The Hidden Trauma We All Carry (And How to Heal It) (Diana Bitting) - Episode 217

Today’s conversation is one that touches every single one of us — whether we realize it or not.

We’re talking about trauma.

Not just the big, obvious trauma. Not just what happened to you. But how it lives inside your body… and quietly shapes your health, stress levels, relationships, and even your sense of purpose.

Joining us is Diana Bitting, co-founder and CEO of Catbird Health, an AI-powered trauma-informed care platform pioneering an entirely new model for healing.

But Diana didn’t start here. She spent decades struggling with a chronic inflammatory condition that no doctor could explain. Test after test came back “normal.” She was told it was stress. Or anxiety. Or maybe even “all in her head.”

Sound familiar?

After trying everything — diets, protocols, medications, functional medicine, and talk therapy — nothing created lasting relief. Until one conversation changed everything.

When Diana began exploring trauma science and nervous system healing, her symptoms started to lift. Because here’s what she discovered: Trauma doesn’t just live in the brain. It lives in the body. And until the nervous system feels safe, true healing can’t happen.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why trauma is stored in the nervous system
• The link between inflammation, anxiety, insomnia, and unresolved trauma
• Why talk therapy alone may not be enough
• The difference between cognitive healing and body-based healing
• How personalized, trauma-informed care is changing the future of medicine
• Why every single one of us can benefit from trauma healing

This conversation is grounded in science, but it’s also deeply hopeful.

Because healing trauma isn’t just about resolving the past. It’s about unlocking energy, clarity, connection, and purpose in the present.

If you’ve ever felt like something was “off” in your body — even when everything looked fine on paper — this episode may connect some powerful dots.

You are not broken. Your body has been protecting you. And healing is possible.

MORE FROM DIANA BITTING

• Check out Catbird and start your person healing journey. 
• Learn more about Diana. 

Visit seekingcentercommunity.com for more with Robyn + Karen and many of the guides on Seeking Center: The Podcast. You'll get access to live weekly sessions, intuitive guidance, daily inspiration, and a space to share your journey with like-minded people who just get it.

You can also follow Seeking Center on Instagram @theseekingcenter.

Transcript

Robyn: [00:00:00] I'm Robyn Miller Brecker and I'm Karen Loenser. Welcome to Seeking Center, the podcast. Join us each week as we have the conversations and we, through the spiritual and holistic clutter for you, we'll boil it down to what you need to know now, we're all about total wellness, which to us needs building a healthy life.

Karen: On a physical, mental, and spiritual level, we'll talk to the trailblazers who'll introduce you to the practices, products, and experiences that may be just what you need to hear about to transform your life. If you're listening to this, it's no accident. Think of this as your seeking center and your place to seek your center.

Robyn: And for the best wellness and spiritual practitioners, experts, products, experiences, and inspo, visit theseekingcenter. com. Today's conversation is so important because it touches every one of us, whether we realize it or not. We're talking about trauma, not just in the traditional sense, but the subtle ways it shows up in our health, our stress levels, and even our [00:01:00] sense of connection and purpose.

And joining us is someone who's helping to completely reimagine how we approach healing from trauma.. Her name is Diana Bitting and she's the co-founder and CEO of Catbird Health, an AI powered trauma-informed care platform that's pioneering a whole new model for healing.

 Catbird combines expert human support with personalized digital therapeutics and is completely grounded in science. What we love most about Diana is her why her own story and her years of research are what led to the creation of Catbird.

She believes that every single one of us has experienced some form of trauma, which means every single one of us can benefit from healing it, not just emotionally, but physically and spiritually too. We're gonna dive in to how trauma impacts our daily lives and how healing can become a full body process.

Get ready to look at healing in a whole new way. Hi, Diana. Hi Karen. 

Karen: Hi Robyn Welcome, Diana. 

Diana: Thank you so much. [00:02:00] I'm so honored to

be here 

Karen: we're already inspired with your story, which is where we'd love to start. Tell us about your journey and how Catbird came to be.

Diana: So Catbird was born out of my own decades long struggle with a chronic health condition that no one could explain and no one could treat. I saw dozens of doctors and specialists. I ran tests after tests and I was told over and over again that my labs were normal and that it was all in my head, and that there was nothing that they could do to help me.

And this was the conventional medical specialists that I was working with. I took my health into my own hands. And along this journey, at least at the beginning, I tried everything. I tried special diets. I tried protocols, medications, functional medicine talk therapy.

 And my specific condition was an inflammatory disorder. So it was ruining my [00:03:00] digestion, and the inflammation was also leading to insomnia and chronic anxiety. So it was all just a mess, right? And I would try something and it would work. Maybe it was the placebo effect, but it would work for a little bit.

 and then it gave up and nothing really worked for a long time. There was no sustainable path to healing. Eventually, it was actually after a serendipitous conversation with a dear friend of mine . And she was studying mind body medicine. And she asked, as I was reading out on my health crisis and all of these symptoms that I was managing whether or not I had childhood trauma.

And I said, yeah, but I'm in talk therapy and that has nothing to do with this. And I threw it away. And she responded and said, don't discount your trauma. I would start there. That's all she gave me. And I continued to stumble along in my healing journey until inevitably and serendipitously again, I stumbled into the world of trauma science [00:04:00] and it changed everything for me.

 So once I began healing my nervous system. Which is the core of trauma where trauma is stored. We've been wrongly conditioned to believe that trauma lives in the brain. It lives in the body. And once I started healing trauma in my body, my symptoms started to lift. And that experience opened my eyes to the truth that no one had ever told me that so much of our suffering in this world, physical, mental, emotional, is trauma related.

It's this lack of feeling safe and all the physiological, biological, neurological effects of that feeling, of lack of safety. 

And the healthcare system is completely missing this link, which is why most of us are very sick. 

Robyn: so you start down this road and what did it initially look like for you once you started to understand that trauma actually.

Was a big player in why you were feeling the way you were feeling? 

Diana: Yeah. The [00:05:00] universe works in magical ways and all of a sudden these doors started opening for me and one of them was a recommendation to meet with an acupuncturist. And so I met with her and I started describing my symptoms.

And again, as a toss away comment at the end after she had worked on me, she said, you should look into the link between trauma and IBS, which is what I was diagnosed with. so I started by literally just going to my podcast app and typing in trauma and and there wasn't a ton of content.

Because the study of trauma is actually a very recent, emerging field. We haven't had hard data and hard science around the link. Until the past, I would say 12 to 15 years at least peer reviewed, actual, formal science that people are respecting and taking and taking seriously.

 So I learned that trauma isn't always this crazy catastrophic event that happens. It can be a [00:06:00] series of distressing events. It can be the lack of something, it could be something that didn't happen when it should have. They were talking about the biological, the physical implications of experiencing trauma.

And what happens is your body kicks off this stress response, right? You start to release adrenaline, you start to release cortisol, and that's fine if you're running from a bear. You then release it and then you restore safety in your nervous system and you move on. If you're stuck in this state of hyper arousal and these, this feeling of not feeling safe indefinitely, then you are releasing these stress hormones in your body to a toxic degree.

You are creating toxicity in your body and that leads to all this inflammation. And what is a, digestive disorder, but an inflammatory disorder. So no doctor had ever asked me about my trauma. No doctor had explained the link between inflammation and trauma. None of my talk therapists had ever talked to me about trauma and the somatic science [00:07:00] of trauma healing.

 So I became a trauma researcher and that's what I do now and that's what I'm, dedicating my life to. 

Karen: Just a quick question on what were you doing before this, Diana? What was your day-to-day job? 

Diana: Yes. So I was a tech bro. I had worked in high growth venture backed tech companies as a product and growth executive for about 12 years.

And that kind of high stress environment set off the domino effect, which would lead to this health crisis that I experienced in 2019 where I found myself in the back of an ambulance. After having an episode related to this chronic condition and all of the anxiety that I was experiencing and insomnia it ended up just being a really serious panic attack.

But for anyone that's had a panic attack, you feel like you're dying. 

Robyn: you do. 

Diana: Yeah. It's serious. And that was my body waving the white flag of you [00:08:00] can no longer engage in this kind of work cadence and this work environment or you will die. And if I don't die tomorrow of a heart attack, what will happen is it will just start shaving years off of my life and my chronic condition will continue to get worse.

And It creates this whack-a-mole situation where you're just trying to mitigate symptoms all over the place and you have this cocktail of medications that you're taking. And I left that world in 2023. I was admitted to the Stanford School of Business and as part of that program, they have you incubate a company.

So as you're learning about how to build businesses, and I knew I wanted to start. Something that could truly change the world for the better and heal the world. And I had gone through this crisis in 2019 and had learned all of these things and maniacally researched trauma and basically owned my own healing journey.

 Starting then. That I saw [00:09:00] this huge opportunity and this huge care gap for most people that are suffering from trauma related conditions and have gotten chewed up and spit out of the conventional medical and psychological model and have nowhere to turn Other than like Googling symptoms and maybe talking to people that you trust. but yeah that's why I started catbird after many years of working in tech. 

Karen: I think so many people listening right now are feeling so validated, They're in maybe a job or a career and they're feeling these symptoms.

I know when I was in the corporate world, I felt them too, where you're just so overwhelmed and yet you're trying to talk yourself out of it, or you're saying, oh my gosh, you should be able to deal with this. And I love your definition of trauma. It's that feeling of not being safe and how that's imprinted in your body in various different ways and how we try to medicate ourselves out of the feeling.

So what led you to feeling like this was meant [00:10:00] to be your life's work and what led you to the next step in, creating catbird? 

Diana: so it was definitely a calling. I believe it was a divine calling. And as part of this healing process, and I can detail out just exactly how that unfolded later, but I had a spiritual awakening and I know it to be true.

 there was a series of spiritual awakenings, but one of 'em started with holotropic breath work. No joke. This was in the middle of COVID and I was homeschooling two small children and I was going through a divorce and my life was a complete mess. And I was also working on trying to heal this condition, this holistic health crisis that I was in.

 So I locked myself in my closet and I turned on a podcast that led me through a holotropic breathwork exercise. And I remember being in such a dark night of the soul during this intense traumatic event, which was the global pandemic. That I offered it [00:11:00] up. I literally offered it up and said, I can't do this anymore.

 And I was working through this breath work and I felt my organs start to move. I felt this intense energetic shift start happening. And I looked down at my stomach was actually moving, and I started to feel tingly all over. And it's a really hard experience to describe using the very limited language, which is English, but it fit the description of a Kundalini awakening.

 And my life shifted from that moment on. It was like I was upgraded energetically and I get really emotional talking about it because it was so beautiful. I started to have hope for the first time in a really long time, and that hope shifted everything. It started to shift my physical health, my symptoms started to ease, it wasn't dramatic, but they just started to get a little bit better and [00:12:00] that was the very beginning of my healing journey.

Robyn: journey. Wow. So as you said, you were accepted into this program within the Stanford Business School, and you had this idea for Catbird and obviously you have a very deep why and what we know because we've gotten to know you You've created a whole process, I just want to help people better understand when you talk about trauma, how you do feel it's not just for the most extreme of situations.

 Let's touch on that and then get into what this process that you've created looks like. 

Diana: this is really important for people. Trauma isn't just these big catastrophic events. It is a series of distressing events that are cumulative. And add up to, again, this felt sense of fear and hypervigilance and lack of safety.

 And it can also be the absence of what we needed. Connection, attunement, validation. It can be growing up in a [00:13:00] household where emotions weren't, safe. It's chronic stress with no outlet. And it's also things like medical procedures that left you feeling helpless or unseen. It's anything that overwhelms the nervous system's ability to regulate itself.

And it leaves this physiological imprint across your entire system in your brain, your body, your immune system. And that's why it's so universal. I think we've all had these moments, at least the vast majority of us, especially in childhood, and that gets stored in our body. So trauma healing really is the process of acknowledging, processing and releasing trauma that we now know has been stored on a cellular level.

Robyn: I'm really glad we're underscoring that because I just want people to think back. I know in my own life, my dad died when I was 12, So that can be traumatic. But for other people in their childhood, it could be that school was traumatic, That there were kids that were not nice to them, or [00:14:00] they didn't feel that they were seen by their teachers.

And so that made them nervous. It doesn't have to be, as we're talking about, like these kind of very extreme situations. It could be these small things that were happening on a day-to-day basis in their childhood that were what we would call traumatic after a while because they were constantly in fight or flight their nervous system was not regulated.

And so I just, I want people to think about it does really impact almost everyone. 

Karen: It's really important, Robyn And I also think even as you're talking, so many people may not realize I never really connected trauma. I think trauma as being something emotional, not physical, and I've never really connected.

Robyn: Yes, 

Diana: So many things lead up to this feeling of lack, of safety, And these definitions are evolving and they're also they are a different across sources. If you start to do the research and to answer, part of your question before, that's really what [00:15:00] kicked off the roadmap that would become Catbird for me.

Robyn: What did that look like? 

Diana: Yeah, so trauma literacy and understanding what trauma is a really important part of the process. You have to self-educate about the implications of trauma on your brain, body and spirit. And we can talk a little bit more about this but I was a little maniacal, admittedly, because that's who I am.

I am a nerd, and whenever I devote myself to something and dedicate myself, I'm gonna go hard on it and I'm gonna go super deep. And so I became a trauma researcher and just nerded out on trauma science kind of all day long. I read over a hundred books I listened to. Last count was I think 600 and some podcasts.

I interviewed experts because as part of the Stanford program, you have to do a lot of due diligence and research. And I had this aha moment, which is the how of trauma healing. Trauma healing can be this [00:16:00] really messy ball of confusion and overwhelm and analysis paralysis, and so many opinions coming at you and so many different things to try.

That's when you get stuck. You get stuck because you're overwhelmed by all the possibilities. And even now when you ask Dr. Chat, GPT, or Dr. Google or whoever you go to for answers or Reddit, you get 50 different answers to the same question. You get 50 different modalities that you can try. You get 50 different paths that you can explore.

 People don't have time for that. People don't have money for that. And this is keeping us sick. It's keeping us stuck. I really wanted to unwind this for people. I knew that there's a way to present trauma healing in a really digestible, accessible way. That took out all of the confusion and it gave a path to clarity.

And again, it started [00:17:00] with understanding trauma and the literacy piece. And then we realized that there were four different principles that came together in order to catalyze deep levels of healing. And I'm not saying that simple things like going to a yin yoga class every week, can't catalyze healing.

What we were trying to develop was a fully optimized, expedited process for people. People, some people are completely fine healing their trauma, in 30 years they kind of chip away at it over time because trauma is. A journey. Healing from trauma is very much a journey, and it's a lifelong journey, but people that are stuck in acute states of distress and symptoms that are really impacting their quality of life, they need help and they need help fast.

 So what we did with our recovery protocol is focus on, okay, what is our thesis around healing trauma and how can we [00:18:00] make this easier, faster, more affordable for people that want to get out of symptom management and mitigation and a better place soon.

And so we looked at four principles. We looked at cognitive rewiring and neuroplasticity. That. Involves your brain and your brain's ability to change. And when you've been impacted by trauma, what ends up happening is there is a neural imprint. That means that in your brain there's a pathway that was carved by this traumatic event or series of traumatic events.

And what that leads to is thought loops and a complete mindset shift in how you view the world, You've set off this trigger of the world isn't safe, and that leads, we now know to all these physical problems. So we start by working on cognitive rewiring. Your brain is oftentimes not your friend.

 Your brain is lazy. It just uses information that you've given it to help you navigate the world. And if you've given it, information of the world is [00:19:00] not safe. That keeps you stuck. So we really work on the brain and at the same time we work on the body via somatic release and nervous system regulation.

 So because trauma is stored on a cellular level, you have to purge it from your body. And this is where you have to be really open-minded, but things can get a little weird. We have, you do things like tapping, we have you do things like holotropic breath work. We have you engage in modalities like shaking and kundalini yoga and TRE yoga, which holds poses for a really long time to get into the fascia where a lot of trauma is stored.

 And then we do a lot of meditations and body-based exercises to restore that regulation in your nervous system. And then last but not least, the mindfulness and spirituality piece is critical. And why is that? It's because trauma is both a psychosomatic and a [00:20:00] psychospiritual disease. It is something that affects your connection to the divine.

Because if you are on the receiving end of trauma, oftentimes you feel God forsaken. You feel left behind, you feel completely abandoned by the universe. 

 and you might not even realize this could be something so deeply subconscious, you're not even aware of it. But that's again, how you start living your life.

You start living your life in a way where you were abandoned by the universe. So therefore, you're not worthy, you're not worthy of health, you're not worthy of self-care, you're not worthy of putting up boundaries with people in your life. You're not worthy of a better job that doesn't fill your soul.

You're not worthy of all these things that are actually negatively impacting your life. I'm really passionate about this piece because when people ask me, how did you heal your trauma? Of course I respond and say, do you have three hours? But I also [00:21:00] say it was remembering, it was in the process of remembering that I am perfect and I'm connected to the divine.

 I am a fractal of the divine, and I am perfect in my imperfection. and through that process, I became whole again. My entire physiology, my entire holistic health realigned with that mantra. And then it was like oh, this is coherence. We're all coming together and you love yourself and therefore we love you.

And I can't always say this on every podcast or interview that I engage with because that kind of turns some people off. But the framing is really important and I'm glad that we're in a safe space with this podcast to be able to share that part of the recovery process. 

Robyn: I'm so grateful that you have used your own trauma to create something that is really going and already is impacting so many people.

 And I'm in awe of all [00:22:00] that you are doing. So I'm excited to really even understand more about the physiological imprint of somebody's trauma. Is there a specific place that it typically shows up or is it different for every. Person. How did you really come to understand that part?

Diana: Yeah. I really wanna get into the science ' cause it's really important. Yeah. I also wanted to just drive home a really important point again to help people that are hearing this podcast and still absorbing this information and thinking. Yeah. But it still seems really complicated.

 And what I want to reinforce is this idea that we know that trauma healing can happen and it can happen a lot quicker than we've ever done it in the past through this systematic titrated multidisciplinary process. So what does that mean? That means that through micro practices and daily interventions and exercises, you start [00:23:00] to unwind the trauma from the cellular level and you start to resource safety in your body.

 That doesn't all happen at once. There's no silver bullet for trauma healing. It's a process. Just like losing weight in a sustainable way, there are little changes that you're gonna make every single day that add up. That's the titration. Systematic means you're not gonna wanna do or engage in something that might completely dysregulate your nervous system out the gates.

You're not gonna wanna engage in certain modalities that you're not quite ready for. they're just not gonna work. You're gonna waste a lot of money doing things that your body isn't actually ready to receive. I'm outing myself as a advocate for psychedelics, but I also always say that you're not ready at the beginning of your healing journey to engage in these really powerful somatic experiences until you've laid the groundwork.

So that's the systematic approach, It's the ramping up. And then lastly, multidisciplinary. I talk about healing [00:24:00] as a process of uncovering your own medicine cabinet, the medicines in your medicine cabinet. What are the medicines that keep you whole and healthy and in homeostasis? And that could be medicines like you meditate every day in the morning for 20 minutes.

That could mean you chat with your best friend every week for an hour. That can mean you go and engage in your faith community. Those are your personal medicines. And the healing process allows you to test all these different medicines and curate your own medicine cabinet. And I don't wanna speak to everyone's experience.

 And I'm always testing new medicines, but I have my medicine cabinet set now and I tap into it every minute of every day. Like even now, how I'm breathing. I learned to breathe better. 

Robyn: Yeah, exactly. Don't 

Diana: get me started on breath work. 

But that's the multidisciplinary side where it's not one thing.

it's rarely, I will say it's rarely one thing that's, that [00:25:00] heals your trauma. And it's oftentimes not talk therapy because again, trauma doesn't live in your brain. It lives in your body. The multidisciplinary aspect of the process is uncovering these modalities that work for you.

Karen: Diana, how did you identify that the root of your health issue was trauma? I'm just sitting here thinking about some people I know who keep saying the same thing and keep going back to the doctor that can't figure out what's wrong with me. How does someone listening identify that within themselves and know that could be the source of their health issue that they're having.

Diana: This kind of parlays nicely into the science of trauma and asking yourself, the questions around that, But to answer your question, it starts with an assessment of your levels of trauma. So I'm a big fan of Dr. Nadine Burke Harris.

She was the former California Surgeon General, who really did a big push around ACE awareness. ACE stands for Adverse Childhood [00:26:00] Experiences, and we offer a free quiz on our website that, we'll be sure to link that serves up this analysis. This really easy, quick analysis of your childhood traumas and it's science-backed.

This was a survey that was developed by Kaiser physicians. Which is I think the third best hospital group in the us. And so it starts with just knowing your levels of trauma as a child. And then what we offer on our website too is a free adult trauma assessment which we created in collaboration with trauma trained MDs and psychotherapists.

 And it pulls in any adverse experiences you had as an adult because those impact you as well. It's not like you're no longer susceptible to trauma, once you're 18. 

Robyn: Totally. Yes. 

Diana: Yeah. So I think it starts with awareness and curiosity and an openness. You have to be open-hearted and open-minded to exploring these things.

A lot of people [00:27:00] sadly won't go there in terms of trauma because they know it's lurking. They have buried it so deep within themselves and they're scared to open it up. And what I always tell everyone is, the only way out is through. And if you truly wanna heal and you want to achieve not only sustained health and wellness, but joy, you wanna tap into joy and bliss and all these beautiful gifts that the creator has given us to experience, on this earth, during this human this human life, then you have to go there.

And some people are called to do that and some people aren't. And I have to respect when people just aren't motivated enough to go there. But to answer your question, Karen, I would say that, it's important for people listening and also for anyone that you're interacting with to know that trauma doesn't live.

Just in our memories or our thoughts, it lives in our bodies. And when something overwhelming happens, our nervous [00:28:00] system goes into survival mode. So this is why healing trauma isn't just about talking about it. It's why the efficacy of talk therapy is so low for people with high levels of trauma.

It's really about completing those un finished stress responses and restoring a sense of safety in the body. The physiology again, is this chain reaction that happens through this chronic stress state, and you have to reregulate your nervous system. And I will say for what it's worth for anyone that might have this little voice in the back of their head saying, I know you have childhood wounds.

I know you have adult trauma. but I just can't go there right now. I just don't have time, energy, resources to really go there. Know that you can start really small and you can start really safe and we can help you. We have a ton of free tools at Catbird, I just wanna fill people with hope and not intimidate them to say yes to this process because the fruits of your [00:29:00] labor are beautiful and the universe will start to open up all these doors to joy and awe and bliss and fulfillment in life that you've never found before.

So hopefully you feel the call. 

Robyn: I have a question too, in terms of your own journey, and you talked about how you went into that closet and you did that breath work experience. When you came out did you feel. the need to talk about it with somebody. Did you share that with someone and then one thing led to another?

Because I feel like once you do start to, to experience some of, even as you said, starting slow so maybe these micro practices that continue to add up, there's this, I would believe a need to share and a need to feel heard and then receive, validation from somebody that maybe an expert or somebody that has the experience of helping others.

Which I [00:30:00] know is what Catbird will also help you do, but I'm just curious for you how that then, was a chain reaction to 

Where you are now. 

Diana: Yeah. Just off the cuff, I would say that community is so critical and important, and that's why I love what you're building with Seeking Center, and I love the spiritual community that you're building because if I was to answer your question, honestly, I would say that I didn't do it properly.

I didn't have a supportive community, and I regret that It was a missed opportunity for me to really get support because this happened to me and I came out of that closet and I had no idea what had just happened. It wasn't until about a year later where I was describing it to one of my healers where he was like, oh, that's a Kundalini awakening.

I had no idea. I didn't have the education on spirituality and spiritual practices. I didn't have the nomenclature and the words to use to describe certain things, and I certainly didn't have the community, and I know [00:31:00] that. Again, that would've expedited so much of what I went through, which was a very fragmented, two steps forward, one step back, expensive process of understanding how trauma works.

I wish that I had the support of a knowledgeable community. 

Robyn: Yeah, these are such big experiences to have, and so I think as you, you were saying it's like it is that whole mind, body, spirit connection.

Karen: that kind of leads me to the next question in terms of methodology, how did you bring those specific practices together? And how did you come to realize that that combination was really helping people expedite the way they deal with their own trauma?

Diana: Sure. Absolutely. Can we get back into the science a little bit? 

Karen: Yes. Let's 

Diana: talk. , 

Karen: We love the science. Yes. 

Diana: Good 

Karen: science. 

Diana: I'm a nerd. I'm a total nerd. So we can start with polyvagal theory, which was developed by Dr. Steven Borges, and it [00:32:00] explains how our autonomic nervous system, which is the part of our bodies that controls, things like our heart rate and our digestion, and it responds very sensitively to safety and threat.

So when we feel safe, we operate from the ventral vagal state. We're connected, we're calm, we're social, we're balanced. But under stress or trauma, we shift into sympathetic mode, which is that fight or flight. Some people call it hyper arousal. But there's also the dorsal vagal too, which is the opposite.

The shutdown or the freeze, which is a lot of what happens when people are depressed or are suffering from chronic depression. And these are all survival states, right? When someone's been through chronic stress or trauma, their system is getting stuck in these modes even after the threat is long gone.

 So our work at Cap Bird helps people gradually return to safety through these science-based, based practices that cue [00:33:00] this feeling of homeostasis in the body. And again, so many modalities, which is why we titrate them and serve them up. Via your personalized healing journey. But it could involve breath, it could involve music and binaural beats, which are really powerful.

Sound healing is very powerful. It could involve storytelling and narrative and just getting your story out there somewhere. It can involve relational repair and community building. And this is where neuroplasticity comes in actually, because neuroplasticity means the brain can change.

And when we repeatedly offer the nervous system new experiences of safety and regulation, we are literally rewiring the brain and therefore the body's default settings to repair itself. And over time, this builds resilience, it builds capacity, it builds regulation, and all of these are the foundational ingredients for lasting healing.

 , 

Robyn: How does [00:34:00] neuroplasticity work?

Diana: Sure. neuroplasticity is actually just a word that means your brain's ability to change and evolve. And so what we do is we serve up practices that help to incentivize this.

It helps to motivate the brain to turn on. And what happens is these synapse in your brain start to fire and you start to carve new neural pathways, you're waking up the brain and there are all these cool techniques that you can do in the comfort of your own home that help to what we call tone the vagus nerve.

And also in the process, your neuroplasticity. Exponentially. So think about your brain as a sponge, that's become hardened over time, but you can flood it with water and allow the pores to open, and all of a sudden you're able to unwind all of those thought patterns that are keeping you stuck and sending [00:35:00] information to your body that keeps it sick.

 And it's a really powerful methodology. 

Karen: So is trauma in a way for some, a subconscious illness in a way? Because I'm just thinking about things that have happened even in my own life, and I'm like, yeah, but I get over that or it's fine. , My brain can justify or validate and I can put it in the drawer and it's really fine.

I'm a grownup. I've dealt with it. I've moved on. but I can see how keeping that in the drawer and letting it fester, I just think of bacteria in my refrigerator from something that's been in there too long. How do you talk to people who, in their own minds feel like they've justified that trauma in some way?

Is it like this danger of something that's going to erupt if it's triggered by something else? Is it that if I keep it in that drawer for too long it will resurface as an illness somewhere else? it's like your body knows and it's trying to validate it in some way, but it seems [00:36:00] like putting it in that back drawer is almost dangerous for yourself.

Diana: Yeah. What I always say about trauma is that you can run but you can't hide. Yeah. And again, that's why taking our assessment, like taking our quiz around trauma is a really good place to start because you need to be aware. You just need to start bringing awareness to your levels of trauma. 

 And I don't want anyone to live in fear. I don't want anyone to be listening to this and think I might have fear and I might have trauma and it might be unresolved. And is that gonna lead to cancer? Is that gonna make me sick? No. I do not want you to live your life that way.

 But what I would encourage you to do is just start asking yourself the hard questions. Start to increase your levels of curiosity around things. I know a ton of people that suffered from a traumatic event, compartmentalized it, locked it away in a box, and then later in life started to experience things like early onset osteoporosis or some kind of chronic autoimmune [00:37:00] condition or cancer diagnosis or things like that.

And we also have to Reframe, our. relationship to illness. This is our body calling to attention that something is imbalanced within us. And I love my spiritual healers and my spiritual network because they have opinions about why these imbalances happen involving energy and blockages and things like that.

 But there's also, again, the biology of trauma that could be coming into play here. And you need to just start taking care of yourself. That's really what it starts with. And for anyone that's unsure, I would ask this simple question. When is the last time that you cried, when is the last time that you had a good, hard cry?

This is urging, this is releasing. This is a experience that in indigenous cultures and marginalized cultures and other cultures across the world, they [00:38:00] embrace these outpourings of emotion. And we've become so civilized that all of these, what should be normal practices have become stigmatized or viewed as weak or judged, and it's really impacting our society.

We should be able to express our emotions, That's what trauma is, stored emotions as a result of these distressing events. So ask yourself when the last time is that you cried, and maybe you're like I don't have anything to cry about. That's amazing for me. I'm a highly sensitive person, and I just can turn on the news.

Feel like I need to cry. I can walk past a homeless person and feel like I need to cry. So that's also just a good place to start, is by asking yourself those types of questions. 

Robyn: there's so much , what we've been discussing I think you're right.

Most people feel judged if they cry or feel they're weak. If they cry, or to your point, they'll [00:39:00] say they have nothing to cry about. And maybe that's the case, most people that I know are empaths and feel the way that you feel in terms of if they turn the news on or they see something that can make them emotional and crying.

Doesn't even always have to be. This outpouring of sadness, it can be from joy. I cry sometimes when I'm overwhelmed. This happens multiple times a week actually, when I'm listening to certain music that makes me happy, you can change your perspective on crying altogether.

Diana: That's so true. I love that. 

Karen: Diana you're reminding me too, it goes back to what you were saying at the beginning, is that we are perfect in ourselves and we should be able to validate that within ourselves so that whatever emotion that we're feeling instead of.

 Crunching it down and we're ignoring it we should be allowing ourselves to feel those things. And that we're important enough to do that. I think, Robyn, can attest, like I'm always quick to be like, let's move on. Let's go on to the next thing. It's just, it's a way I was raised [00:40:00] So I think it's just taking that moment and assessing, and I also just love the fact that there is finally now this intersection of science and wellness and spirituality and all those things, and we're starting to really understand how they work together and how they impact one another.

It's like you said earlier, who would've thought that all those chronic things that you were having, it's give me a pill or just tell me what to do to get rid of it, versus looking within and really. Doing that assessment and work to understand where that all came from and how it was impacting your life.

Robyn: And I'd love to also talk about how you're using ai. 

Karen: Yes. 

Robyn: And, how are you balancing technology and human touch with catbird and trauma healing? 

Diana: I wanna start by saying that all the data supports this idea that recent technological advances have not moved the needle on chronic disease for people one [00:41:00] bit.

And actually there is a chart that I was just reading from the National Institute of Health that tracked technological advancements in The acuity and the prevalence of chronic disease and the lines are actually moving in opposite directions, meaning that with the increase in technological sophistication, we have gotten sicker.

So I think it's important for people to know that the technology is a valuable tool, but it's not gonna do the healing for you. 

And we did an extensive round of customer interviews before we launched anything with ca and Zero people out of dozens and dozens of interviews wanted AI to be any part of their healing journey.

 And that's really interesting, but it's also really important. So the way that we leverage AI and these types of innovative technologies is really thoughtful and really strategic and hopefully very resonant with people. Trauma is a [00:42:00] deeply vulnerable, deeply tender deeply shame filled state of being.

And when you try to place a robot next to this mindset, and this frame of mind, there's incoherence people just intrinsically do not want to engage with ai. So again, we're listening to people, and when it came to our tech roadmap, we wanted to build a product that actually meets people where they are.

And what the AI is not only this deeply personal piece of the equation, We know that trauma healing is deeply personal. This is what the AI unlocks, right? It gets to know you and then it can all of a sudden serve up these personalized recommendations and remember your trauma history and remember your symptoms and every single medication that you've taken and help to tweak your healing journey along the way.

But it also can help to optimize your healing journey because [00:43:00] if you think about it, the AI is like having a hundred of the top trauma experts in the room with you. These are the most experienced, learned, educated mind, body medical practitioners, indigenous healers physicians in the world that can come together in this knowledge base and help to optimize your recovery plan.

We call it the healing journey. To, again, expedite that healing process so that you're not fumbling along and spending all this money that won't really move the needle on your healing journey. So I just wanted to clarify that we're being really intentional with AI and we're really excited about it, but it plays a certain role within Cat Bird that's operating in the background and you're engaging with a digital assistant, We wanna keep things affordable, and if humans are doing everything that gets really expensive, so you're engaging with a digital assistant and this assistant acts like a source of truth for you, right? You can ask it questions, it has all of your [00:44:00] information. It serves up this healing journey for you, but it's not trying to be a person.

 It is not replacing that human, that critical human component 

 In the process of healing from trauma and, we see it as a bridge between this hybrid model of AI and human care. it's really important how we deliver this whole practice. We know, the data around therapeutic alliance.

 We know that the human component is really important but we also give you the power to decide what humans to engage with, We're gonna match you with specialists based on all of your information. These are vetted, credentialed practitioners that are curated for you and here to support you, but you can choose whether to engage with them or not.

And it's the resonance piece of, okay, do I feel called to seek extra support at this time? And if so, this person is ready and willing and able to meet with you and assist you. 

Robyn: I think so many people [00:45:00] are going to feel called to really investigate their own trauma, and I think what you bring up as well is that it's not just childhood trauma, 

This is ongoing journey. We live in a world where, it can feel traumatic and we're living in it. So to me it's really looking back at where there may be trauma stored from earlier in your life, but then also figuring out what kinds of practices and protocols you can put in place to help heal what has been done, but also help you moving forward.

Diana: Yes. 

Karen: Cat Bird. Where did that come from? what does that mean? Yeah. 

Diana: The naming process for Catbird comes up a lot. I was in the sacred valley of Peru and I was engaged in a deep meditation, somewhat transcendental, even though I do not claim to be a great meditator, it's actually really hard for me.

It's actually really hard for anyone that's suffered trauma, right? Sitting quietly in a room by yourself [00:46:00] without feeling safe in your body is very difficult. But I've gotten better over time and it's been such a powerful tool for me. And there's a myriad of benefits, but one of them is downloads.

So messages from. The divine messages from my guides, messages from the universe that I know are meant for me and also not coming from me. And I was thinking about what I was called to build with Catbird I knew that I was called to this mission of healing people, but what did this look like? And I was sitting there and I got this vision of a beautiful emerald green bird. And the word bird flashed into my consciousness. And I was like, cat bird? What? Cat bird? Okay. I don't know what that means, but I got this sense the way this bird was flittering around and these rainbow hues that were accompanying it.

 there was something [00:47:00] special about this creature. And at that point I was like, this creature doesn't exist. It's just a weird fusion of two words. Maybe it's a mystical creature. I don't know. And so I went to my computer and I looked it up, and a cat bird is a very rare bird that exists in the jungles of Australia and New Zealand.

And it comes in this vibrant, emerald green color sometimes. And it is known to have healing properties. It's this kind of spiritual guide. So that was the inspiration for the name. 

Robyn: Oh, I have chills. 

Karen: I love it. Yeah. It's like in the actual spirit of that cat bird came to you. 

That's for the divine inspiration. 

Robyn: Yes. 

 I feel like we're leaving people with so much to uncover and one of the things we, I don't know that we said this, that you've said that trauma is the number one root cause of chronic illness.

Diana: Yes. 

Robyn: And I feel like you've really laid that out for people in a way that they can hear [00:48:00] it.

Diana: Thank you. 

Robyn: And if they feel called, they should go check out cat catbird club.com. 

And what would they find when they get there? 

Diana: I would just encourage them to click on the obvious CTAs on the website, those little buttons that say, start free or get your trauma score and really just start to tap into our knowledge base.

So what makes us special is that we have trained our technology on mind body medicine and trauma science, which you will not get from Dr. Chat GBT because it's incredibly biased public health driven machine versus bringing in all this indigenous wisdom and all of these other paths to healing that aren't represented in public health and conventional medicine.

So we start with a trauma score trauma assessment and a trauma score. We ask about your childhood, we ask about your adult trauma. We even ask about your chronic stress levels. And again, we're just trying to lay the groundwork of [00:49:00] awareness of, oh, something deeper might be going on. This might actually not have anything to do with.

What I'm eating, this actually might not have anything to do with hormonal shifts, which could be exacerbating my trauma and chronic stress, but it could be rooted in something different. And it just starts to, again, lay that foundation of education. And then from there, everything's free.

If you give us your information, then we'll send you free resources. We'll give you this full ace profile guide now that you know your adverse childhood experiences score. What does that mean? Now what? And so we help guide you there. We help guide you with resources around how to start your healing journey.

 And then if you wanna sign up for our beta, we can engage with you that way. So lots of different options. 

Robyn: And I think the important thing too, in speaking of it, of trying to find the root cause rather than treating. Just symptoms that come from trauma.

Diana: Yeah. We are just doing it wrong as a society across the board. And we need to [00:50:00] start deconditioning ourselves around what the healing process actually looks like.

This needs to be a cultural shift. 

 We need to stop pathologizing people for these natural trauma responses and start recognizing them just as adaptations. It's your body being like, Hey, 

the world isn't safe. And then of course there's this systematic element of our healthcare system is built to diagnose and medicate.

It's not built to listen And don't get me started on the coding system, which doesn't allow for multidisciplinary care and collaboration. So it starts with us and this is a movement that we're trying to build. And we also think that there's already a paradigm shift happening that we're plugging into.

And the work that you're doing is such good soul food and so nourishing and so supportive of this cause of catalyzing deep healing in people. 

Robyn: We are so grateful to be collaborating with you and in the future, more programming together. That is the goal.

, We want to help as you are with the deep healing. 

Diana: Thank you so [00:51:00] much. I'm excited to see what unfolds in the future. 

Robyn: Same. Yes. Thank you so much, Diana. Again, everybody visit catbird club.com. We'll have the link in our show notes and we thank you for being here.

Diana: Thank you. 

Robyn: Thank you.