How to Heal Relationship Patterns Rooted in Childhood Trauma with IFS and Nervous System Regulation

Have you ever felt like you were doing everything “right” on your healing journey—only to find yourself right back in your old pain on your personal growth journey?

Maybe you finally found a healing modality that worked. You felt grounded, regulated, even hopeful. And then one comment, one moment of disconnection, or one unexpected ending stirred something much deeper—bringing old wounds, loneliness, or abandonment back to the surface.

In this deeply personal solo episode, I’m reintroducing myself—not just as your host, but as a woman actively in the midst of her own healing.

I share openly about my recent breakup after a 3.5-year relationship, and how it activated an abandonment wound I’ve carried since childhood. Despite years of personal growth and trauma-informed work, I realized something important: healing isn’t about finding the right tool—it’s about going deeper into the body when old patterns resurface.

That realization led me back to Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems (IFS)—two practices that helped me slow down, reconnect with my body, meet my protective parts with compassion, and begin rebuilding self-trust from the inside out and tend to an old abandonment wound that I’ve carried since childhood.

Because the truth is: the only way to find joy again… is to go through the pain.

In this episode, I share how nervous system regulation became the foundation for real trauma healing and helped me shift lifelong relationship patterns—how physical symptoms pointed the way forward, and how learning to stay with sensations (instead of avoiding it) expanded my capacity to feel, grieve, and eventually experience joy again.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What  somatic healing looks like in everyday life
• Why nervous system regulation is the gateway to deeper emotional healing
• How Internal Family Systems (IFS) and parts work helped me relate differently to the parts that once helped me survive
• How healing childhood trauma can restore your capacity for joy.
• Why building tolerance for physical sensations is essential to trauma recovery
• How healing after divorce laid the foundation for healing after this breakup.
• What it means to fully grieve, feel, and slowly reconnect with yourself

If you’re navigating heartbreak, grief, or the confusion of feeling “set back” on your healing journey, this episode is a gentle reminder: nothing is wrong with you. Healing is not linear. Your body remembers. And your pace matters.

Much love,

Laurie

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Transcript

Intro: Welcome to Confessions of a Freebird podcast. I'm your host, Laurie James. A mother, divorcee, recovering caregiver, the author of Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go, a therapy junkie, relationship coach, somatic healer, and now podcaster. I'm a free spirit and here to lift you up. On this podcast, I'll share soulful confessions and empowering conversations with influential experts so you can learn to spread your wings and make the most of your second half. So pop in those earbuds, turn up the volume, and let's get inspired, because my mission is to help you create your most joyful, purpose-driven life, one confession at a time.

Laurie James: Hey there freebirds, welcome back. and I am doing a solo episode today which I have not done for a while, but I am going to be peppering those in in 2026. So I hope you enjoy this. And also, before we get started, there is a link in the show notes that you can click to give me feedback on what topics you'd like to hear this year. So it will take you one minute to fill out. I'd love your feedback so I can continue to offer episodes that resonate with you.

Laurie James: And before we get started on today's podcast, I have a confession. And it's a confession I've shared before, but it's something that has popped up in my life this past year in 2025. And that is belonging and loneliness. I have spent most of my life wanting or looking for belonging. And belonging has always been this very elusive, kind of mysterious thing I've chased at times through my life. I thought I had it, but never fully felt it until after I left my marriage eight years ago. And in one of my earliest episodes I recorded when I introduced myself, and I went back to listen to it and I sounded so nervous and like I was reading a script, so please don't go back and listen to that unless you want to laugh with me.

Laurie James: One of the things I did in that episode was I looked up the definition of belonging. And belonging is the feeling of security and support when there is acceptance, inclusion, and identity. And when we can show up as our authentic self. And what I've realized is for me, when I don't feel like I belong, what I feel instead is lonely. Or I should say loneliness. Because loneliness and belonging are really two sides of the same coin, in my opinion.

Laurie James: I've struggled with loneliness as I said for most of my life. It has shaped my relationships, my patterns, my people-pleasing, my survival strategies as a child. Growing up, I often stayed close to my mom. I stayed small. I didn't have much of a voice. I thought if I was the glue in my family as I got older and made everyone happy then I'd be happy. It shaped how I survived my childhood, the abuse I endured from my oldest brother, never telling my parents until I was in my early 20s. And part of that was also because when I would go to my mom about certain things, she would discount what my experience was when I would tell her. And I know now that wasn't because she didn't believe me, it was more because she didn't want to believe that about her son. And what I know from somatic experiencing, it's also she didn't have the capacity to hold that with all the trauma that she had in her life.

Laurie James: It doesn't mean that it didn't hurt. It didn't mean that it didn't leave emotional wounds inside of me and oftentimes left me very confused about what my reality really was. But that's where the body-based healing, that's where the work we do can repair some of those early wounds. And I didn't talk about it with anybody because I had so much shame around it. Again, I didn't have words for that at the time, but I know now that's what I was feeling. And those were the kind of discussions we also didn't have around the dinner table. I thought I should be able to handle this on my own because who went to therapy back in the 70s?

Laurie James: And I just pushed through, hid it behind a can-do attitude, behind my competence that was masked by my insecurity, behind smiles that were hiding the quiet sadness I was feeling within. And I only felt free when I was skiing in the mountains or sailing with my mom. And don't get me wrong, we were a very middle-class family growing up. We had very little, but being adventurous and being active were important to my parents, which I do thank them for. And I didn't really truly lean into my adventurous side until my adulthood outside of my skiing. I probably pushed myself with skiing a little too much early on.

Laurie James: Hey freebirds, I wanted to take a quick pause in our conversation to share something I've created just for you. If you've been curious about nervous system regulation but aren't sure where to start, I put together a nervous system regulation starter kit. A gentle, practical guide to help you begin feeling safer and more grounded in your body. Inside it, you'll find simple daily practices, easy-to-use worksheets to help you track your nervous system patterns, and three guided somatic practices you can return to again and again. These tools are designed to help you show, not just tell, your nervous system that you're safe in the present moment. It's normally a $59 value, but I'm offering it for just $29 because I want this to be accessible for anyone ready to begin their healing journey. Head to the link in the show notes to grab yours and start feeling more regulated and connected today. Now, let's get back to the episode.

Laurie James: And I carried all of this inside my body and in my nervous system. The emotional baggage just kept getting heavier and heavier, which then I would put up my armor and that got thicker and thicker causing so much unease and anxiety late in my 40s and early 50s. I had a lot of repeated back pain and until my body gave out and I ended up in the hospital twice within two weeks, a year and a half after I left my marriage. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I was passing out. I had low blood pressure. I had fluid around my lungs. I had migrating arthritis in my joints that was moving around my body. You guys, it was bad. And it was my body saying enough and it shut down.

Laurie James: Two weeks prior, I was telling a friend that I was stressed but didn't know how to back out of everything I had said yes to. I was dating, writing my book, coaching, finalizing my divorce. I even put an offer in on a house and it was too much too fast and it overwhelmed my nervous system. And my body said, "I'm shutting down." So today's episode is really about me reintroducing myself and sharing where I came from, how some of this belonging and loneliness resurfaced this past year after a breakup with somebody I was dating for three and a half years, and why I turned back to a somatic practitioner to help me with the dysregulation I was experiencing inside.

Laurie James: Because after I fell ill six and a half years ago and left the hospital for the first time with a walker, looking like I was six months pregnant, extremely low blood pressure, low oxygen levels, severely anemic, I ended up back in the hospital two weeks later. And once I was well enough, my close friend suggested I start working with a somatic practitioner, which changed me in ways I never thought possible. I felt and still feel less anxiety, more intuned with myself and my intuition, more presence. I sleep better. It is life-changing, I'm telling you guys. I experienced more healing in one year working with my somatic practitioner than five and a half years of talk therapy came close to doing.

Laurie James: And if you are new to somatic experiencing and nervous system regulation, welcome. Somatic is derived from the Greek word "soma" meaning body. So to simplify this work, it is experiencing what's happening in the body and when we do that, it helps us to regulate your nervous system. Because your nervous system is the operating system, your autonomic nervous system, is the operating system for your entire body. It sends the signals to your organs that causes that restriction in your chest, that causes the pit in your stomach, that tells your brain to scan for danger. We call this neuroception. And if something feels familiar, like something you've experienced in the past, it will put you on high alert and put you into a threat response, which is our fight, flight, freeze.

Laurie James: So where did all this begin? If you've listened to any of my podcasts, you won't be surprised. My longing for belonging didn't come out of nowhere. Like many things, it started very early. I was adopted at birth and as my nervous system was even forming in utero, my birth mother had been sent away, struggling with her desire to keep me and the societal pressures to give me up because being an unwed mother in the 60s was unthinkable. So my trauma began in gestation, as a fetus, as I was becoming a human being. And while my adoptive family loved me, I never felt fully in. Never quite mirrored, never emotionally understood in the way that I needed.

Laurie James: And that's because my mom had her own trauma. And so did my dad. My mom had lost two baby girls before she adopted me. One was a pregnancy that she gave birth to a stillborn at eight months gestation, and then they adopted another little girl in between my two oldest brothers and that baby was taken away from my mother after six months. So I always knew I was loved, but I felt an emotional distance from her. As I grew up, I learned to cope in ways that looked confident from the outside. I became the girl who had it together, the one that was had the strong front, the one who dressed like her brothers to try and fit in, and also the one who didn't need anything. But the real truth was I was craving for connection. I was craving for safety. And I was craving for belonging. But my nervous system had already learned: don't get too close, don't need too much, don't take up space.

Laurie James: Peter Levine, the founder of somatic experiencing and the training I went through, teaches that when early attachment ruptures happen, the body stores them in incomplete responses. Survival impulses that never got to finish. And mine stayed buried for years. So fast forward to 2025. This past March, I went through the end of a three-and-a-half-year relationship and even with all the work I've done, it hit me deeper than I expected. Breakups have an eerie way of waking up those old pains and this one brought my abandonment wound up to the surface. Sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly. Sometimes it was a quiet rising of the ocean floor and sometimes loudly where I could just feel it in my body and I would need to curl up in a ball and cry.

Laurie James: Even though I was ready for this relationship to end, it still hurts because when you leave a relationship, there is a physiological change that happens. You're used to attaching to somebody, you're used to connecting with somebody, even though at times it was unhealthy. And to cut that off immediately, there's a younger part of me that just was feeling like if I don't attach to somebody or something that I might die. And that's because of my very early attachment wounds. So I did get activated. I nestled in my house. So I did a podcast back in August about seven steps to emotional healing after a breakup or something like that. I'll share that link in the show notes. It was a solo episode that I talk about the things that I did through my healing process.

Laurie James: But I slept a lot. I nestled in my house. I allowed myself to get activated. I allowed my emotions to emerge so I could experience, express, and expel them. And I hung out a lot with my favorite buddy and my rescue husky Lou. She knows trauma too. She was abused before I adopted her, so we get each other. My nervous system felt like it was reliving old wounds, that original rupture of being left, the ruptures within my marriage, the betrayal that I experienced in my marriage, the emotional distance I experienced growing up. And there were moments I could feel my younger parts of me scared, alone, bracing for more hurt.

Laurie James: In Internal Family Systems terms, which is another training I did this past year, my younger parts were front and center. And in somatic terms, that survival energy that never completed was back online. And that's when I knew I needed support at a deeper level. Not mindset work, not journaling, deeper nervous system support and parts work. So I started working with a new somatic practitioner who was also Internal Family Systems informed and trained. And honestly, that has been one of the best decisions I made this past year. Instead of talking about the pain, we slowed it down to feel it. Instead of talking about what I was experiencing, I listened to it. I tracked the sensations. We talked to the parts that were hurting, the parts that were protecting me.

Laurie James: I have a younger part that carries an automatic rifle and who will take out anybody and anything when she feels like she needs to protect me. In those sessions, I would laugh, it's so funny. And Peter Levine teaches that trauma isn't what happened, it's what stays stuck in our body. That fight, flight, freeze response that didn't get completed, as I said earlier, and my body was feeling safe enough to show me what was still stuck. That was what was resurfacing.

Laurie James: So my somatic practitioner and I worked with the tightening in my chest by sitting with it. The headaches I was feeling and leaning into them instead of moving away. When the anger surfaced by allowing it and I'd push against something, I'd yell or scream or tell somebody literally to fuck off. The freeze of old betrayal by allowing my arms and legs to move in ways it wasn't able to move when I was younger. Through somatic work, those incomplete survival responses began to come back online, to thaw and to release. Through the Internal Family Systems and parts work, I began meeting the parts of me that carried those wounds: the young abandoned child who just wanted to be chosen and loved, the protector who overfunctions, that part of me that carries that automatic weapon.

Laurie James: And we'd ask it what it needs to trust adult me, update it to my new age and ask what it needs to relax and allow adult me to be in control. My managers who hustled for self-worth and why it needs to work so hard. And the part that believes she must earn or chase love. And instead of pushing all of those things away, I continue to befriend my parts. I continue to befriend the sensations that arise and continue to sit with them, care for them, and be curious about them. Because that work softens us, softens me in the best ways possible. It strengthens me and helps me reconnect to myself in a deeper, more authentic way.

Laurie James: And the payoff? Because I allow myself to feel the pain, the betrayal, the loss, I can now feel more joy, more curiosity, more happiness. It was so funny because on my walk this morning with my dog Lou, I was listening to some music, the Goo Goo Dolls, and I was literally like rocking out, walking down my street. And you know what? I didn't really care. And at the time of recording this, my birthday was a few weeks ago and when I was on my way down to Orange County to see a girlfriend, I was singing and dancing in my seat and laughing. And I don't care. Because I am allowing myself to feel the joy.

Laurie James: And here's something also that's different. The old version of me, the 2.0 version—I'm hoping I'm on the 3.0 now—the 2.0 version of me after I left my marriage would have filled that space as quickly as possible with doing things, busyness, with putting myself out to dating. I'd have that yearning to connect with someone so I could feel safe. A good friend of mine who is very similar to me, we we talk about it like it's a honing device, our own personal honing device. And we're out there saying as we're looking around at a bar or if we're on a dating app, it's like us checking everybody out, "Are you my mommy? Are you my mommy?" I don't know if you guys remember that children's book Is Your Mama a Llama?

Laurie James: And this time I didn't do that. I took months off. I allowed myself to grieve, to reflect, to regulate. I went to an incredible yoga retreat with girlfriends and did some travel. I spent time in nature with my dog Lou up in Mammoth where my nervous system instantly regulates. And just to rebuild internally before moving on externally. I promised myself I wouldn't look for belonging in dating until I fully returned to myself. So what does that even mean? It means being happy alone instead of looking for someone to fill that lonely void. That doesn't mean I was alone all the time. I spent time with my adult children and their significant others who I adore. I spent time with friends, poured myself into my work, which ironically got busier when I focused on it. And it felt amazing to not have my nervous system controlling and dictating what I did. Because I have the tools to regulate so I can make the best decisions for myself in the present. This is called attunement. And it's a shift in my past pattern. But the journey continues, folks.

Laurie James: In the fall of 2025, I also began an IFS training for coaches. It's Dick Schwartz's program, who's the creator of Internal Family Systems, and if you don't know much about it, it's very popular right now and it's all about parts work. But just going through that training also just allowed me to heal some of my heartbreak. So in a lot of these trainings, we have to do our own work. The IFS training really helped me see who my protectors were and how they were reacting, the fear that was controlling me, the patterns that I had developed even though they have a positive intent. And as Dick Schwartz says, there's no bad parts. And the parts of me that just wanted safety and connection. I really do think it's made me a better practitioner and I've really loved working with this parts work with my clients. But most importantly, it's made me a more integrated human.

Laurie James: So this episode is a reintroduction to you, to my listeners, to my community, of who I am. What I've experienced in the past, through my early childhood, through my divorce. But it's also about who I am today. Today, I'm a woman who's healing her belonging wound. And I think I'm going to continue to be doing that until the day I die. But I'm doing it not by chasing others, but by returning to myself. I'm a woman who is learning to trust her intuition more deeply through nervous system regulation and feeling the sensations and emotions in my body because sensations are the language of the nervous system.

Laurie James: I'm a woman who is honoring my parts: the tender ones, the fierce ones, the scared ones, and the wise ones. Instead of moving away from those parts. I'm a woman who's no longer abandoning myself to avoid being abandoned by others. And I am someone who believes that healing is not linear. It is layered, spiraling, messy, but also incredibly beautiful when you can stay with it. Because when we learn to be with ourselves instead of running, hiding, fighting what we are experiencing, we can find more freedom within ourselves and from there we can create that next chapter of our lives.

Laurie James: So listeners, if you're someone who's spent your life searching for belonging, if loneliness has been a familiar companion, if your anxiety, fear, worry, frustration in your body is getting louder than your thoughts, if a recent breakup or life rupture has brought out old wounds to surface, I want you to know nothing is wrong with you. Your body is wise. Your parts are trying to protect you. Your nervous system is telling the truth before your mind can make sense of things. Belonging begins with belonging to ourselves. In our bodies. In ourselves. In our truth.

Laurie James: So thank you for staying with me until the end and thank you for being on this healing path with me. I'm excited for what 2026 will bring for me, for you, for the collective. And if any of this resonates with you and you're interested in working with me, click the link in the show notes to book a free inquiry call today. I have a couple of one-on-one slots available and I promise you, your body and your future self will thank you. Be well, my friends.

Outro: Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Freebird. I'm grateful to be in your ears and hearts. If you're interested in becoming a freebird, I'd love to support you. Please check out my website at LaurieEJames.com  to learn how we can work together or to sign up for my newsletter so you can receive tips on how to date and relationship differently and ultimately find more freedom and joy in your life. If you found this podcast helpful, please follow or subscribe, rate and review, and share it with friends so they can find more freedom in their second or third act also. Until next time.