Understanding Neuroception: How Trauma Training Can Transform Schools with Amy Huggins

In this episode, trauma recovery coach Amy Huggins breaks down the powerful concept of neuroception—our nervous system’s behind-the-scenes radar that’s constantly scanning for safety or threat. We talk about what trauma really is (hint: it’s not just the event, but our body’s response to it), and why two educators can experience the same stressful moment—like a student flipping desks—and respond in completely different ways.

Amy shares practical, bite-sized strategies to help educators regulate their nervous systems, set healthy boundaries, and stop treating emotions like enemies. From "inner child" work to 30-second self-regulation tools, this conversation is full of insights for anyone looking to create more psychologically safe classrooms—or just survive a hard day at school. It’s a must-listen for educators and school leaders ready to move beyond surface-level fixes and start building sustainable well-being from the inside out.

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Connect with Amy Huggins: 

Amy Huggins, Trauma Recovery Coach: www.ascensionwellnesslife.com

Creating Calm After Chaos: Process Art Workshop for Educators

Book: The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren

Gabor Maté – Resources on trauma and nervous system science: https://drgabormate.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Educator Burnout Crisis Introduction
• 1:35 Meet Amy Huggins: Trauma & Coaching
• 3:16 Understanding Trauma Beyond Abuse
• 6:44 Neuroception: How We Read Safety
• 10:43 Trauma-Informed Leadership for Schools
• 16:57 Healing the Inner Child
• 21:35 From Doing to Being: Emotional Messengers
• 26:01 Small Shifts for Trauma-Informed Schools
• 30:01 Creating Calm After Chaos
• 33:23 Taking Back Your Agency
• 34:16 Episode Closing and Resources

Transcript

Amy Schamberg: 0:05

Hi everybody. This is Amy Schamberg, and you're listening to TAUGHT, the podcast for education changemakers who want simple, effective and actionable strategies to make schools healthier, safer and more sustainable places to work. By now you've probably heard it loud and clear- Educator burnout is a compounding global crisis. Teachers are leaving in droves and students are paying the price, but despite the scale of the problem, most teacher wellness efforts still focus only on the individual, the least effective level of intervention. It's time for a new approach, one that looks upstream, moves beyond surface-level fixes and focuses on real organizational solutions, because, let's be honest, you can't self-care your way out of systemic dysfunction. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. Hi everybody, and welcome back to this episode of TAUGHT.

Amy Schamberg: 1:07

Today we have with us a very special guest who I am just so excited to dive into conversation with. Amy Huggins is here with us. She's a holistic life, career and executive coach. She's also a trauma recovery coach, an educator, a speaker and a business owner. Drawing from nervous system science and systems thinking, she supports educators navigating burnout, self-doubt and systemic overwhelm. Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy Huggins: 1:33

Thank you so much, Amy. It's a pleasure to be here.

Amy Schamberg: 1:35

I'm so excited for you to be here. Great name, by the way. Can you just, you know, briefly give us the 35,000-foot overview of your journey, how you got to where you are now and why this work matters to you?

Amy Huggins: 1:46

Yeah, well. I can say that it's been a lifelong question, since as long as I can remember, to try to understand what makes people tick, what makes us, as humans, do the things we do, or say the things we say, or think the way we think, or feel the way we feel. I'm a little bit addicted to learning. I always have been. When I was a preschooler, I could not wait to start school because I thought they were going to give me all the answers to the universe. Didn't quite work out that way, but that's okay because I'm a lifelong learner. I'll figure it out In 2017, I was going through life coach training. Well, it just so happened at the same time I was going through some pretty big, major life upsets, like huge stuff, and not just one, but it was just before I could get back up on my feet there was another one knocking me down, and another one. It's like being pummeled in rough waves in the ocean and it just couldn't catch a breath. And so I started Googling a million different versions of what is wrong with me and, very long story short, I discovered the world of trauma. I never thought I had trauma.

Amy Huggins: 2:43

I thought trauma is something that happens to other people. I thought trauma and abuse were synonyms. They're not. They're very different actually. But what I learned is not only had I experienced abuse, but even in non-abusive situations I had loads of trauma that I was unaware of, and I learned what that meant and I learned what to start doing about it, and so that kicked off my career as a trauma recovery coach. I received extensive trauma training and, more specifically, in nervous system training. Now, for the past several years, I've been not only a coach, helping other people navigate their trauma and learn to recognize how it's showing up in their life, in their relationships, in their workplace.

Amy Schamberg: 3:23

I want to hold space for what you just shared. I really appreciate your openness and talking about your story, and what you said is really important. Trauma is not the same as abuse, and I think that's where most of our minds go when we think of trauma. Just a brief trauma 101 for those who aren't in this field how would you describe complex trauma? What is trauma? What is it not?

Amy Huggins: 3:48

So for anyone familiar with Gabor Mate and if you're not familiar you can Google him he's wonderful, yes, amazing. So he says it best Trauma is not what happens to you. It's your body's response to what happens to you. Now, what happens to you might be abuse, but it might not.

Amy Huggins: 4:07

An analogy I like to use is let's say Amy, you're pitching a baseball to me, I catch that ball and maybe you threw it so hard or I caught it in just the right way that it hits me, or maybe I don't catch it and it hits my body or whatever, and it it leaves a bruise.

Amy Huggins: 4:22

You're just we're playing, we're just playing a game, there's no abuse going on there. And I just experienced a physical trauma. And I experienced that physical trauma because the impact was greater than that part of my body could withstand in the moment and it burst capillaries, and so now I have a bruise right Now let's take a different situation and say someone is maybe not a healthy person, maybe they're just not in a good place in that moment, and they throw a ball at me intending to hit me. Now that would be an example of abuse. Now let's say I dodge it or it glances off me or it hits me, but not in such a way that my body is feeling overwhelmed by and so it does not leave a bruise that my body is feeling overwhelmed by and so it does not leave a bruise. So abuse certainly has a higher propensity to cause trauma, but not necessarily we can experience many abuses and not have a wound, a lasting wound from it, completely harmless. You know, day-to-day things can leave major wounds as well.

Amy Schamberg: 5:20

Thank you for sharing that's an important distinction to make sure we all know at the beginning of the conversation why do you find that it is so important for leadership to become trauma-informed?

Amy Huggins: 5:31

Many leadership styles are very top-down, as in, the leader is seen as being above anyone else. What I refer to as self-led leaders when we are in, self-connected with our authentic self, then self-led leaders there is no hierarchy. I am here. I might show up in a space as a leader. Never do I feel like I'm above anyone else or better than anyone else. And even though, as an example, as a personal example, even though trauma is my thing and I know trauma inside and out and I can talk about it until the cows come home, that doesn't mean that I'm the all-knowing right. There are people out there that know things I don't.

Amy Huggins: 6:11

To share a few personal examples for the first many years of my young adult life, all of my jobs were incredibly toxic Supervisors, managers, business owners and also my colleagues. I felt like I was just walking on eggshells at any given moment, just trying not to set people off. It had me spinning into people-pleasing, just trying desperately not to be yelled at or trying to do a good enough job, because nothing I did seemed to be good enough. Everything about me just seemed to be wrong. What I can say now is it wasn't me. I know that, but at the time I didn't know that At the time. It's like gosh, why is everybody just always mad at me and each other? What is going on? And I felt like I was in this weird middle place trying to people please my managers and my coworkers and protect my customers from them.

Amy Schamberg: 7:00

Wow, thank you for sharing that. And that connects to a big pattern. Everybody is interconnected. Even if we don't think our vibe is impacting others, it really is. If we are a teacher in front of our students or if we are leading a school, how we feel, even if we're trying to mask it or suppress, it, just still comes out, and that energy is absorbed by those around us, whether that's good energy or not.

Amy Huggins: 7:28

And I'd like to speak to that just a little bit more, because that energy coming out, just to get into just a tiny bit of jargon, the word neuroception is kind of game changing Once we understand what neuroception is. So it's our nervous system. I always compare it to bat sonar. It's like the human version of bat sonar. So we're, our nervous system is sending out these pings and we're reading the situation. We're reading our internal body environment. We're also reading the external environment around us and we are reading individuals in our relationship with them. So, for example, my nervous system, without my awareness, none of us know this is happening, we don't do it on purpose, but my nervous system is reading. Amy is on the screen in front of me. Really, what my nervous system is doing is am I safe? That's the question. Am I safe? I'm here with Amy. Am I safe with Amy? I'm also here with my dog, annie. Am I safe with Annie? I can also hear traffic in the street outside that, hopefully, my microphone is filtering and my nervous system is asking am I safe with these people passing by my house?

Amy Huggins: 8:30

Right, and it's this continual thing and it's not necessarily hypervigilance. It's even when we are in the most grounded, happy, healthy place. Our nervous system is still doing that. Now, when it becomes hypervigilance is when we're getting too many cues of danger, danger, danger.

Amy Huggins: 8:46

But the fact is other people are feeling what we're putting out neuroceptively. For example, I had a repair person come by my house just a few days ago and I opened my door and before we even greeted one another, his energy hit me like a brick wall and I'm like, oh, I could just feel his dysregulation. Now I've been well-trained, I've been doing this for a long time, so I know what I'm feeling now. In the past I would feel it and not know what I was feeling and it would dysregulate me. I didn't know that because I didn't know that word. But I would become dysregulated in some way, or on edge or just not feeling safe around this person, but have no idea why. And a lot of times I would internalize that, thinking it was me, and I think that's the story for many of us.

Amy Schamberg: 9:34

Yeah, that's a great example and all of us can think of a time, probably recently, where we just had that gut feeling around someone and you just feel something is off. And on the other end of the spectrum, I can think about people whose presence just make me feel so calm and safe and relaxed. I want to think about school systems, because that's where my passion lies and there has been a big shift, a positive shift, recently across the nation to implement trauma-informed practices for educators working with their students and clearly that's very important and we can see that those practices have positive outcomes. What I don't hear about as frequently is trauma-informed practices amongst staff, for staff. If that were to occur, what do you see as a benefit or an outcome?

Amy Huggins: 10:27

So many because of that whole ripple effect, if you think of the butterfly effect. My grandest wish is for everybody to be trauma trained not merely trauma informed, but fully trauma trained. So you don't have to become a trauma professional. But what that does is teach us what we're experiencing at any given moment. We can also understand the roots of it and where it's coming from, and we are empowered to know how to meet ourselves where we are, without shame or guilt. And that's a big piece right there and that ripples out Most people.

Amy Huggins: 11:00

When you start learning about trauma, you're really seeing your life and your entire history through completely different lenses. You realize that, oh my gosh, I've been living in this trauma identity, thinking that this is who I am, but really who I am has just been so shut. Illusions start falling away and you start accessing your authentic self more and more and more. You become more confident. You experience greater clarity, no matter what the situation is around you. You also become just rooted and rock solid. It doesn't matter what craziness might be going on around you. You can find yourself in the middle of extreme dysfunction and maintain your rootedness, and you're going to be rattled, sure, but you're also going to know that you're okay and you will know. Okay, I don't know how to figure it out, but I know that I will figure it out.

Amy Schamberg: 11:57

You're empowered. It sounds like resilience, to me Immensely like times 10.

Amy Schamberg: 12:02

And I'm wondering if what you've just described explains why there may be a situation in a school where two different adults experience the same situation very differently. And in elementary school when we have a, let's say, we have a third grader just raging and throwing tables and chairs and just really being very disruptive, clearly they are dysregulated and we know that there is something that happening with that child that needs to be supported. And we have one teacher who is able to see it for what it is and follow the plan and, you know, minimize verbal interaction and call for help calmly. And then we have another teacher who becomes escalated themselves because of the escalation of the child and is completely thrown off for the rest of the day, for the rest of the week. So those are two very different reactions to the same situation and it makes me wonder if perhaps trauma or your ability to kind of know your trauma response plays into that.

Amy Huggins: 13:02

Oh, that's exactly what's going on. So to translate the entire situation, the child, first of all, is in fight or flight, and at that point, full blown fight or flight. They're not hearing like physically incapable of hearing. When we become triggered enough, our inner ear muscles constrict in certain ways that literally block us from having the ability to hear the human voice. That's really important for educators to know. So what's going on in those situations? When that inner ear shifts, their body is tuning in for sounds of danger. So they're hearing shrill, high-pitched frequencies, and they are hearing deep, hearing shrill high-pitched frequencies, and they are hearing deep, low tones. So those deep low tones think growls, think lion in the savannah right.

Amy Huggins: 13:50

So when we hear these deep sounds, these predator sounds, our nervous system sends us into fight or flight state and it makes us want to get away, whatever that means. It might mean throwing chairs and tables. We just need to get away. And if we hear the high-pitched sounds, that still signals that something is wrong. But in those instances we're going to be more likely to turn towards the sound, because think of like crying babies or crying women or screaming like, ah, help me. And so those high-pitched sounds tend to be more help me sounds, and so we are still triggered, but we'll turn more towards it.

Amy Huggins: 14:24

But the point is, in a classroom there's no learning going on, so that's the child's experience. Now for the first educator. You talked about the example you gave as someone who can see what's happening with the child and support them through it. That is because that teacher's nervous system is regulated enough that the child's behavior is not dysregulating them, that teacher's neuroception is pinging away and it's informing her. Okay, this child is dysregulated and they need support, but it's not triggering her into her own survival state versus the educator who might become triggered and start to have the adult version of a meltdown.

Amy Huggins: 15:05

And that could be so. First of all, she's not, or they are not, in a regulated state. Their nervous system is in that fragile, more fragile place where it's easily knocked out. But it could also be more specific than that. It could be. Maybe they grew up in a violent home where they were constantly being yelled at, and now here's this kid yelling be. Maybe they grew up in a violent home where they were constantly being yelled at, and now here's this kid yelling. Maybe they grew up in a home where things were being thrown, and now here's this kid throwing things.

Amy Schamberg: 15:28

We often, as adults, don't consider on a day-to-day basis our childhood and how our childhood is impacting us day-to-day. It takes a lot of self-reflection and intentionality, and often the support of a trained professional, to take us to that place in a way that feels safe. But what you just said is so important, because there are these of our childhood that, even if we're not thinking about on a day-to-day basis, they're still there. And so when you have that experience where you're triggered by something that was frightening as a child when you had no agency to get yourself out of the situation, for example that triggers something deep inside of you and even if you don't understand it at the moment, because you're just physiologically experiencing a racing heart or whatever that might be.

Amy Huggins: 16:16

Yeah, and just to add a little more nuance to that. It can be super trippy when we are not able to make those connections in the moment. Years ago, I had an experience where I would find my though. This was before I knew anything about trauma. I would find myself being reactive all of a sudden and I couldn't figure out why, and so I thought the person in front of me did something or said something. It's their fault, right? I would suddenly become upset and not fully understand why I was upset. I had no memory of childhood stuff going on in that moment. I was focused on the person in front of me, and if anybody had asked me, how does this link to your childhood, I would have said it doesn't, it absolutely doesn't. I'm not thinking about my childhood right now, and I hear many people now tell me the same thing. Right, you know? No, no, no, no. I don't have any wounds from that, or I've healed those wounds or whatever.

Amy Huggins: 17:04

But what's going on again, back at that nervous system level, beneath the conscious awareness? Our nervous system is what is remembering. So most of us are familiar with classic flashbacks. Those would be explicit flashbacks. The soldier has come home from war. They hear a car backfire. They hit the deck. That's an explicit flashback. They can tell you exactly why they just hit the deck. Oh well, suddenly I was back in Afghanistan, so they understand that.

Amy Huggins: 17:32

Now an implicit flashback is far more disorienting, because we can't make those connections and so we can be triggered on one level, but it does not bring a conscious awareness of the memory, only a nervous system level of that memory. So all of a sudden I can become this five-year-old child and my nervous system is remembering something that happened when I was five years old and I'm reliving it in a 49 year old body and everybody around me is like what is she doing? What's happening right now? And I might be asking the same thing. That's what had me years ago Googling what's wrong with me, right? Well, nothing is wrong. I just want to clarify that in our culture we are this, all of this, everything we're talking about right now.

Amy Huggins: 18:18

Amy is so pathologized and I really just want to name that. Nothing is wrong with you or me or any of us. When we act like children, it is because those parts of us are children. We're all familiar, I think, with the term inner child. It's more like there's an inner village of children. They're all different ages. Some of them carry big wounds, some of them carry little wounds, some of them don't have wounds and they just like to play. But when those wounded children become triggered by our nervous system, there's still nothing wrong with us. It's just our system letting us know. Hey, I need some support right now, just like the kid in the classroom does.

Amy Huggins: 18:56

And for those listening who aren't familiar with the term inner child how would you describe that Inner child work is really helping us connect with that part of ourself that we have been taught as adults to shut down? We're taught that adulting looks a certain way right. We're taught that, well, you're too mature for X, y and Z. I literally watched a TV show last night where the main character created a list, once he turned 30, of all of the things he was now too old for, and so that's heartbreaking to me. But inner child work has you going back and revisiting things like that to get in touch with that part?

Amy Schamberg: 19:30

of yourself. You know it's interesting because I often say you can't self-care your way out of systemic dysfunction, but I think that a lot of places district schools are trying really hard to bring wellness into the staff community. However, I see it falling short quite often because it looks a lot like additional activities or things to do for yourself. It's access to free counseling, it's the mindfulness apps, things like that, gym memberships, which are wonderful. That's one component and it makes me think of the times in my life when I was eating really well and exercising every day and, you know, making sure I was getting enough sleep, taking care of all of those pieces, but still feeling a wreck. I didn't even know was there because it wasn't the big. You know the big T trauma that we often think about, and so I just wanted to name that. You know you really doesn't matter how well you're taking care of yourself physically, if you don't take care of yourself emotionally by addressing a lot of this trauma work, then there are still going to be gaps.

Amy Huggins: 20:46

Exactly, I'm really glad you brought that up. It speaks to the heart of one of the reasons I created a workshop specifically for educators. We're actually leading the workshop for different sectors, but the one next week is specifically for local educators and it's kind of addressing that whole dynamic. So it is a process art workshop. What we're doing is splitting it in half. The first half of the workshop is trauma training, mini trauma training and a lot of nervous system training.

Amy Huggins: 21:16

And also, the biggest thing for me is I want these teachers leaving with a slew of tools in their toolbox that they can pull from when it feels right for them. But things yes, it's so great to go get a manicure and just have a day for yourself or go to the gym, or those things are wonderful, but they're also very topical. They're not getting to the problem. I mean they're literally. They can be nice and so sure do them, but they're also band-aids. If we're talking about healing a wound, they're not going to heal the wound, they're just going to cover it up. So let's get down to the root. And those are the tools and resources that we are arming them with and the education that we're arming them with. And then and I always joke. It's like, okay, when I come in with my trauma training, it's going to feel sometimes like I'm in there picking at scab because I'm going to be reminding your nervous system of some wounds that maybe they're partially healed, maybe you don't even know they're there yet, and so you're going to be feeling some things and that's okay, just let that happen. And we do practices together. Okay, let's pause here. Let's just sit with this, let's tune into our body. If your body doesn't feel like a safe place, focus on your toes or focus on your ears Does that feel safe enough? Let's just stay there. Let's just be with that.

Amy Huggins: 22:27

When we live in a culture that has us go, go, go, go, go, go go all the time, it can be disorienting and it can feel even threatening for someone to just stop and to just feel. And I want to name that because, expect it, if this is a new practice for you, you're going to feel all kinds of resistance. That's normal. Stay with that resistance. Don't run away from the resistance. This is a practice we're shifting from doing to being.

Amy Huggins: 22:56

Many people may have heard the phrase. We are spiritual beings having a human experience, and so my body is a human, but I am not my body, I am a being, and so how can we stop worrying so much about the doing? The doing will be there. There will always be dirty dishes, so the doing will be there. But how can I pause and just be and remember what that's like?

Amy Huggins: 23:19

Because it's when we are in that place that we are then connecting with our human body, where our emotions live, and we're allowing those emotions to just roll through us, and over time, we start to remember that emotions are messengers. I don't think many of us have been taught that. We feel so often that they are inner bullies. But our emotions are messengers and they're helping us understand what's going on internally. And it starts with that neuroception. Right, we're with neuroception. We're pinking away internally too. What's going on inside of me right now? And then the emotions are the ones that translate. Okay, hey, amy, your nervous system said you're feeling this right now. And you're feeling this right now because, maybe because all your needs are met and you're feeling happy and joyful, or maybe because a particular need's not being met. I just want to let you know that so you can take care of yourself. But we miss those messages when we're only ever doing.

Amy Schamberg: 24:13

That's so true, and I think about myself and so many of the clients that I've worked with, who are typically really successful, high performing, highly ambitious and come in because they're chronically stressed and on the edge of burnout, but are so and I am the same way, or I was this way so uncomfortable, just sitting still. They will tell me that they just can't sit still Like they have to. Their mind must be engaged, They've got to pull out their phone and check their email or they've got to be doing something. And I, you know, I can think of one person in particular when I've seen her just sit because maybe she's waiting for someone else. You could just see the distress of just sitting. And I love what you said about emotions are messengers. I often say as a school psychologist that behavior is communication, and I can see that this goes hand in hand. Right, If behavior is communicating, then emotions are the messengers. That's beautiful.

Amy Huggins: 25:09

Yeah, Just a quick resource for listeners. The Language of Emotions by Carla McLaren is a phenomenal book that helps us understand what those messages actually are. Just a quick example anger is one of my favorite emotions because it's the one I've struggled with the most, and anger is the messenger letting us know hey, your boundary is either being crossed or being threatened. You might want to pay attention to that right now.

Amy Schamberg: 25:34

Yes, yes, thank you for bringing that up. Okay, so what is one small shift that a school leader could make tomorrow to start leading in a more trauma-informed way and to start that ripple effect that you talked about? And to start that ripple effect that you talked about?

Amy Huggins: 25:50

One small thing, pausing and just being with themselves. Once you practice that enough, a natural outpouring of that is to know that other people's stuff is not about me, even when it's directed at me. Even if my student, for example, is yelling at me and telling me how I'm making their life miserable, I know I'm not making their life miserable. I know there are other things going on that has that child feeling so overwhelmed right now. And I know that I am safe in my body. I know that I have agency, I know that I can support myself and I can support this child in front of me. All of that really starts with those pauses. You mentioned just being with yourself, just tuning in and feeling what's there, and you're right. You talked about people who really, really struggle with that, even for a few seconds. And so what helped me was a timer, and I committed to it daily, at least once a day, and if I could, if I thought about it more often, I would do it more often. If I was able to.

Amy Huggins: 26:50

In the beginning I would set a timer for two minutes and say I'm just going to sit here and feel and I'm just going to ask what's in there. Now, in the beginning. I had never done that before, and so all kinds of stuff would flood me. I would be emotionally flooded and would end up on the floor crying in a puddle. It was a. It was a whole mess. So if you're getting started, maybe don't do this in the middle of class. Maybe do it in the evenings or sometime when you can just have a minute alone. If two minutes is just unbearable, start with 30 seconds. The catch is to come back daily because over time your system is going to learn to trust you.

Amy Schamberg: 27:42

That's such great advice and it reminds me of advice that I was given by a therapist once who suggested that I set several alarms on my phone to go off at very random times of the day, like I don't know 947 am and 122 pm these random times as a reminder, as an alarm to pause for a moment and check in with myself. When she told me to do that, I was like really, but it was great because I was trying to remember, for you know, weeks ahead of that to check in with myself throughout the day, but I never could remember. So setting those alarms really helped. I would recognize tension in my back that I probably wouldn't have noticed until maybe later on that night when I was laying in bed. So then I could do some stretches or think about okay, what's causing me to hold on to stress in my back right now? Why am I so worked up at the moment, whereas if I just kept going and going and going, I would not have even had that awareness.

Amy Huggins: 28:22

Exactly, and you named something important about noticing, you know, tension in your back, for example. For some people, when they start doing this, they can't name the emotions. And I want to just clarify this is not necessarily about naming the emotions. It's about feeling it, feeling your body. Now, just asking your body what's going on, what are you feeling right now. That could be an emotion. You don't have to name it. You can, but you don't have to. There's no pressure, and it could also be a body sensation, like tension in your shoulders, for example. It's just a practice of connecting with your body and just witnessing whatever happens to be there.

Amy Schamberg: 28:57

Yeah, or even just feeling your feet on the ground, noticing where you are in space. It's getting out of autopilot for, like you said, 30 seconds, 10 seconds, whatever you can handle. So, when you've done your work with your clients and you've had them take part in these practices daily, what are the outcomes that they have shared with you from doing this? The emotional?

Amy Huggins: 29:19

flooding stops, the resilience increases and one of my favorite parts that I get super excited about is when they become dysregulated. They're able to come back home more quickly and more easily. I have had clients randomly text me or call me. Guess what? You're not going to believe what I just did. This crazy thing happened and it rattled me and I was so dysregulated and then I caught myself and I interrupted the process and I said, no, I don't have to do this. And I was able to just come back and I was okay, and then I suddenly knew what to do and how to handle the situation.

Amy Schamberg: 29:54

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. So the process art group for educators is happening next week.

Amy Huggins: 30:01

The process art group is called Creating Calm After Chaos, and they will be a continual offering. We're offering two-day intensive right now specifically to make it easier for educators over the summer. Throughout the rest of the year we're also offering the same workshop over a four-week spread. I also work with one-on-one clients. I'm really helping them connect what's going on with them with what's going on in the workplace, so to help them see how they impact the workplace impacts them, and how all of that can be traced back to trauma.

Amy Huggins: 30:36

If you consider, your relationships are a mirror, your workplace is a mirror. If you're an entrepreneur, your business is your mirror. So what are you seeing in the world around you that's driving you crazy? What are you seeing that just wrecks you or brings you to your knees? Okay, now we're going to flip that mirror around and we're going to look and see how that's originating in you.

Amy Huggins: 30:58

We always feel it's someone else, it's the situation outside of us and there's so much evidence to that right. Well, this person mistreated me. How could that be my fault? So it's not about fault, but it is about what's going on for me internally that I in any way invited. What, in this situation, is mine, because that's all I ever have control over. So let's tease that apart. What is mine, what is theirs, so we can let theirs go. Now there might be some internal wounding. We can work on that, cleaning up those wounds and healing those wounds. And now that we know what is my responsibility, now let's talk about, okay, what do we do with that moving forward? What does that mean for creating new boundaries? What does that mean for how we're going to choose to show up differently, both with ourselves and others?

Amy Schamberg: 31:42

As I'm listening to you say this, I have to say that the feeling that kind of came up for me at first was indignant, what? But it's never my fault, really. Like it's the system, it's this person. But as you continue talking, I think about well, you know what I have let my boundaries be stepped on, and so then I set the expectation that my boundaries aren't what they actually are for me, because I'm modeling that it's something different. So that's where I can take some ownership, exactly.

Amy Huggins: 32:11

Yeah, and just as a quick example that brought to mind, there have been times when you know I would be railing against my workplace and eventually had to come to a decision like I'm the one that continues to choose to still work here. I don't have to work here Now. That's easier said than done to just just go find a job real quick. That can be a several months long process sometimes, but the fact is I can choose to start that process.

Amy Schamberg: 32:36

That's right, and we can choose to start taking small daily actions towards something different.

Amy Huggins: 32:41

And in the meantime, I can choose to show up in the current workplace differently and I can choose to protect myself differently. We have so much choice, so much that most of us are not aware of, and that's what I help people reconnect with.

Amy Schamberg: 32:54

I love that so much. It's empowering people to take back their agency Exactly. And you're right, because, truly, when you're in the thick of it, when you are burnt out or totally stressed out or dealing with a bunch of family issues or whatever I mean just life really it's so hard to remember day to day that you do have a choice, that you do have agency, and so that's why I really love what you just talked about and I think your work is so important. I wish that we could bring you to every single school district so that you can continue this work in schools, because I do see how it could be transformative, not just in education, but in our entire communities.

Amy Huggins: 33:32

Yeah, my grand, ultimate dream. What Utopia looks like for me is for the entire education system to be fully trauma trained, for the entire medical system to be fully trauma trained, for the entire judicial system to be trauma trained and, going even further, once we're at that level, for every newborn baby to be born to parents who are trauma trained because they grew up in a system that's trauma trained, because really all that means when I say trauma trained, it just means I know how to be human oh, and I thought I had big goals.

Amy Schamberg: 34:07

Yours are monumental. Oh my gosh, amy. This has been such a great conversation. Before we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to share that we didn't get to today?

Amy Huggins: 34:16

Biggest thing that really comes to mind for me is I just really want the audience to know that they're worth it, to know that they deserve it and to know that, even when they feel like they can't do it, they can. They are stronger If they consider all of the energy they pour out, all of the projects, all of the people around them. What if they were to reclaim even a fraction of that energy and say you know what this part's for me? That is what will empower them and energize them to show up for themselves differently.

Amy Schamberg: 34:46

Thank you so much. This was such a rich conversation. It's been so valuable. I will make sure to link your website and your educators group information resources that you mentioned the books and I hope that we can have you on again, because this conversation is very important and we need to keep it going.

Amy Huggins: 35:05

Absolutely, Amy. Thank you so much for having me. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I really look forward to seeing you again and continuing.

Amy Schamberg: 35:15

Thanks for listening to TAUT. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a colleague and leave a quick review, and be sure to follow the show so you don't miss what's next. For more tools to support educator well-being, visit amyshanbergcom backslash TAUT. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to keep the conversation going. Finally, remember to check the show notes for links to today's guest and additional resources. See you next time.