#363 Triggers, Letting Go of Other People’s Opinions with Jen Johannsen, DDS

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I had the pleasure of chatting with the incredible Dr. Jen Johannsen. Jen is a dentist by trade, but she’s also a self-development nerd with a passion for financial, time, and emotional freedom. Join us as we dive into her journey from dealing with seasonal depression to becoming a self-care advocate and nervous system health enthusiast. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• The impact of nervous system health on our daily lives
• Practical tools for emotional well-being
• The transformative power of Dr. David Hawkins' Map of Consciousness.
• Mentorship’s role in personal growth and self-discovery
• Why regular practice and self-care routines are essential for lasting change
• How understanding the polyvagal theory can help you manage stress

ABOUT GUEST:
Dentist by profession and a self-development nerd by passion. We’re debt-free (mortgage included) and I’ve scaled back to working 12 hours per week. I’m deeply passionate about financial freedom, time freedom, and emotional freedom. I am endlessly fascinated by how we can shift ourselves internally, and radically change our perceptions and experiences. Much of our interaction with the world around us is filtered through the lens of our (often negative) mental chatter. Through a combination of medical knowledge, tools for nervous system regulation, and a lot of trial and error, I’ve drastically improved my baseline mood and have teachable tools to return to it. If any small thing I’ve learned helps someone else or builds belief, that’s a win!

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://grounded-now.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grounded.now.with.dr.jen/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: ****https://www.christabiegler.com/links

EPISODE SPONSOR:
A huge shoutout to Jigsaw Health for sponsoring this episode! Grab a discount on any of their fantastic products. Use the code lessstressed10

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jen Johannsen, DDS: when we feel good, we have a really solid skill on board for when we do feel triggered. And that's when we can start to have this letting go process gain momentum and actually work.

[00:00:09] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On this show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:39] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:00:57] Christa Biegler, RD: All right. Today on The Less Stressed Life, I have Jen Johannsen. She's a dentist by profession, but a self development nerd by passion. She's passionate about several topics, including financial freedom, time, freedom, and emotional freedom, but also endlessly fascinated about how we can shift ourselves internally and externally.

[00:01:16] Christa Biegler, RD: And we radically change our perceptions and experiences. She believes that much of our interaction with the world around us. And I agree with her as filtered through the lens of our often negative mental chatter. And so through a combination of medical knowledge, tools for nervous system regulation, a lot of trial and error, she's improved her baseline mood and has teachable tools.

[00:01:36] Christa Biegler, RD: to share she feels really compelled to just pay it forward. So if something that she has come across that is, that has really helped her helps others then it's a win. So I met Jen in a little professional group online and I saw she was very interested. I saw she was a professional, very interested in nervous system health.

[00:01:55] Christa Biegler, RD: So I just reached out to her and was like, I too on like a four year experimental journey of all the nervous system things. And she was like, Yes, we could be friends. And so that's how we landed in this conversation. So Jen what's interesting, you guys have a little bit of a fun family history.

[00:02:12] Christa Biegler, RD: I met your sister because I hosted a breathwork session in the group that she was in. So I met your sister, Kristen, and you're both dentists. Your dad's a dentist. But you practice, not all week long and not with them. So tell us about that and how, what you're doing now.

[00:02:25] Christa Biegler, RD: And then let's get into your story a little bit and the fascination of nervous system work. 

[00:02:30] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Sure. Yeah. My sister and I are both dentists. I had gone to college in central Virginia and decided to stay I'll get to this bit of it, but I struggled with seasonal depression growing up. Warmer, a warmer and sunnier climate definitely excited me but I've just been so motivated to cut back my hours over time to like live life on my own terms and that is involved becoming debt free that's involved as I've had my children I know work two days a week, and we chose an area with a lower cost of living on purpose, but I have had the time.

[00:02:57] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And the bandwidth to now try different things, see what works, see what doesn't work. And yeah, if anything I have to share works for someone else, that would feel great. 

[00:03:07] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I love that. Okay. Like you, I've been on a four year journey with experimenting with nervous system modalities. And so I think we're going to talk about some different tools, I always think people's stories is the most interesting thing about them.

[00:03:18] Christa Biegler, RD: You were telling me a little bit before we hit record about how, You developed a fascination with nervous system and it is with relatable parts of the story. So just take us back to wherever you want when, how this all started for you. 

[00:03:29] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Sure. I had gone, we were chatting before the call, I was talking about my childhood.

[00:03:33] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I experienced some normal ups and downs as well as some more extreme ones. I started to struggle with seasonal depression from about ages 12 to 17 or so. And then when I was 17, I also experienced the death of a young family member and it was the lowest low I've ever felt. Yeah. But when I was 15, that summer, a really strange thing happened.

[00:03:52] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I experienced what I would describe as a heightened awareness and this really just pervasive sense of peace. And I really feel like I experienced life without that often negative mental chatter that we tend to see the world through as human. I felt like I could show up as what other people needed in the moment.

[00:04:10] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And as a 15 year old girl, I felt remarkably good about my physical self. For over a decade, I wrote this off as a fluke, but another low in my late 20s led me to really question it. When I was about 28, I was a few years out of dental school. My husband and I had hustled to pay off debt. We had well over six figures of student loans.

[00:04:31] Jen Johannsen, DDS: We had just gotten married and purchased our home. And there was nothing else externally that I felt really motivated to work for. But I struggled with these mysterious dark moods a lot. I felt insecure a lot of the time, both personally and professionally, and I had these days where I would feel crippling anxiety and other times it would completely evaporate, and it was insanely frustrating.

[00:04:53] Jen Johannsen, DDS: For the past eight or so years I've been on this journey. of what I would call a deconstruction and reconstruction of self. And by that, I really questioned what that experience was that summer. And it was something that I could learn to harness more intentionally and sustainably. And I've come a really long way.

[00:05:10] Jen Johannsen, DDS: So this process has involved examining beliefs and patterns and insecurities. It's involved getting really honest with myself about my own quirks and pitfalls and ways that I self sabotage, and it's involved asking for feedback. And as scary as this has been at times, it's been so worth it because I think the biggest thing I've learned is that when we really can be consciously present with really uncomfortable emotion, it starts to dissipate pretty quickly.

[00:05:38] Jen Johannsen, DDS: But there's some caveats and there's some other things we'll talk about as we go. But the biggest caveat is I am not a licensed mental health professional, and I absolutely have experienced depression in a way that you can't just turn off or shift out of. So there's absolutely physiological factors besides what I'm going to touch on today. 

[00:05:54] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. Cool. So I'm intrigued by this 15 year old Jen, right? That had this okay. Almost divine intervention. I've seen that differently. And then you were able to remember that a decade later. Would you say your late 20s is when you started on this journey, that eight year journey? 

[00:06:13] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yes. 

[00:06:14] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. Cool. 

[00:06:14] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yep. I would say I was 28 when I was questioning things 29 when I started to really get traction or find tools. And then I'm 37 now. Nervous system learning started during the pandemic. 

[00:06:26] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. Got it. For me, I've just experimented with lots of tools to see what could help me because I was observing that nervous system stuff was holding my clients back from like true resilience and healing for.

[00:06:40] Christa Biegler, RD: And so I also had, I'm not unlike my clients actually, and so I found that I was just going through those modalities to see what I thought of them. I'm curious if you found mentors, guides, inspiration, what that kind of looked like, how that started to unfold. 

[00:06:56] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yeah. So I met someone by chance 2018 who became a holistic therapist for me for many years.

[00:07:04] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I still see her, but it's maybe once every few months just to stay in balance. She was the person who I ended up learning about the map of consciousness from. But she just became this guide for me of what you experienced was real, other people experience it too. She introduced me to Dr.

[00:07:18] Jen Johannsen, DDS: David Hawkins, who's the person who came up with the map of consciousness. He describes a very similar experience as a much younger child, I want to say he was. under the age of five, but can remember really well. I had heard of Eckhart Tolle, but I wasn't super familiar with his work until I started seeing her, but he also describes a very similar experience that happened in his late 20s and stayed which is atypical for a lot of people.

[00:07:43] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Learning to heal these things or step out of our unconscious patterns is a thing that happens in bits and spurts and one step forward and two steps back. But yeah, her name is Jane. She's been a really influential influence for me. 

[00:07:57] Christa Biegler, RD: Beautiful. 

[00:07:58] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And I've also done EMDR recently, so I'll just throw that in.

[00:08:01] Jen Johannsen, DDS: But in terms of somatic healing. Healing work and EMDR practitioner had a really wonderful experience with that. 

[00:08:07] Christa Biegler, RD: So you bring up the map of consciousness and Dr. David Hawkins, will you go over that with us? What is the map of consciousness? 

[00:08:14] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yes. So I call it my framework for everything. I'm going to recommend that if somebody's listening to it, that they look it up.

[00:08:21] Jen Johannsen, DDS: It's going to come up online in a rainbow colors, but It's a blend of science and spirituality, and it gives us practical tools for releasing tough emotions. Now, there is a point that I got stuck with that until I had the nervous system learning on board, so we can circle back to that at the end.

[00:08:37] Jen Johannsen, DDS: But it's a map of the entire human experience. At the bottom of the map is shame. Then as we move up from there, we have guilt, apathy, grief, fear. Desire. And that one I always felt found interesting because when we are desiring something it can feel good, but it's actually a disempowered state, like a thing that we want almost have the power over us anger and pride.

[00:09:01] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And then there's this sort of tipping point of neutrality. And then we get into the more life giving emotions, more optimistic. Hedge spaces we can exist in. Courage, willingness, acceptance, reason. And then there's this other tipping point we get into the spiritual paradigm, which is love, not the type of love that we think of.

[00:09:19] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Typically this is like love in the complete absence of fear. This is like this completely unconditional type of state. So we have love, joy, peace, and enlightenment. So when we are on the lower half of the school scale, we are in our ego. We're concerned about competition. We're usually in a head space of lack and fear.

[00:09:40] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And we feel contracted and we often have an inaccurate perception of reality. And then we're in the upper half of the scale. We feel more abundant. We can usually roll with the flow of our day and handle curve balls really well. We feel expansive. We participate through, in the world through our authentic selves.

[00:10:01] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Now, It's one of the things I thought was really cool that he noted is this is not good or bad. This is not something to achieve. These emotional states are basic like the weather, I'm thinking air quotes, he describes it. But they also can be again this is his analogy like a symphony, where there are certain low tones and high tones being played at the same time, some are standing out more.

[00:10:23] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Because we can feel two emotions at once as humans, but the cool thing is the more I've been able to apply the nervous system learning to this, and the more I've been able to consciously work with these emotional states, the more my baseline mood has improved. And when it gets thrown off, I have the tools to return to it.

[00:10:40] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Now this spiritual paradigm, that's where I think I was at 15 and why it felt so different. 

[00:10:47] Christa Biegler, RD: I was just listening there. 

[00:10:49] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yeah, 

[00:10:49] Christa Biegler, RD: you're at the spiritual paradigm. I'm wondering how you transcend through the scale, but it sounds like you're up and down on it at different times. 

[00:10:55] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Oh yeah. I'll also note that he describes that the spiritual masters around whom modern religions formed, so like the Buddha and Jesus, existed at the very top of this scale, this like ineffable place that we as normal human beings Can't relate to, but in that place, things do come through us in this way.

[00:11:14] Jen Johannsen, DDS: That's probably teachable and meaningful and universally true and helpful for human beings. But the more fundamentalist any particular religious sect is, the more those teachings are being interpreted from the lower half of the scale. So the shame, guilt, fear. So that helped me understand a lot of context of, I think, The world that we live in at the moment, global violence United States politics, all these are things that are going on, but it just gave me a lens to understand how something can be both, if that makes sense, and it's really just our own state that is being interpreted through what it can manifest as or become. 

[00:11:50] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, we can be surrounded by the lower part of the map, the ego, the shame, the guilt, but how we're expressing is actually our experience.

[00:11:59] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yes. Yes. 

[00:12:02] Christa Biegler, RD: Fortunately for us. We're not screwed. We're not stuck. 

[00:12:05] Jen Johannsen, DDS: No. No. And how this has developed. I listened to your episode from, I think it was a few weeks ago with Bradley Nelson.

[00:12:12] Jen Johannsen, DDS: This was developed for muscle testing. Which I understand that you have some training in. 

[00:12:17] Christa Biegler, RD: That was my initial training was actually that right out of college. It was interesting. It was like, it's funny. I grew up in a bit of a holistic household, like in a very different way from which I practice now, but we didn't go to the doctor when we had a cold or anything.

[00:12:33] Christa Biegler, RD: My mom pulled out her homeopathy kit. So my parents were like folk medicine and People very much like into the stuff that's very popular now, homesteading stuff. And so I had that as part of my foundations. And so when I went to school, I thought I would learn more about holistic medicine, nutrition.

[00:12:50] Christa Biegler, RD: You do not learn about that at all in school. And I remember the man I was dating, who's now my husband. I'd never seen a chiropractor ever in my life, but he had told me you should go to this training. And it's so funny to look back and realize I had no idea. Concept that people were into integrative and functional medicine at that time.

[00:13:08] Christa Biegler, RD: I didn't even know what that was. And this was the step before I met those dieticians and nutritionists in that space. I was in thrown into a pool of chiropractors mostly with muscle testing. So yeah, so I was exposed to that at the very beginning of my career. And what I take from it is that there's a lot of common concepts among successful practices is what I take from that.

[00:13:29] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Do you use muscle testing for anything and you're not there security? 

[00:13:34] Christa Biegler, RD: No. And The company I was learning it from I found to be a fairly toxic company. And so it didn't really resonate. There were some things about it that I didn't really resonate with and some subjectiveness and just some of the ways it was being presented.

[00:13:47] Christa Biegler, RD: Do I think it's a valid tool? Totally. I think it can be subjective and the way I was taught to use it or the kind of the methodology I was taught in, there was like this never ending ness to it. That was like, come in, get like a ton of supplements, then come back and get more supplements.

[00:14:04] Christa Biegler, RD: And so that wasn't really like a model and there was no explanation. I always like to understand things. I'm a questioner, so I like to understand things. Oh, yeah. And so it wasn't a model. I was like, yeah, I don't want to use this model type thing. And everyone's got a different experience with it.

[00:14:17] Christa Biegler, RD: So it may make more sense. I share that because it might make more sense. I'm like, why didn't pursue that? 

[00:14:22] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I really appreciate that angle. I haven't heard it that way. And I can see how that would almost feel manipulative. Maybe 

[00:14:28] Christa Biegler, RD: it was a bit like, there was definitely 

[00:14:31] Christa Biegler, RD: like a lot of, I felt like there was a lot of ego in that room and it was like, you don't have to explain how it works.

[00:14:36] Christa Biegler, RD: It just works. And I was like, okay. Whatever. 

[00:14:39] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Interestingly so Dr. Nelson on the call that you did with him explained the caveat of it might not work if you have an attachment to a certain, he gave an anecdote about thinking he was, and another caveat related to the map of consciousness is if the tester is on the lower half of the scale, it will Work.

[00:15:00] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And it sounds like the folks that you might have been with, if they were in a black mentality or a state of wanting a certain outcome, desire, that type of thing. Yeah, it can be skewed. It's interesting. Yeah, it can be skewed.

[00:15:13] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Would you repeat what you said Dr. Nelson said the caveat was?

[00:15:17] Christa Biegler, RD: Because you cut out right there and I don't want us to miss that. 

[00:15:19] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yes. 

[00:15:20] Jen Johannsen, DDS: He shared an anecdote about when his wife was pregnant, and I think he had a dream that he was going to, and when he muscle tested the gender of the baby, it kept coming up girl. And then it was a boy and I think he shared that story just to say that when we have to be impartial, if we're going to muscle test something about ourselves, personal life.

[00:15:41] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And it, and when he realized afterwards, that was that he was not impartial. You wanted his dream to be 

[00:15:45] Christa Biegler, RD: this is 

[00:15:46] Christa Biegler, RD: A big deal because we are operating in the world through our biases and something the most fun thing I'm doing in practice right now is a coaching model where we're exploring current thoughts, beliefs, and then shifting those because without it, like you can't shift the biochemistry the way you want.

[00:16:02] Christa Biegler, RD: Like you can make it, you can change it, but it's it's not going to work for a long time. Like you're going to be stuck in this. And then people get pissed because their lab tests look the same. They felt better, but then it's like you retest these mineral levels. It looks the same as yeah, it's because you haven't changed anything inside your body.

[00:16:17] Christa Biegler, RD: The way we're processing emotion. So anyway, the point of me saying that and where that all came from is that, one of is that we believe that Our beliefs and our thoughts are facts, right? So we have all these biases. Yeah. I just think that they're facts. Dr.

[00:16:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Brad was probably like, yeah, it's totally a girl. Like he probably just thought that was a fact. Yeah. So it's such an easy example. It's yeah, sometimes it's a bit different. Okay. I'm looking at this map of consciousness and you brought up that the ego is at the bottom and It might be that there's a lot of different maps out there on how to look at this and I agree with you like it's there but the word isn't there and I seem to be stuck on 

[00:16:57] Christa Biegler, RD: that.

[00:16:58] Jen Johannsen, DDS: There are a bunch of different visuals of this out there. I pulled up this one in particular because I find it the most helpful but I've been working with this for years now. Yes, there are some that label the one that I'm looking at right now has the lower half called the survival paradigm.

[00:17:13] Jen Johannsen, DDS: That's what is called like the egoic half of the scale and the upper half on here is called reason and integrity or spiritual paradigm. That's the part that is called the authentic self. 

[00:17:24] Christa Biegler, RD: I love that. I like to make sure we highlight that because I think some people I think linguistics are very interesting.

[00:17:31] Christa Biegler, RD: For example, I'll give you a very medical version. If I ask someone if they have heartburn, they may not resonate with that. I need to ask them if they have indigestion, burping, heartburn, like a variety of things because they may not resonate with that word. So similarly, like survival may not be the same resonant word as ego.

[00:17:48] Christa Biegler, RD: And if you're very unconscious of things neither of these words will resonate with you. I too, I'm developing major love of consciousness, which is why I'm delighted we're talking about this because it's like, there's all these concepts are out there that are not, I think, new, but people present them in different ways.

[00:18:05] Christa Biegler, RD: And some people are like this is my proprietary process. And I'm like that's fine. No big deal. Everyone can have those things, but they've already existed in some other version almost. So anyway, just interesting that it could be survival or egoic and spiritual reason or authentic, I think you said, right?

[00:18:22] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yep. 

[00:18:23] Christa Biegler, RD: I don't know where you were with it, if you wanted to go over the chart more. 

[00:18:26] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Oh. 

[00:18:26] Jen Johannsen, DDS: So let me jump into I'm gonna shift to tools and pitfalls and then blend some polyvagal stuff into that, if that's okay with you. That's fine. I love to share practical applications. 

[00:18:36] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yeah. 

[00:18:36] Christa Biegler, RD: You also said you got 

[00:18:37] Christa Biegler, RD: stuck in this chart at one point too. 

[00:18:39] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yes. So where we weave that, so that's gonna be 

[00:18:42] Jen Johannsen, DDS: part of this next step. This is my favorite of the David Hawkins books I've read just because it goes into practical schools the most.

[00:18:48] Jen Johannsen, DDS: It's called Letting Go, the Pathway of Surrender. I'm going to share what I liked and I'm going to share what I, where I got stuck. So the process of letting go, as he describes it, is I'm gonna start with analogy. He talks about our minds almost as like a filing cabinet, and each of these emotions is, has its own drawer with a various number, varying number of memories that carry different emotional intensities.

[00:19:13] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And when we get triggered, these old emotions are what's getting stirred up. So the letting go process is to Be able to pause and say, wow, gosh, like that thing made me feel shame or made me feel guilt instead of just like writing it off as a bad mood and jumping into an addiction, which is I think what an addiction can be just like opening up our phone.

[00:19:33] Jen Johannsen, DDS: It doesn't have to mean alcohol or something like that. But when we can pause and become consciously aware of it without trying to resist it, which is hard, it can start to dissipate. Where I got stuck, though, is that I believe I had too much of my own quote unquote survival stress still stuck in my body.

[00:19:51] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And this is where the Nervous system learning came into play. So I'm going to switch to a nervous system analogy. That's been really helpful for me. Are you familiar with Irene? Lion? 

[00:20:03] Christa Biegler, RD: Yes. 

[00:20:03] Jen Johannsen, DDS: You come across the rock at all. Okay. Are you familiar with her beach ball analogy? 

[00:20:07] Christa Biegler, RD: No, I haven't really been herself.

[00:20:09] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And these things might not just be like, abuse, neglect, etc. It's, loss of loved ones. It's chronic busyness. It's chronic feeling like we're not enough without being able to recognize the belief patterns underneath that. What she describes is as we're able to move the big beach balls out of the pool, all of a sudden the smaller ones can move around a bit better, and we have capacity to deal with things in our day to day life, and then it becomes a lot easier on our own to start working through some of those smaller things.

[00:20:38] Jen Johannsen, DDS: So the methods for removing this, the bigger beach balls, this is where, absolutely see a mental health professional. I found EMDR to be really helpful because it gets into our somatic cells. It gets into bilateral stimulation of our body in a way that helps us reprocess and then release the emotional intensity.

[00:20:57] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Associated with certain events. So once I had that on board, I was able to have the Dr. David Hawkins tools work a lot better because my body had released this big amount of survival stress. Now, Irene Ryan also the way she describes, it's very similar to the letting go process, but she calls it orienting.

[00:21:19] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And I would love your feedback on this in your learning, but with nervous system learning, I find that a lot of content talks about, quote, calming down or resetting the nervous system, which to me is more of a short term thing, whereas the longterm thing is to build capacity to be able to sit with discomfort.

[00:21:40] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Love your thoughts on that. And then I can go into a little bit more. 

[00:21:42] Christa Biegler, RD: I've arrived at that on my own is okay, that's how people think in a very before you zoom out a bit, people are like, they think the goal is removing stress all the time. And it's really resilience to it is how I describe it. 

[00:21:54] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Absolutely. 

[00:21:56] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Orienting is rather than having to, and it's great to have goals for when you get thrown off and when we feel anxious. Absolutely. And I know you're a breathwork practitioner. That is not my wheelhouse, but in terms of orienting, the gist of it is that when we feel good, when we feel regulated and that we're already in that rest digest state.

[00:22:14] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Is to pause and feel the surface that we're sitting on standing underneath our body taken details around the room that we might ordinarily miss because we're just in our head going through our day. Engage as many of the senses as possible and she mentions tuning into the breath without trying to change it and I think the whole point of that is really just to pause.

[00:22:35] Jen Johannsen, DDS: and see where you're at. And then this is a skill that as boring as it may sound, when we build this muscle over time, when we feel good, we have a really solid skill on board for when we do feel triggered. And that's when we can start to have this letting go process gain momentum and actually work. And that filing cabinet I talked about in the beginning with the different emotions that are stuck in each drawer with different levels of intensity, that's where they start to be able to go away and dissipate.

[00:23:00] Jen Johannsen, DDS: So that next time something happens that could make us feel angry, We have less of that intensity or guilty. We have less of that intensity. So for me, that's how over the time, over time, my baseline mood has become so much better. And my ability to return to that state when I get thrown off has drastically improved as well.

[00:23:18] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. This is neural plasticity 101. It's they, it's really the flexibility to shift between a

[00:23:25] Christa Biegler, RD: It's another way to describe it that I just love this expression and I'm using it and like really working on it is like the responding and not reacting. 

[00:23:35] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yeah, which in the beginning for me was so much easier than said than done because my neural loop what I had my reactions for so long were one way.

[00:23:44] Jen Johannsen, DDS: One thing that I say, I myself saying so much as these things. Are they simple in some ways? Yes, they're not easy, but they're very worth it. It's a long term thing. Another thing that I'll mention, I'm sure this is something that perhaps you've touched on at some point in these episodes, but taking it slow with this kind of work for me, at least, and I think for most people is so important.

[00:24:08] Christa Biegler, RD: I agree. And, but I talk about neuroplasticity early on in programming. I think for people, sometimes it's hard to find a thing and then adopt it regularly because we are an overstimulated person already has so many things going on. So what advice do you give to that person? Who's I have a real passion for people who are in this unrealized state.

[00:24:28] Christa Biegler, RD: Consciousness is like a word that doesn't even resonate with my person. I feel so Compelled to love and support and help them. Because I was that person. . It's like you have unrealized stress and you're just going from thing to thing. And it's like the hell is consciousness.

[00:24:43] Christa Biegler, RD: Or it's like stopping. 

[00:24:44] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Oh, for sure. Yeah. 

[00:24:45] Christa Biegler, RD: And it's a beautiful thing when it starts to shift. Just today, one of the people in my breathwork session said, I think, 'cause we did a breathwork session on your ideal day. And she decided, I thought this was the most beautiful thing, she's I just decided my ideal day is connecting more to my body.

[00:25:00] Christa Biegler, RD: And that's a really big thing that some of my very disconnected people have said, is I'm just up in my head all the time, right? Just logically running around and pretty disconnected to my body, numbing, dissociated, right? I'm trying to multitask, right? All those things. It's Speak to me in a language.

[00:25:16] Christa Biegler, RD: I understand. 

[00:25:17] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And you use the word overstimulated. That has been my number one biggest postpartum challenge. So I love that you brought that up. It's, I think it's very common. 

[00:25:27] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Yeah. So what do you say to the woman that's that's nice, but I don't have time to like brush my hair or take a shower and get out of my pajamas right now.

[00:25:37] Christa Biegler, RD: If you're urinating a lot when you're drinking water, maybe you're not actually hydrating that much. Or, in other words, getting the fluid and nutrients into the cell. Electrolytes are minerals that help fluid and nutrients get into the cell. I recommend all of my clients start by drinking electrolytes when we begin our work together, so to improve energy.

[00:25:56] Christa Biegler, RD: And then we get even more strategic with our electrolyte recommendations as test results come in. Now, generally electrolytes are potassium, sodium, and chloride. One of my favorite electrolyte products is pickleball cocktail from jigsaw health, because it's one of the only products you can get with an adequate dose of potassium to meet my recommendations, which is critical for blood sugar, which everyone should care about hormone health.

[00:26:19] Christa Biegler, RD: And digestion, huge thing for relapsing digestive issues. Jigsaw health is also maker of the famous adrenal cocktail made popular by the pro metabolic corner of the internet and root cause protocol, as well as a multi mineral electrolyte for recovery called electrolyte supreme. You can get a discount on all of jigsaw's amazing products, including pickleball, electrolyte, supreme, and adrenal cocktail at jigsawhealth.

[00:26:43] Christa Biegler, RD: com with the code less stressed 10. That's three S's less stressed. Ten.

[00:26:50] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I love that you asked that because I do have a couple of what I think of as like the least effort, highest reward things that I think anyone can implement right off the bat. This, okay, overstimulation. This is very common and I didn't know this until pretty recently. High frequency sounds. So children's voices can be a lot.

[00:27:07] Jen Johannsen, DDS: In my office, it's a hand piece. I learned about these little guys they're called flare bombers. Are you familiar with this? 

[00:27:15] Christa Biegler, RD: No, I got a, an Instagram ad one day for a, basically a ear plug an expensive ear plug for this very reason. What did you call 

[00:27:22] Christa Biegler, RD: them? 

[00:27:23] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Flare Calmer, 

[00:27:24] Jen Johannsen, DDS: F L A 

[00:27:25] Jen Johannsen, DDS: R E. Yeah. So they're 25 on Amazon.

[00:27:28] Jen Johannsen, DDS: They tune out high frequency pitches without blocking sound. And it's made such a difference in my baseline. Like my threshold of when the overstimulation limit gets hit. 

[00:27:37] Christa Biegler, RD: Oh, that's good. Cause my middle child knows that I find high pitch sounds annoying. So she sits around and and expresses high pitch sounds.

[00:27:45] Christa Biegler, RD: It's really exciting for me. Thank you for this. What in the hell are you doing? And if you say it, she's going to do it more because she's the second born. And they are, I don't know, I love birth order stuff, but like they some kids like to, and she doesn't necessarily, I think there's a whole self soothing thing there too, but she probably doesn't know why she's doing it.

[00:28:05] Christa Biegler, RD: So it's I got to control myself. Yeah. First. Yeah. Totally. 

[00:28:09] Christa Biegler, RD: Very good. And then pitches. 

[00:28:11] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yeah. High frequency pitches. So that's helped me a ton. And then, have you had anyone talk about earthing and grounding? Or are you familiar with that much? 

[00:28:17] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Okay. My husband's German. And for years, we would go to the beach, and he would say, Other people go surfing, and I go earthing.

[00:28:25] Jen Johannsen, DDS: He'd go walk around barefoot on the sand. And he would just talk about how great he felt. But we really didn't know the science behind it until a few years ago. There's a free movie on YouTube called The Earthing Movie that I really enjoyed and I. What's that? Exactly. So his book. Exactly. So I now sleep grounded and I have for about three and a half years.

[00:28:44] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I bought a mat from Clint over his company. It allows the same science to happen, which is, our bodies have a positive charge. The earth has a negative charge. The electrons from the earth are neutralizing free radicals in our body to bring that information. So this can go a long way.

[00:28:59] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Mood with hormone balance with cardiac health. One of my favorite studies that's been done about earthing. I don't know if you've seen this, but it's like a picture of what people's blood cells look like before and after 40 minutes of being grounded. And it goes from clumpy to being like wine, like smooth and flowy.

[00:29:16] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Which is remarkable. And my personal story with earthing was that I'll never know if this was for sure a factor, but I think it was, I've had really irregular periods and I struggled with infertility before our first child. And the second time around I started sleeping grounded and I got pregnant the first month I slept grounded.

[00:29:32] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And I don't know if that's a factor, but. 

[00:29:34] Christa Biegler, RD: I'll have to try again and see. Yeah. 

[00:29:36] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yeah. There you go. But those would be my two tools for someone who feels what you're describing. 

[00:29:43] Christa Biegler, RD: You mean tuning out high pitched noises and then grounding? 

[00:29:47] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yeah, you said for a woman who would say to these other tools oh, yeah, I would love to have the time to do this, but I don't have time. These are two things that don't take time. 

[00:29:54] Christa Biegler, RD: I love when you can automate something, right? It's this didn't require you to do any time. You might have to buy something, right? That's the option. Do you have time or money? Yes. And I think there's all kinds of perspectives around both of those things, right? There's a lack of mentality for sure, but it's desperation can create money sometimes for people, right? It's yeah, there's a grant. So I had an engineer say to me, I was talking to him, I've had some interesting stories about grounding sheets, people just feeling more awake than they have, et cetera.

[00:30:22] Christa Biegler, RD: And then I had an engineer who I wanted to try this and he was like I'm not sure that's going to work without a grounded outlet into copper, et cetera, et cetera. And I was like I wish I had the right expert to ask this question about, do you have any comments about some of these?

[00:30:34] Jen Johannsen, DDS: So I can't explain the exact science behind a grounded outlet, but the mats that you buy from this company come with a a thing that you can plug into the wall and see if your outlet is grounded. And it has a certain way it lights up if it's correct or incorrect. So when we went to Germany We went for two weeks to visit my husband's family in June, and I brought the tester with me in a small earthing mat, not knowing if it would work because I'm using an outlet converter.

[00:30:56] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And if I had the outlets, a lot of their outlets, ours are this way, theirs were this way. If I put the converter in the wall one way, or two ways, It would show that it was grounded. And if I put it in this way, it would show it was not grounded. So I don't know 

[00:31:09] Jen Johannsen, DDS: how. And probably not every company has 

[00:31:11] Jen Johannsen, DDS: that 

[00:31:12] Jen Johannsen, DDS: option. 

[00:31:12] Christa Biegler, RD: I think it's actually easy testing. The embarrassing part is my dad was an electrician. So I should know this stuff, but not that I learned anything from him. 

[00:31:20] Jen Johannsen, DDS: You're not an electrician. 

[00:31:22] Christa Biegler, RD: Exactly. So it's just, since you brought it up, I'm curious, but I want to iterate what you said, that's the conversation that inflammation is positive electrons and the earth is negative electrons. And so we're getting to this neutral state, right? That's how I understand it anyway as well. I would love to look at this study of the cells looking clumpy versus flowy. 

[00:31:42] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I have it on my blog. I took it from another site and I have them cited, but I have a earthing article.

[00:31:48] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yeah. With the blood. Yeah. I can send you the link if you'd like. I have to get off today. 

[00:31:51] Christa Biegler, RD: Perfect. 

[00:31:52] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. Okay. We started with the map of con we started with your story we've got this interesting, apparent experience of consciousness at age 15 that you remember over a decade later. And then you get introduced by your holistic therapist to consciousness, Dr.

[00:32:09] Christa Biegler, RD: David Hawkins. And I don't know, I wonder how he developed that. 

[00:32:15] Jen Johannsen, DDS: So I can go into that a little bit. He had this experience as a child where he, it was very similar to what I had, and he ended up becoming a psychiatrist to try to figure it out. And as much success as he had within the realm of science, it wasn't until he learned a lot about, I think, ancient spiritual wisdom and tried to blend the two that he made progress with mapping the entire human emotional experience. 

[00:32:39] Christa Biegler, RD: Interesting. Okay then we talked about a little bit of iron lion, the filing cabinet, the beach ball conversation. You shared a couple things that are just great for the overstimulated woman without, with this unrealized stress. Maybe the person who finds herself a bit reactive the, 

[00:32:57] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I've been there, by the way, relatable, 

[00:32:58] Christa Biegler, RD: yeah, yes totally.

[00:33:00] Christa Biegler, RD: And I think that's the thing is I really want to connect these women to these right tools, right? So it's like they can do anything to bring themselves into a better place as soon as possible. I don't think we covered this. I think we started talking about those tools and you mentioned how you got stuck somewhere in the chart, but I don't remember the answer to that.

[00:33:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Yes. 

[00:33:20] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yes. So with trying to let go of. Emotions on my own. I just, I had a wall where I couldn't do it until I had done EMDR. That was what really got some of that deeper, visceral, somatic stress out of my system. And that's where I can't recommend highly enough seeing a professional an EMDR. I don't know if anybody has talked about that on your podcast, but it's a way to Reprocess traumatizing memories in a way that gets into the conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the body at the same time. 

[00:33:50] Christa Biegler, RD: Before you were doing EMDR and you were working on releasing emotions on your own, you became of it with, some of this work we've talked about. How were you doing? How were you working on that on your own before? 

[00:34:03] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Really just trying to follow the advice from the Letting Go book, which is when something would come up, like a typical thing would be like, people in the dental office are just the patients we see every day.

[00:34:13] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And it would happen so often that someone would make a comment, a patient or maybe even a coworker that had nothing to do with me and I would go home in a bad mood because of it. So what I used to do before was just sit with it and be like, What is it that I'm feeling usually would go to like irritation, sometimes it would go to guilt.

[00:34:30] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And then I try to think, is there a reason why, and I wouldn't always come out up with anything, but being able to pause and let that emotion be did help. The difference with having EMDR on board is that most of the time, I don't even get triggered in the first place now, which is so cool. All this effort for all these years.

[00:34:49] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Now people can say things or do things. And I feel relatively immune to other people's thoughts and opinions. 

[00:34:56] Christa Biegler, RD: That is a such a sexy statement Jen. It's I'm immune to other people's thoughts and opinions. How amazing, like you can, that's the name of your future job. How to become immune to other people's thoughts and opinions. 

[00:35:12] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Thank you. I didn't come up with that. It's 

[00:35:14] Jen Johannsen, DDS: from the four agreements. I used to read that. My sister and I both had to have the four agreements as the background of our show. 

[00:35:20] Christa Biegler, RD: Oh, that's such a good idea. That's a really good idea. 

[00:35:21] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yeah. And that one was the hardest one for me. I would read it and be like, gosh, that sounds great. 

[00:35:28] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, no, I love that. That's such a good point. Cause I listened to the four agreements twice and I was like, oh, this is good. And I agree with you. I always suggest to people like put something in the front of your face.

[00:35:37] Christa Biegler, RD: An absolutely useless Quick sidebar. Sometimes I put. inspirational things on the background of my phone. And my second child with that high pitch noise changes it to grilled cheese. A photo she took. And it takes me a while to notice. She switched it back to grilled cheese. Absolutely irrelevant, stupid side note, but parenting is a whole different beast.

[00:35:59] Christa Biegler, RD: It's 

[00:36:00] Christa Biegler, RD: a whole different piece. 

[00:36:01] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I very similar anecdote, which has nothing, but it's very similar, so I'm gonna share it. My second child, who's my youngest who's two and a half somehow figures out, has figured out how to change both of our screen backgrounds and changes it to pictures of himself. 

[00:36:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah.

[00:36:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Oh, I think kids do that actually all the time. She used to do that all the time before This girl, she's now, I think she's just think she's very funny. You are funny. But you're a pain in my butt. . Oh, funny. Okay. I love the question. One of my favorite questions of all time is if this was easy, what would it look like?

[00:36:31] Christa Biegler, RD: And I feel that you answered that with how were you releasing emotions on your own? It's yeah, I'm just observing. That instead of because busyness is a bit of a, is it just a distraction from what we're currently doing? And so that's where it doesn't sound sexy to the un overstimulated, unrealized stress person to slow down.

[00:36:49] Christa Biegler, RD: But it's more have you noticed how you were feeling today? What did you feel like? And that's the thing is I will tell you if this is you and it was me a hundred million percent. Usually other people can see it on you before you, not that it matters. But it's I see it on my clients.

[00:37:04] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm like I wonder how I could express this to you and it would land the right way. Because I've also been through the experience of telling people that they're stressed and that backfiring pretty amazingly too. It's that didn't help at all to tell them that. There was a different book you held up besides Letting Go. 

[00:37:17] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yes. 

[00:37:18] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Thank you. This is awesome. This is gonna I think, leave hopefully people with something hopeful. Or at least that's what I got out of this book. Eckhart Tolle. Had this kind of experience when he was about 28 and it stayed. He stayed in this he transcended his own ego and stayed in this really peaceful state for the rest of his life.

[00:37:34] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I want to say he's in his late 50s or early 60s now. He's most known for a book called The Power of Now. This is my favorite of his books. It's called A New Earth. So consciousness, people who write about it and teach about it, talk about it as if it's we have our individual consciousness, but we also have a collective consciousness all human beings and probably all living things that somehow intertwined.

[00:37:57] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And I think a lot of people who are spiritual or have dealt into this at all since it, but they might not know how to articulate that. So he describes is there is this phenomenon happening that's been happening now for a few decades, but it's. Speeding up where people are, quote, unquote, waking up to gosh, and ego is a thing that I have, or this negative voice in my head is a thing that I don't have to have and trying to figure out what to do about it.

[00:38:21] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And that over time, as more and more people land themselves in that upper half of the scale, more often, there will be this tipping point that we reach as a human society where ego dominance dissolves. I think that's happening. I think that American politics and all the especially things have happened globally.

[00:38:41] Jen Johannsen, DDS: The violence last few years, unfortunately, fortunately, and unfortunately, he describes other things are going to look really worse, a lot worse before they start to dissipate and then humans, hopefully, will be able to live in a much more cohesive way than we ever. Who knows? I don't know, but this is something that I feel, and I feel like I sense it, and I felt like when the pandemic was happening and 2020 was unfolding I hadn't read this yet, but I had read enough of his other stuff to think this feels so chaotic, but maybe it's leading us somewhere, and I really do believe that. 

[00:39:13] Christa Biegler, RD: I think that's such a beautiful place to end because you're like, I think we're moving this way. I was like, are you sure? Things will look worse before they look better. Okay. Yeah, we have heard this before. Very interesting. Eckhart Tolle's The Power of L. 

[00:39:27] Christa Biegler, RD: A. This 

[00:39:27] Christa Biegler, RD: is called, 

[00:39:29] Jen Johannsen, DDS: this one's called A 

[00:39:30] Jen Johannsen, DDS: New Earth. 

[00:39:31] Christa Biegler, RD: A New Earth.

[00:39:31] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:39:32] Christa Biegler, RD: Sorry, I don't know where I am. 

[00:39:33] Jen Johannsen, DDS: And I have a summary of it on my blog if you want to just get like quick highlights from it. 

[00:39:38] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, that's beautiful. 

[00:39:39] Christa Biegler, RD: Jen, where can people find your writing and find you online? 

[00:39:43] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Yeah, so I've been publishing content since the spring. I did it anonymously at first.

[00:39:49] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I had a lot of mental blocks to get over, but it's grounded now. com. And just in the last few weeks, I've started an Instagram account. It's grounded now with Dr. Jen with periods between all the words. So my blog is no longer anonymous. I am a life coach. I am not actively taking people in until my kids are in the flow of the school year.

[00:40:09] Jen Johannsen, DDS: So probably six to eight weeks from now. But if you'd like to do, what I call a discovery call, just to have a Hey, what's your biggest struggle. And if I can help you direct you toward one or two resources to get you unstuck. Awesome. Just shoot me an email if you're interested in that.

[00:40:22] Jen Johannsen, DDS: Grounded. now. contact at gmail. com. 

[00:40:26] Christa Biegler, RD: Perfect. Thanks so much for coming on today. 

[00:40:29] Jen Johannsen, DDS: I appreciate it.