0:00:03 - (Megan Owen): This is pretty psych, the podcast where we discuss and deconstruct the impact of evangelical Christianity and cultural phenomena on the psyche, the deep and sometimes uncharted territory of the mind. We venture into raw, rough, and sometimes triggering moments, but we know that through this, what we will find will be pretty fascinating, amazing, and pretty intelligent. My name is Megan Owen. I'm a pastoral trauma counselor, and I have spent decades studying the science of human behavior.
0:00:43 - (Megan Owen): I draw parallels between therapy and connection to God, self, and others. I love what I do, and I will walk hand in hand with you through the fire to help you find healing and rest. Most importantly, I want to bring you home to yourself.
0:01:14 - (Megan Owen): So happy to have you. Jennifer is a clinical hypnotherapist trained in neuro linguistic programming, positive psychology, mind body psychology, and eft tapping. Jennifer Ferrante brings a framework to access the subconscious mind and rewrite deeply ingrained programming for fast and effective change. You can find her work and book a remote session with her at Ferrante family wellness, or take her online course called reach my zenith.
0:01:50 - (Megan Owen): Jennifer, welcome.
0:01:52 - (Jennifer Ferrante): Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited we can do this.
0:01:56 - (Megan Owen): So am I. And it's an honor to have you. Jennifer and I go back a very long way. I don't even remember when we met. I feel like it was at least a decade ago.
0:02:06 - (Jennifer Ferrante): It has been. It's been, goodness, 2016, maybe somewhere around there. I was in major life transition, so, yeah.
0:02:16 - (Megan Owen): And it's been fun to get to know Jen and watch her kids grow up and just be connected all this time. So I'm so happy to have you. So let's just jump right on in, Jen. All right, so I know that our listeners are not familiar with clinical hypnotherapy, and I have an inkling that they are thinking that you hypnotize people. So I would like for you, that's a common misconception.
0:02:47 - (Jennifer Ferrante): Right? Sure. Because there's a difference between a hypnotist and a hypnotherapist. And one of the main differences is that we're using a brain state. So when we say hypnosis, we're talking about the hypnagogic brain state, which everybody goes into. So we all naturally go into a state of hypnosis and out of a state of hypnosis throughout our day. It doesn't have to be something you're put into. So if you've ever experienced driving in a car and you realize that you've driven home instead of the place you were trying to drive because you just went on autopilot.
0:03:22 - (Jennifer Ferrante): That is a state of hypnosis. So anytime we go on autopilot, what's happening is our subconscious mind takes the wheel, and so it just keeps doing the things that we have ingrained, patterns that we're used to doing. And so whatever we've got running the show in our subconscious, that plays out. When we go into this brain state that we call the hypnotic brain state. It's an alpha theta dominant brainwave state, and we can use that. We can use that in positive ways, or it can be used in negative ways, what we're used to seeing in a hypnosis stage show or something.
0:04:01 - (Jennifer Ferrante): Usually people are being made to do things that are embarrassing or silly or things outside of what they would feel like they're giving up control for. But the way that that alpha theta brain state is used in a clinical setting is for therapeutic purposes. So the person doesn't lose consciousness. They don't go into, like, a trance state, that they don't know what's going on. They maintain awareness, because keeping the alpha brain state very important.
0:04:29 - (Jennifer Ferrante): But what it's doing is it's just quieting the critical mind a bit, because the critical mind, the mind that is the conscious will, comes in and says, I don't believe this. This isn't my programming. So I have to step in and block this new thought pattern or this new possibility. So, when we're using hypnosis in a clinical setting for therapeutic purposes, I'm very clear with my clients that their will is what is being imprinted and also that they are an active participant in it. They don't go into some trance and have no idea what is going on.
0:05:08 - (Jennifer Ferrante): It's actually just a really relaxing. If you've ever been through, like, a guided meditation or some kind of visualization journey, it's very similar. And all we're doing is we're reworking connections that have built up and patterns that have built up over time to help them feel less emotionally attached to things that they're wanting to release or let go of.
0:05:33 - (Megan Owen): Okay, that is a beautiful definition of what you do as I do. I'm trying to sort of relate it to maybe the EMDR therapy that I do with my clients or the DNMs therapy that I do with my clients, which we do meditate. Anybody who's worked with me knows that we do meditations. So it feels as though the rewiring can help with triggers, right? High activation levels, attachments to memories, maybe the neural pathways that swirl around and around and around so that you feel as though the trauma is still happening, maybe.
0:06:13 - (Megan Owen): Am I tracking?
0:06:15 - (Jennifer Ferrante): Yes. And in addition to that, things like addictions, anything where you have a connection between. So what happens is typically between the ages of zero to eight, we are making positive and negative associations. So if something happens in our childhood, we may not even be aware of it. It may be subconscious, but we pick up on something that holds a negative connotation for us. Anytime we have that sensory input again, we have that same feeling. So we have a feeling attached to a stimulus and that becomes a pattern that plays out anytime. We have a wounding that happens in childhood that creates a need, which creates a pattern of attraction because you're attracting in and bringing in what you feel like will fill that need.
0:07:01 - (Jennifer Ferrante): And so when we're running on that autopilot programming, it makes it very hard for the conscious will to take us in a different direction.
0:07:10 - (Megan Owen): All right, so it sounds a little bit like moving out of maybe a jungian archetype or being a fish swimming upstream. We sort of have to decide that we are not going to just go with this sort of natural pattern that we have in order to heal.
0:07:31 - (Jennifer Ferrante): Right. And that's the really interesting work. And so one of the things that I know you and I chatted about over the phone when we were first pitching around ideas for this podcast was how do we teach people to listen to their internal knowing, and at the same time, not always go with what is natural? Because sometimes what is natural is working against us. And that is a very tricky balance, and it's one that I think I found a really great workaround for. So that's one of the things that I wanted to share because it's a pattern that I noticed specifically in the people that you and I have a heart for. So people who have come out of abusive situations, where they've come out of abusive families growing up, and now they don't know how to trust their own inner knowing, but maybe their own natural patterns and tendencies keep pulling them into these situations that they don't want.
0:08:29 - (Jennifer Ferrante): So how do we learn to, on one hand, validate our experience and on the other hand, change our experience?
0:08:38 - (Megan Owen): Absolutely. Okay. And I think the word that you use, which is new to some of us, is interoception. Is that what you're describing as you talk about our inner knowing? I love that.
0:08:50 - (Jennifer Ferrante): It's a big piece of it. So interoception is actually our perception of our internal processes that are happening. It can be things as tangible as our temperature regulation, knowing when we're hungry or when we need to go to the bathroom. Kids struggle with interoception, particularly kids that are on any sort of ADHD or autism spectrum or sensory processing disorders. We have a mix up of signals, right? So some things were hypersensitive to and other things were hypo or under sensitive to.
0:09:25 - (Jennifer Ferrante): And this mixing of signals has many reasons of why these wires can get crossed, and we can kind of have mixed signals. So interoception is in the insular cortex. We're talking about having a perception of body processes, but it goes beyond body processes into our emotions. And so understanding where our emotions are coming from, understanding what is running when we're feeling emotions and how to regulate them, that's all internal perception that's happening in the moment.
0:09:59 - (Megan Owen): Okay. Okay. So you validate a trauma survivors story and help them to understand that they may be reenacting patterns that they've learned. Right? Okay. And so you're saying on one hand, you do a lot of validation, a lot of compassion, maybe teaching self compassion. Also, of course, this makes sense that you would be reenacting this very painful pattern that you learned to use in order to cope, maybe to keep yourself safe.
0:10:34 - (Megan Owen): To keep yourself safe. That's right. And that's what I really want our listeners to hear. I know Jennifer's heart and mine are. We get it. We understand why these patterns have been developed. We understand why addictions are there. Lots of coping, lots of really smart ways to take care of yourself in impossible situations.
0:10:58 - (Jennifer Ferrante): Yes, absolutely.
0:11:00 - (Megan Owen): So you validate that and you help people understand. And it almost sounds like you sort of lift that out and say, could this be a pattern? And then what happens after that?
0:11:10 - (Jennifer Ferrante): So let me give you a really tangible body example of this so we can understand how this could be extrapolated into, like, an emotional or pattern way. So one thing that interoception takes control or what we perceive in our body is regulating our body temperature. And this is one I struggle with myself. I have a really hard time regulating my body temperature. I get very cold most of the time. And so there's these two things at play. There's objective truth and there's subjective experience.
0:11:42 - (Jennifer Ferrante): So it may be that the objective truth is that it's 76 degrees in the room. And I may say to my husband, I'm freezing. And he looks at the thermostat, and he says, it's 76 degrees. Well, I could say, oh, gosh, there's something broken with me. I experience this as cold. I'm freezing. Or I can understand that I have a subjective experience in 76 for me feels different than 76 for him feels. And so if that was something that was very bothersome to me, that I realized I have this pattern of always feeling cold, and I'd like to change that, then a way I could work with that is I could say, even though I am feeling cold, with each and every breath, I'm feeling warmer and warmer.
0:12:29 - (Jennifer Ferrante): So it's validating the experience. I am perceiving this as cold, but I don't want to feel cold. So because I don't want to feel cold, I have tools to start letting myself experience a different reality, to start experiencing warmth. And so that's one of the biggest things, and that's just a body example. But when we apply this to an emotional level, or somebody who's repeating patterns because they've had trauma, they may experience, let's say, power.
0:12:58 - (Jennifer Ferrante): It's a very negative thing, power and control. If you've come out of an abusive situation or a situation where power and control were used against you, you probably have a fear around power and control. It won't feel good, it will not feel good to you. But we understand that not having any power and control can make us feel terrible, and it can be a really bad situation. We don't want to feel like a victim all the time.
0:13:24 - (Jennifer Ferrante): And so we could say, even though I feel insert, however you're feeling your experience here, each and every day, I am feeling more internal control. And I understand that internal control is actually the antidote to external misused control. Because when we can actually act, I like to call internal control integrity. So when we have an inner core belief system and we know what we value, what feels right at our core, that internal control can pull us out of being a victim.
0:14:01 - (Jennifer Ferrante): But it also can help the people who are victimizing us. Because if somebody has internal control, they're not needing to exert control out of a wound. Because most of the people who are, whether consciously or unconsciously exerting their control, maybe as a parenthood, who say in parenting, they were raised in an authoritarian parenting style, and they feel a lack of control in their home, from that place of a feeling of lack of control, they seek to externally control the situation, to kind of take back some of that control, they feel like they're missing.
0:14:39 - (Jennifer Ferrante): So when we can develop this sense of inner integrity and control, and understand that our subjective experience is not threatened by anybody else's experience, now we don't have to push our own integrity onto someone else.
0:14:57 - (Megan Owen): I love all of this. I love that you have found an antidote for people who can't trust themselves anymore because they were gaslit for so long. Or perhaps we're not given the appropriate tools as they developed into adults to be able to trust themselves and make their own decisions. I have to say, Jen, it sounds a lot like source. Source. The whole entire intention behind source is to get people connected to their own souls and to begin to trust their own souls and their own bodies.
0:15:35 - (Megan Owen): So.
0:15:36 - (Jennifer Ferrante): Exactly.
0:15:37 - (Megan Owen): You all couldn't see this, but she just smiled really big. Because we're on the same wavelength. We recognize that being disconnected from yourself is incredibly painful. It causes tremendous doubt. And a lot of us were raised in a paradigm where you could not trust yourself. You were told you can't trust yourself. And so our tagline is bringing you home to yourself, and you are very much aligned. I love your use of the word integrity or walking within your integrity or authenticity.
0:16:11 - (Megan Owen): So here's something I want to ask you about. Objective versus subjective truth. You kind of answered this with your example of the temperature being colder. That helped, because very often we hear a very dogmatic phrase, there is no subjective truth. There is only one truth. But however, that one truth that people are saying is the one truth is often the way they experience something, right? And they're saying, I have that truth, and there's kind of an arrogance about that. Right, right.
0:16:48 - (Jennifer Ferrante): So that is one thing, that when we start to believe that our own subjective experience is universal and that everybody perceives things in the same way, when we can understand how many layers of things go into perception, we can't possibly hold that as truth anymore, because we understand that there's sensory input that we're receiving from our five senses. We understand that there's extrasensory input that's coming in. Proprioception, vestibular sense, interoception, like we talked about, everybody has layers. And then you get into the really tricky work of the belief systems and the framework that you have in your programming.
0:17:29 - (Jennifer Ferrante): You are going to see and experience the world through those lenses. And so even if two people are looking at the same thing and we know this, two people can be looking at the same situation and come away with a completely different perspective of how that played out. And this is when we get into that push pull of I'm right and you're wrong, and I'm right and you're wrong. So there can be some objective anchor points of, like, the objective truth is that the temperature is 76, but everybody experiences 76 differently in our body.
0:18:06 - (Jennifer Ferrante): And so we can have some universal truths, and that's why there's so many different stories and myths and religions and things that all seem to be saying similar things. But everybody's got a little bit different perspective on it because everybody's filtering it through their perceptive framework. And so when we can be aware of that, then we can have compassion. When somebody is seeing something from a completely different viewpoint than we hold.
0:18:35 - (Megan Owen): Yes, I am loving this. This feels like a cool drink of water to my soul. Like you said, it gives us the ability to have compassion for other humans. We are so complex. It also points to how beautiful human nature can be in its complete diversity, because we have so many factors that affect our perceptions, and it doesn't mean that somebody is wrong in feeling the way they feel. I have a little bit of an example.
0:19:10 - (Megan Owen): I used to live overseas, and I lived in kind of a constant state of gaslighting, but I was. My children were very little, and we lived in a country that is heavy on bread, sausage, potatoes, noodles. Y'all probably know now what country I'm talking about. I did not know at the time that I was gluten intolerant. I just knew that all of the grains and the pasta and the heaviness of the food was causing me pain. I was having joint pain. I was having stomach pain. I was having a lot of headaches to where I couldn't get out of bed in the morning.
0:19:47 - (Megan Owen): And my then husband said to me, well, I'm not having any problems with it. And I remember thinking, okay, it's just in my head. It's just in my head now. This is 15 years ago, and now I understand that I was gluten intolerant. That wasn't really talked about as much back then, and that I had. I have a lot of problems with any grains. But he was forcing on me his subjective truth as my subjective truth because he didn't see me as a separate person.
0:20:17 - (Megan Owen): Right, right.
0:20:19 - (Jennifer Ferrante): And that's where, in certain cases, it's intentional. It's an intentional invalidation of somebody's experience and truth. And then there's all these really covert ways that we are questioned in our experience. Medical gaslighting happens from perfectly well intentioned doctors who say, your test came back fine. There's no reason for you to feel this way. I have a lot of clients that experience a disconnection in the way that they feel they have fibromyalgia, and they're told, we don't really know why, but you're just like you feel everything more intensely with people who are considered highly sensitive and have a lot of overstimulation.
0:21:02 - (Jennifer Ferrante): Sensorily, other people might look at your reaction and think that's out of proportion to what just happened. And this is where we start to develop these mixed signals of everybody's telling me that I'm experiencing this in a wrong way, but it's my experience, and so can I not trust what I'm feeling? And that's where we can go back to that core of, is this how you want to feel? Because if it's not how you want to feel, then let's shift it. Not because what you're experiencing isn't valid or real, it is.
0:21:36 - (Jennifer Ferrante): But if what you're experiencing is harmful and painful, then let's shift that for you. That's where I think even as children will tell our parents, oh, I have a stomach ache, oh, you're fine, go back to bed. Or little things that we don't even realize are building in that child sense of ability to read their body and what is happening or their experience. If we can always mirror back to someone validation of their experience, because if someone really is feeling everything extremely through their body and through their senses, and they're in pain all the time, that's a horrible way to feel.
0:22:16 - (Jennifer Ferrante): We have to validate that. If they're feeling that pain, they need that validated. They need to know, yes, you feel things very deeply. Do we want to shift this or do we want to embrace it? Because those are both options, and those are both completely valid options as well.
0:22:37 - (Megan Owen): You know, since we are talking a little bit about HSP's, right, highly sensitive people, but we also have a lot of neurodivergence around us. I personally have a lot of neurodivergence around me and in me, which means that children can grow up with a different experience than their siblings and they have a right to have a different experience. But I really do want to talk about some of these sensory issues, ADHD, autism, and other areas of neurodivergence.
0:23:13 - (Megan Owen): How do you work with clients who are neurodivergent? It doesn't seem as though it would be a standard. Maybe it's a little more tricky.
0:23:25 - (Jennifer Ferrante): So I think that that's a big theme that comes up for people who are neurodivergent is that they are used to having their experience questioned because it's not the norm, it's not the societal expectation. And all of these spectrums are spectrums. So even within the category of ADHD, sensory disorders, autism there's still a spectrum. And so even when you feel like you've found your tribe and people are going to totally understand, it's still subjective, we still have a layer of subjectivity, even within.
0:24:03 - (Jennifer Ferrante): So that's where teaching someone to validate their experience and then also have tools to change their experience if they want it. So this is something that I experienced with my children, because I have seven kids and all in various ranges of spectrums. I've got some on the autism spectrum, I've got some that are ADHD. All of them have sensory stuff. So not all of them toilet trained at the time that society said it's time to be toilet trained because they didn't have those sensations, their body interoception was hypo or under reactive to that sensory input.
0:24:47 - (Jennifer Ferrante): And that's a tricky thing. When you put a milestone tracker that society accepts as this is the default. And in some sense, in classrooms and in big organizations, to keep control of the greater mass, you kind of have to set these averages or these median ways of meeting milestones or expectations. But at the same time, the people who aren't on that average track feel not only invalidated, but they feel like they're failing.
0:25:23 - (Jennifer Ferrante): And so most of my clients that have some of these issues or have children with these issues, and I wouldn't even really call them issues, because when we open them up, we see the gift and the disadvantages next to each other, and they're so proportionate. You know, the kids that really struggle with certain things have these high spikes of ability on the other end of it. And it makes sense when we're having to look at how it's held in the brain. Because to make space for these amazing ways of relating and perceiving, we have to shut down other parts of our brain to be able to hold that in our awareness.
0:26:02 - (Jennifer Ferrante): So if we have very high hsP, like you said, if we have high sensory input and everything feels that much more vivid, then other areas of our brain have to be put on those back tabs so that we can have that full range of experience. And so that's where you see things like twice exceptional, where there's multiple layers of sensory things going on. And in addition to that, they may have some areas where they're wanting to improve alongside the areas that they're just off the charts, above and beyond in the gifted aspects.
0:26:38 - (Megan Owen): And it sounds as though you continue to creatively love your children again. It seems as though what you do, Jen, is you open up some beautiful qualities in other humans pointing out their superpowers, helping them to navigate very challenging waters in a neurotypical culture. And you highlight the beauty of that human being. There. There are no cookie cutters unless we make ourselves into a cookie cutter.
0:27:16 - (Megan Owen): And you have a gift for highlighting that vibrancy, and it's beautiful. There is not going to be a parenting book that you can use for all of your children there. There are not going to be standard disciplinary actions that work for all children, which, again, we're often sort of put, at least when I was raising my kids, there were a few books that we used, and we were supposed to use those books, and we spanked our kids when they were little. I deeply regret that noun and have apologized to my kids for that because I didn't understand their uniqueness at the time.
0:27:59 - (Jennifer Ferrante): That's where we can give people tools. We can give people tools to cope with things that they want to change while embracing the real strengths and being able to pull those out and kind of tease those out. Because when we're looking at gifts to show up in a certain way and they don't, we assume that our kids can't do them. And one of the most fascinating things that I've been recently studying is the gift that comes with nonverbal, autistic communication, because their nonverbal communication is off the charts.
0:28:36 - (Jennifer Ferrante): And there's many studies that show they're telepathic, which is something that the rest of us would love access to but don't have access to because we are so programmed to communicate verbally, and it's our dominant communication source. So if our dominant communication mode is not represented in our children, we might think there's a problem here. They can't communicate instead of seeing all the ways that they're showing up with communication in really brilliant ways.
0:29:06 - (Megan Owen): I love that. So I want to switch gears and ask you your opinion on this, Jen. Do you think that those with these various forms of neurodivergence are more susceptible to finding themselves in controlling or abusive situations, doubting their own discernment and subjective experience?
0:29:28 - (Jennifer Ferrante): Absolutely. Absolutely. Because of multiple reasons. So the first is that they're more likely to experience mixed interoception, where they're doubting their own perception and ability to know what their body is needing and what they are needing. And so this creates a wound where they bring in and draw in somebody who they feel like can take control for them. And at the beginning, that feels really good. It feels like protection.
0:29:54 - (Jennifer Ferrante): It feels like someone coming in and taking control in ways that you need and so we more likely to draw in somebody who likes to take control and likes of to wield power in perhaps an innocent way or in like the abusive situations in intentionally evil ways. I believe they prey on people who have this genetic makeup because they're more likely to doubt themselves when they already can't trust how they're feeling.
0:30:28 - (Jennifer Ferrante): All the more likely to attract somebody who feels like they know what they're doing and also to distrust yourself more and more. And it can become, you know, a snowball effect. And then when leaving those situations even more so, when you've believed something so strongly and have seen that break apart before your eyes, now there's this whole journey of putting back together what to believe again, because what you truly internally believed, when you see that fall apart or see chinks and you start to see holes in belief systems, instead of again looking at that compassionately and saying, with the information I had, it made sense that I had that belief system.
0:31:18 - (Jennifer Ferrante): But now as I know more, I can see it in a different light and I can shift my experience and I have a new center point for that integrity to form around.
0:31:29 - (Megan Owen): Beautiful. I love that. And for anybody who's listening, who is neurodivergent, I really want you to hear us say that you can do those hard things. Oh my goodness, that was so good. And we are only halfway through finished. There is so much more goodness to come with the amazing and brilliant Jen Ferrante. So stay tuned because next podcast is going to be part two with Jen and you'll get to hear the rest of it, so make sure you subscribe.
0:32:07 - (Megan Owen): And thank you so much Jen, for being here more soon.
0:32:18 - (Megan Owen): I hope this conversation has encouraged deep thought as well as helped you draw parallels between therapy and your connection to God, self and others. If you'd like some one on one time with me unpacking some of your most precious life stories to find healing and rest, contact me on Mountain City Crystal to help this podcast reach more people. Do subscribe and review this podcast and share it with someone who would benefit from healing and rest.
0:32:54 - (Megan Owen): My name is Megan Owen and thank you for listening to this episode of Pretty Psych.
0:33:00 - (Megan Owen): Catch you next episode.
0:33:02 - (Megan Owen): And in the meantime, do find healing and do find rest.
