Episode Overview
In this episode, therapist and EMDR trainer Erica Bonham makes the case that trauma doesn't live where we think it does — not in what we know, but in what the body has stored, patterned, and organized around long before the thinking mind gets a vote. Erica and Ana talk through what it actually takes to build a nervous system with more capacity: not bypassing what's hard, but developing the physical ability to stay present to it, one breath and one contraction-and-expansion at a time.
What We Cover
- Why trauma "doesn't care what we know" — the difference between cognitive insight and what's actually stored in the body, and why knowing a boundary is healthy doesn't mean the nervous system will let you set one
- Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn as physical survival strategies, and what a body stuck in a low-grade, functional freeze can look like day to day
- Toning the vagus nerve as a literal physical practice — the same logic as building a muscle: it takes consistency, not a single good session, and it can be trained through yoga, breath, tai chi, or running with intention
- A concrete grounding exercise: hand on the belly, attention two inches below and behind the navel, searching for the still point beneath the surface waves — and why she starts every practice in the lower body before the heart
- How generational and ancestral trauma gets passed down, including research on epigenetic trauma transmission, and Erica's own work with EMDR and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy around patterns from her adoption that predate her own memory
- Her EMBERS framework — Energy, Mind, Body, Emotions, Reaction, Senses — for tracing whether a pattern in the body is actually older than the person carrying it
- The difference between breathwork used to build genuine capacity and breathwork used to bypass a feeling — and the research suggesting that "breathing through" anger can make people less assertive, and "breathing through" guilt can make them less likely to make amends
- Why nervous system regulation isn't a retreat from injustice or collective struggle, but the physical groundwork that makes it possible to stay present to it without collapsing or shutting down
- What actually happens in the body — the bracing, the defensiveness — when a word like "racism" or "patriarchy" enters a room, and why that felt response is more honest than the story told about it afterward
About the Guest
Erica Bonham, LPC, MA, is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado, a certified EMDR clinician, consultant, and trainer, and the founder of AVOS Counseling Center in Arvada, Colorado. She specializes in somatic and attachment-focused EMDR, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, and nervous system regulation, with a practice focus that includes the LGBTQ community and trauma related to racial and social injustice, abuse, and spiritual harm. She is the author of Always Enough, Never Done: Volume I: Heal Your Nervous System, Turn Wounds Into Wisdom, and Cultivate Your Inner Badass, and a nationally sought-after speaker on trauma, embodiment, and collective healing.
Resources and Links
- Always Enough, Never Done: Volume I - Erica's book on nervous system healing
- AVOS Counseling Center — Erica's practice, based in Arvada, Colorado, including her free Nervous System Reset Toolkit (11 polyvagal exercises and 6 guided meditations)
- Anne Lamott — sober writer Erica references for the idea of trusting the next right step even without seeing the whole path
- The Body Keeps the Score — the well-known trauma book Erica references, adding that in her field it's often said the brain keeps the score while the body is the scorecard
Call to Action
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Episode Credits
Produced, Edited and Mixed by Chris Forbes
Artwork Design by Utterly Create
Music is by Pictures of a Floating World from the Free Music archive.org
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