Pillars for Recovery with Joe Polish
Listen to understand how addiction serves as a survival strategy disconnecting from pain. Learn Joe Polish's four essential pillars for sustainable recovery comprehensively. Discover why genuine connection serves as addiction's antidote through biology. Understand the shame-addiction loop and how to break it effectively.
Your addiction might be your nervous system's best attempt at managing unbearable trauma pain.
7 min read
Episode 103: Addiction & 6-Step Felt Sense Polyvagal Plan to Revolutionize Traditional Treatment with Janet Winhall
Listen to understand how your behaviors serve as state propellers for regulation. Learn Dr. Janet Winhall's 6-step Felt Sense Polyvagal Model revolutionizing addiction treatment. Discover why traditional treatment fails by focusing on behavior instead of states. Understand the difference between artificial safety from substances and real safety.
Your addictive behaviors might be your nervous system's best available regulation strategy.
6 min read
Episode 102: Strategies for Empaths: How to Navigate Sensory Overload, Shame & Trauma with Dr. Judith Orloff
Listen to understand why empaths are more susceptible to trauma through biology. Learn practical strategies like sensory inventories and boundary setting for protection. Discover how to not just survive but actually thrive with your sensitivity. Understand why your needs aren't luxuries but requirements for your nervous system.
Your sensitivity isn't weakness but biological difference requiring specific support and strategies.
6 min read
Episode 101: Brain Inflammation: Addressing The Overlooked Gatekeeper To Trauma Release with Dr. Austin Perlmutter
Listen to understand how brain inflammation acts as a gatekeeper blocking trauma release. Why addressing your microglia matters as much as processing memories. How food influences your brain's ability to process emotions biologically. Learn why small stresses feel overwhelming when inflammation is present.
Your brain inflammation might be blocking trauma healing more than unprocessed memories.
6 min read
Episode 100: 3 Power Stories: How to Reclaim Your Mental & Physical Health Through Biology of Trauma® with Dr. Aimie Apigian
Listen to celebrate 100 episodes with three powerful transformation stories. Hear how reclaiming mental and physical health happens through understanding your nervous system's biology. Discover what becomes possible when you work with your biology consistently. Learn from real women's journeys from dysregulation to regulation and expanded capacity.
Real transformation happens when you understand and work with your nervous system's biology.
6 min read
WHAT LISTENERS ARE SAYING
I was struggling with clients who weren't responding to traditional trauma therapy. Dr. Aimie's podcast completely shifted my approach. Now I understand why we need to establish safety before processing. The Biology of Trauma framework has become essential in my practice. My clients are finally making progress.
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