296: The Stress Monster with Parijat Deshpande

IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean

Never, and I mean not once since the beginning of time, has a person who’s under duress calmed down as a result of being told to calm down. When someone you care about is exhibiting stress, instructing them to “just relax” is one of the worst things you can do.

So, how can you be supportive and help bring them to the other side of the stress episode? As a start, clarify what they’re asking for by reframing what they’re saying or by summarizing their behavior.

Then, look into the mirror to do your own work. Are you judgemental about their stress response? Does the physiological state that you carry into the room impact the situation in a positive way or are you throwing gasoline on the fire?

This week, for the first part of our Intentional Support Bean Pod, I’m joined by a true blast from the past, Parijat Deshpande. She was my guest back on episode EIGHT, and I’ve since had the pleasure to watch her popularity surge across the internet. (And rightfully so.)

Parijat is a trauma-informed health strategist, high-risk pregnancy specialist, somatic trauma professional, speaker, and best-selling author. An advocate for women, Parijat’s book, Pregnancy Brain: A Mind-Body Approach to Stress Management During a High-Risk Pregnancy fearlessly addresses subject matter others dismiss.

Today, Parijat shares a few of her healing techniques as we explore the lesser-known effects of stress and trauma on the body. Parijat also will guide us on what to do and what not to do when taking on a supportive role for others.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

• The Salutogenic Approach
• When a high bar is the right bar
• Remembering how to be a good mammal
• The ambition to play by your own rules
• What if it’s not your fault?

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean will soon celebrate its 300th episode. I’m beyond grateful to you, my listeners, for getting me here. So YOU tell me what you want the 300th episode to be about by completing this short questionnaire.

• Sundae’s Website
• Sundae’s Facebook Business Page – Sundae Schneider-Bean LLC
• Sundae Bean – YouTube
• Parijat Deshpande – Website
• Pregnancy Brain
• Somatic Trauma Healing
• Mind-Body Medicine

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Full Episode Transcript:

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Hello, it is 10:00 am in New York, 4:00 pm in Johannesburg, and 9:00 pm in Bangkok. Welcome to IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean. I am an intercultural strategist, transformation facilitator, and solution-oriented coach, and I am on a mission to help you adapt & succeed through ANY life transition.

When I think about it, probably the scariest life transition I’ve ever been in, it’s definitely this journey into becoming a mother. The whole pregnancy about; “How is this going to work? Will it work?” The labor itself. And then those first moments when you have that child in your arms has definitely been a process of surrender for me and I had a healthy normal pregnancy. I can’t imagine what it would be like if you are in a pregnancy that comes after pregnancy loss or you’re in a high-risk pregnancy. That is another level of dealing with surrender and trying to control what you can and let go of what you can’t.

So, to join us today, we have an expert, Parijat Deshpande, who helps support others during their process when they’re with neonatal loss, birth trauma, and more. So first, let me welcome you Parijat back to the podcast.

Parijat: Hi Sundae. I’m so glad to be here.

Sundae: So Parijat was with us way back in episode 8. Please do not go back and listen to episode 8. *laughter*

Parijat: *laughter*

Sundae: Parijat was amazing. I was very much a beginner at podcasting. So let me reintroduce Parijat for those of you who are not familiar with her work. She is a trauma-informed health strategist, high-risk pregnancy specialist, somatic trauma professional, best-selling author, it’s so cool to watch your book just get popular across the internet. Speaker, advocate for women who’ve been through second or third trimester loss, preterm delivery, neonatal loss, birth trauma, and those who are preparing for high-risk pregnancy.

That’s some big stuff, Parijat. You are by people’s sides in times of so much surrender and so much uncertainty, gosh. I mean, I can’t imagine how it feels to do the work that you do.

Parijat: It’s truly as you know, I do this work because of my personal experience of having gone through it and so, to be there for others, in the way that I wished I’d had somebody for me feels like why I’m on this Earth. And so, every single client and family and this new life that they’re fighting to create and bring into this world and then bring home, it just feels like such an honor every single time, every single time.

Sundae: I have so many questions about your own process behind that because I know you’re so impacted as a professional when you do that work. But before we do that, I want to just say a little bit more about what you do. One of the reasons why I want to bring you on is because you specialize in Somatic Trauma Healing, I want you to help us understand what that is in a second. Somatic Trauma Healing Integrative Health, and Mind-Body Medicine. I was super interested because you helped guide women to restore balance and their nervous system, their endocrine system, and their immune system to reduce the risk of pregnancy complications and preterm delivery in the next pregnancy. That’s massive. You do so much.

Sundae: So you use the word “somatic” and not everybody understands what that is. Do you mind just giving a quick sort of definition of what somatic work is?

Parijat: Oh sure. Yeah, somatic work just means body based. So it means body first, thoughts later and what it needs to include in its purest form is, as I mentioned earlier, all parts of the body. So we are doing access to all branches of the nervous system. We are accessing and utilizing our musculature, our faccia, our joints, our ligaments, our tendons, movement, posture, we’re doing all aspects of the body to really get deep down to the cellular level of what it is that our body is telling us. And then what does it need? And then giving us that. So, we can complete that stress physiology cycle that we’ve been stuck in.

Sundae: Can you tell us a little bit more about your approach? I know you say you’re trauma-informed, you’ve got a neurobiological approach to optimizing their health and their care. Can you just share a little bit about what you do and how that is connected to your mission to ending prematurity and improving pregnancy outcomes worldwide?

Parijat: Absolutely. So when we look at the top 10 reasons, top 10 most common reasons for preterm delivery, on that list among smoking and recreational drug use, and various other factors is stress. Now when we hear the word stress, people often balk at that and say, “What? I didn’t cause my preterm delivery!” As somebody who has a micro preemie, I get that, I get that. And also, I think that having been the patient, it really opened my eyes to how much that actually does play a role, not stress, as in what I’m thinking and what I’m doing and how I’m at fault. But stress physiology. What is actually happening in our body when we say the word “stress.” And so it is in that vein that I started diving into this world of neuro-endo immune work and the integrative approach and the neurobiological approach because what I was very interested in is like I said, “What’s happening inside the body?”

When we say the word “stress,” when we say that, somebody is stressed, especially in pregnancy, what does that actually mean, right? Because we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg, but something’s happening underneath that is impacting health. And we know this outside of pregnancy and I was particularly interested in pregnancy. And so my approach truly is looking at the nervous system and all aspects of the nervous system. So often times when I say the word nervous system, people think we do deep breathing and that’s absolutely not what we do because that’s it’s not a part of the body that we actually need to regulate, it can regulate on its own.

So what we are focused on is the state of the nervous system and the impact that that state has on all other body systems, including the endocrine system, which monitors hormones, as well as the immune system, which plays a significant role in the health of pregnancy. And what research has found is that triad and how the three of them work together and especially how dynamic they need to be in pregnancy because the state that they are in pre-pregnancy and their relationship to each other is different than first trimester, then second trimester, then third trimester. We have to allow for a body to be able to do that dance with those three systems.

So I sometimes use an analogy of a three-legged stool, but it’s actually not that static. We’re really looking at three different elements that actually do this beautiful dance together to support a healthy pregnancy. When we are in a body where the nervous system has identified a threat and shifted the body into a survival state, that dance changes, and that change actually impacts the health of the pregnancy and potentially maternal, as well as fetal outcomes. And so what I typically do is kind of go through – my a client will come to me and say, “But I’ve done everything, I’ve gone to psychotherapy, I’ve been on medications, I have all these people on my team, and it’s still not– something, not quite there yet.” And it’s usually this. And so we go, “Okay, let’s get out of your head and into your body.” And let’s see: What is the story your body is telling us?

And from there, we start piecing the puzzles together to say;

• What’s missing in the healthcare?
• What’s missing in health education?
• What’s missing in terms of what your body needs to no longer need to create this state of survival?
• And how do we get you into safety so that that dance between the three systems can resume the way it needs to?

Sundae: Wow, there’s a lot there. I’m also just thinking, “Get out of your head and into your body,” is not an easy request.

Parijat: It is not. No, it’s not.

Sundae: Wow. So tell me a little bit about why would someone come to work with you? What’s happening in their own lives that they end up working with you?

Parijat: Yeah, so I found that over the years, the people who are really ready to do this work are ones who have, unfortunately, had lived experience of how things can go sideways. And typically they are people, like me, who have experienced pregnancy complications and preterm delivery in a previous pregnancy or they’ve experienced second or third trimester loss, or neonatal loss. They have gone farther than your quote-unquote supposed to make it and everything supposed to be fine. And then it wasn’t fine. And it was their lived experience that showed them either there was inappropriate or negligent medical care, or they had the right medical care that they wanted, but something was still missing from it.

And usually, they will have checked a lot of boxes before they come to me. They’ve tried Acupuncture and Chiropractic and yoga and meditation and mindfulness. They kind of have done the whole thing and then they come across trauma-informed care, which unfortunately is not standardized in our maternity and prenatal world. And so that’s what piques their interest and I think what really brings them over to say, “Yes, I’m ready,” is this recognition that it has to be body-based because anything that we do that’s thought based is like just the tip of the iceberg. Expecting that we’re going to address the whole thing and they have lived experience of that to that’s not enough. It may have been helpful but it’s not enough.

And so between that and then just their vision of, “I just don’t want that to happen again and I want to do everything in my power. And if this is a piece of the puzzle, I want to address it.” And they are so clear about that and that’s usually when we start working together.

Sundae: So, that’s the thing that I’ve learned about trauma, is how it is embodied and how it may be even embodies experiences are not even conscious, right? I’ve done some looking into even intergenerational trauma. It’s so complex. What is trauma-informed? What does that mean? And how do people know that they’re getting trauma-informed care?

Parijat: Yeah. So the phrase “trauma-informed” in and of itself isn’t a great telling, it’s not quite illuminating as much as you would like to think. You really want to work with someone who’s trauma-trained. Because being trauma-informed is very different. Anybody can become trauma-informed if you study enough. But trauma-trained, you know how to actually take that knowledge and apply it. You’re working with any kind of service provider, that’s what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, we’re a little far from that. So, we start with trauma-informed.

And in fact, in my work, when I’m working with providers and practitioners we actually even start with trauma-aware. Are we even aware of what trauma is? And are you aware of how it’s impacting your ability to be a provider or a practitioner? And are you aware of what that’s doing to your patient, your client, your customer?

So you know what we’re looking for is a provider, a business owner, whoever it is, when you say, “trauma-informed,” I think that generally is kind of the larger umbrella of these nuances I’m talking about, to be aware that the state of my body and your body in this interaction will impact how this interaction goes. If I had to put it really simply. And it’s this idea that if either one of us or both of us are in a survival state, what we are going to put into this interaction and what we are going to get out of this interaction, will only be filtered through survival physiology.

Meaning if I’m in a survival suit right now, I am much more likely to misinterpret a vague facial expression or a change in your inflection in your voice as something that’s threatening versus if I were in safe physiology, I would be much more curious about, “Oh I wonder what you meant by that,” and, “Maybe there’s a different explanation for what you just said,” or something. And that is especially important, I think in the medical system or any kind of healthcare system where there needs to be an immense amount of trust, not just with the provider but also from provider to patient. That needs to be there in that if it’s dependent on the physiological state of each person in that relationship, then we need to be able to identify what those states even are to know how to build that trust, that safety, and the communication between the two.

Sundae: So, when I hear that, I think is very cutting edge, when I think about the industry. Especially in the medical industry, it’s about “the other,” the patient, you’re always looking at them and it’s not about you. And even in psychology, there’s this is this blank slate. So it’s always about the other. And what I’m hearing from you is there’s something about attunement, attunement with yourself, attunement with the other. And I love this because I’m a qualitative communication researcher and I always believe that our presence impacts outcomes. So it’s like, the state that we are in and our energy impacts people. So oh my gosh, when I hear that, I hear that it is such a high level. It’s a high bar. But it’s the right bar. And it is, it is what we need to be thinking about to give people the type of care they deserve for these high-stakes.

Parijat: Yes.

Sundae: That’s massive. So I’m curious about you, what do you need to do as a practitioner to show up? I’m going to say, clean, right? Where you’ve done your work, you know you’re in a secure mode. What do you need to do to prepare for your interaction with your clients?

Parijat: Yeah, I would say there’s two things. Okay, three things. So:

1. I work with a very, very, very small number of clients at a time for this reason because practically, I want the flexibility to be able to be available, if anything does happen and they need some assistance, they’re at the doctor’s appointment and something happened, or had to go to the hospital and something happened. Just for practical reasons, but also because it is really heavy work. And I need that space for me and some of that space is then filled with alone time, some of it is filled with my own support system to help me kind of rejuvenate and support myself.
2. The second thing I would say is I have a recognition that I’m not going to show up perfectly and so my intention is never to show up with, “I am safe, I am fine and I’m ready,” because that’s not realistic. And especially in this pandemic that keeps going on forever. It’s not realistic. And that is, if we’re going to add one more word to the approach that I have, it would be a salutogenic approach of, we’re not going for perfection. We are going for the fact that physiological safety is what we want as a common experience most of the time.
3. And also there will be times when I am activated and that’s real. And so do I have what I need to help me come out of that before each of those calls. And so it takes the pressure off that things are happening in my life as well.

Sundae: Yeah, watch the news.

Parijat: Right? Which, I don’t, because I would never show up anywhere.

Sundae: Exactly. I just think that you are setting the bar high and well, right? And I think, it’s a great model for other practitioners to follow. I would also add, for other industries, like in the coaching industry, in the psychotherapy industry, for other industries where we’re dealing with people’s lives and their futures. It is so important.

So can we – there’s so much I want to cover with you but let me just focus on a few things. Tell us more about what we need to know if you are going to engage in trying to have a pregnancy or are in a high-risk pregnancy and if there’s something in your life experience that is creating uncertainty around that. What do we need to know, if you’re the one going through that?

Parijat: Yeah, I would say first and foremost that even if you are diagnosed as high-risk, that doesn’t actually mean anything for your outcomes. I know that that can sound really scary when a doctor says, “You are officially a high-risk pregnancy,” or, “Next time you’re pregnant, it will be a high-risk pregnancy,” and that phrase can be really scary for some people. For some people, it’s very validating because they know that they’re going to get extra care and for others it’s really scary. And so I really want to highlight that just because you have that qualifier it doesn’t say anything about outcomes. All it means is you are at added risk, you or future baby are at added risk for complications. And so you will have likely additional monitoring, more than a low risk pregnancy would.

And that’s all we know for a fact. Beyond that, then we have to take it almost like peeling an onion; “What do we know now? What do we know now?” And the reason I say that is because I find that we often treat pregnancy as similar to outside of pregnancy in that physiology is different than when we’re pregnant but we forget how dynamic the physiology is over those 40 weeks. And so there’s very little, I feel like I have to say this, often to people who want to work with me about, I cannot predict. If even if you do this work pre-pregnancy, I cannot tell you what’s going to happen in the first trimester or the second trimester because what I can tell you, is it will be different. And even though you say the neurobiological body based work for trauma healing pre-pregnancy, there are things that will unveil themselves in pregnancy that we just don’t know what they are yet.

And, and so I think being really open that because it’s a dynamic experience, having support all the way through is so important. We can’t spot treat pregnancy. I mean, we really can’t spot treat anything in health but really not with pregnancy. We really can’t do that.

And then, what I often recommend is especially if you have a history of anything, to really do your homework and dig deep to find answers. I have a personal very strong belief and value that when a physician or any kind of medical practitioner says, “We don’t know,” it means, “We don’t know yet.” And that means somebody can help you find it. And if it’s not this provider who will can it be? And that is some of the work that we do sometimes is finding that provider or that practitioner. So don’t settle for no answers. Look for them. Figure out what happened before and get really clear on what that might mean for your future pregnancy. Where are the gaps? Get really clear about that. The more you understand what happened before, the much better off you’re going to be about making different decisions for your next pregnancy.

Sundae: So interesting. I use the word surrender in the beginning and there’s obviously surrender. But I’m also hearing agency.

Parijat: Yes, yes.

Sundae: And it still doesn’t mean the outcome is going to be what you want, but there is agency to impact how this dance happens. That’s beautiful. That is beautiful. There’s something that just gives me hope, right? It gives me hope in a period of lives where they feel out of control or it’s like, “How does my body know to grow a uterus? That happened.” And it’s so beautiful. You do feel out of control. It feels like it’s happening to you, but I’m hearing you can do some things to regulate. So what are I know there’s a lot of nuance here, but just big picture, what are some of the things that your clients do or practice during their pre-pregnancy or pregnancy process that impact their experience?

Parijat: Well, pre-pregnancy, we consider it kind of the foundational phase where we do a little bit of everything. So, we’re doing somatic work to help them heal from what they’ve been through before, whether it’s a loss or birth trauma, medical trauma, whatever it is, we do some of that. We support their health to make sure that they’ve got what they need for a strong foundation for a healthy pregnancy, often times, they’ve developed a chronic illness or an autoimmune disease, that’s often stress induced from the previous pregnancy, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, things like that.

So we want to kind of get that addressed from a neurobiological perspective because they’ve got everything else covered in terms of diet and lifestyle and all of that. And then we go into their healthcare. And we go; “What questions haven’t been answered adequately yet? Can I get you those answers or do we need to build the team out a little bit differently? Are we interviewing new people? Are we firing people and hiring new ones? And what’s going on there.” And we do all of that in that foundational phase to get them set up and part of that is helping them as we talked about the beginning, get back into their bodies, which you said so perfectly, is very, very difficult to do.

And so especially if you’re living in a body with traumatic stress, your body is actively trying to keep you out of it because you don’t need introspection when you are in that survival state. And so we very, very, gently do a lot of practices that are actually personalized to each person’s physiology but essentially tapping into the sensory system, the sensory motor system and helping kind of re-access these parts of our bodies that we had access to before whatever happened to get back in very, very gently. We don’t go into, “Tell me the story of what happened there.” Clients are willing to tell what they want to share, but really we’re allowing the body to tell the narrative first.

Sundae: I think that’s so fascinating. And keep in mind my work is also very CBD based like very cognitive, processing, and very word related. And that’s one of the things I think we are sometimes too much in our heads in our stories and we’re we are ignoring the story in our body and that’s why the work is so important. And it’s not something we can see or rationalize, right? It is bigger than that. And I want to say it’s like the animal of us. That’s the mammal. We’re mammals. And so you’re working with the mammal body so to speak. Because nature really has it figured out. And we’re just supporting that. Remembering how to be a good mammal is kind of what I’m hearing.

Parijat: Yeah, absolutely.

Sundae: It makes me think about how important this work is for anybody, regardless of their family status or what they’re trying to create in the world, just getting in your body in that way. I’m curious what clients report later about the skills that they learn for things that are none pregnancy-related. What is it that people say?

Parijat: Oh my gosh, I got a message, not too long ago, actually, from a client that I worked with, gosh, it’s probably been three years now. I can’t believe that I can’t, but it must have been three years, at least. And she sent me a message and we had worked through my whole Path to Baby is my program through pregnancy from conception through homecoming. And after her whole, really complicated experience, and all of that, she sent me a message just recently saying, “I had to take my child to the pediatrician,” for I think a vaccine, her checkup or something, and they were scared. And they were really having a tough time being there. And she said I was doing the practices with my child and my pediatrician was watching and my child just completely felt so safe, all of a sudden, you could see it on his face, his whole body just changed, and then they were able to proceed with the appointment and whatever they’re doing.

And just to hear that from somebody, she didn’t just do this for herself, she did this without her at the time knowing the fetus could impact could benefit from the work that she was doing. And now it’s come into parenting as well. So she’s teaching her child, her toddler that this is how we are in the world when we feel scared, when we feel overwhelmed, when we feel helpless. I just – I cried. I just went, “Oh my goodness.”

Sundae: You’re making me tear up. No, because that’s the bigger question. How do we stop this cycle? How do we stop the stress cycle? How do we stop the trauma cycle? How do we not pass on those hard unhealthy patterns that we learned? How do we create new patterns? What you’re doing, this is what I meant about there’s a larger impact that you’re having beyond the individual or that family. It’s much bigger.

So that child will go into the world and self-regulate in a way that others might not, and they’re going to pass it on to the team they lead when they’re adults and their partnerships. It’s just gorgeous. I love the work that you’re doing. It’s so amazing. I’m just wondering, is there anything else that we need to know about your work or things that are often misunderstood around the topic in the work that you do?

Parijat: I think there’s one thing that pops into mind which is kind of what we started with. We hear the word stress tied to health complications and especially around reproductive health, and perinatal health. And it can feel really shamey and blamey. And so what I really want to hit home for people is that stress is the word that describes the physiological chain reaction our body has at a nonverbal level to keep us alive. That’s all it is. And sometimes it shows up as thoughts, sometimes it shows up as mental health symptoms, sometimes it shows up as cardiovascular symptoms, respiratory symptoms, reproductive symptoms, digestive symptoms but it is a physiological chain reaction that happens outside of our verbal abilities.

So it is not your fault. I really, really want to drive that home. It is not your fault whether you have developed an autoimmune disease because of traumatic stress or chronic stress. If you have heart disease, if you’re dealing with asthma, if you’re dealing with pregnancy complications, it is not your fault. And your body is asking for what it needs to come out of this survival state. It sounds so “whoo” sometimes that I don’t know how to make it sound more concrete but our bodies are asking for it. And we just have to retrain ourselves to hear it.

Sundae: We have hunger, it’s a signal. We feed it. And so if we have stress response, it’s a signal. And that’s why I think we don’t do well as a culture, right? If we’re hungry, we know to eat. If we’re thirsty, we know to drink. But if we have stress, we normalize it. “Oh, you must be really productive.” You’re like, “You’ve got a lot of responsibility.” Or we glorify it, or if you’re stressed and then not doing it right. We don’t look at it like another internal signal for our bodies.

Parijat: Yeah, exactly.

Sundae: Yeah. Up until my 20s or even early 30s, I live from the chin up, which is basically ahead, and my body was like, actually let’s just ignore the body. Let’s work against the body. And at least in my culture, I didn’t learn how to do that and I have to do that in my 30s and 40s.

Parijat: RIght. Yeah.

Sundae: So the work that you’re doing, I know who you work with directly but I think it applies big picture for so many people.

Parijat: It does, yes. And in the pandemic actually, I ended up expanding my services a little bit to outside of pregnancy because there were just so many people who are recognizing, “Oh, we’re 18 months in. We’re two years in. I get it now. My body is screaming at me and I’m ready. I’m ready to approach it differently.” So yeah, I agree with you that it’s quite generalizable in some ways.

Sundae: Yeah, it’s beautiful. So I before we kind of try want to speak a little bit about your own personal experience. I’m curious, what advice you have for people who are in relationship and community with those who are going through this process, who are trying to start a family or have had complications in the past. What advice do you have; what should we do? And what should we absolutely not do?

Parijat: Don’t tell them to relax and calm down. Do not say that. I think if you can ask yourself when you’re around somebody who is clearly exhibiting that they are stressed, they’re overwhelmed, they’re fearful of whatever lies ahead on their family building journey, I would say it’s two things:

1. One is, can you reframe what they’re saying or how they’re behaving to; What are they asking for? Because I think we tend to switch it to just judging behavior, like, “There she goes again, cleaning the whole house, she’s just so neurotic like that,” or whatever it is. And instead, looking at, “I’m not going to try to stop her from doing that, what does she possibly need and can I help her find that?”

1. And truth be told to be able to do that, I think requires you to do your own work. Quite honestly. If you want to support somebody through this, as we talked about before, your physiological state is going to impact how that goes. And so prioritize that so you can show up the way you want to for your loved one. And I think that’s true for whether you’re a family friend, but also if you’re a provider or a practitioner. It’s so important.

We talked about trauma-informed and we talked about trauma-healing. It’s not just left to the patient to do that work. It has to happen at a systemic level. It has to include the practitioner, it has to include the hospital or the clinic, they’re part of it. It has to include the industry and the world overall. So we all have a role to play in helping prevent birth trauma, medical trauma, and ending, as you said, intergenerational trauma and really perpetuating intergenerational healing starts really with each of us individually. Whatever the relationship is that we have with that person.

Sundae: And that’s always one of those things, I realized, even for example, as I show up as a parent, I’m like, “Oh man, this is actually about me.” *laughter*

Parijat: *laughter* Always.

Sundae: It’s like I got more work to do. Dang it. I thought I could get away with it but no, I can’t. Do you mind if we focus on you for a little bit?

Parijat: Sure, sure.

Sundae: It sounds like you do such amazing work. And it sounds like part of your work, is doing your own work to stay in that commitment to your clients. I’m curious a little bit about, what’s going on in your life bigger picture. There’s a lot going on in the world. As you know, I have this process called ATT: Ambitious, Transformation, Transition. I’m curious, what transitions are you feeling right now?

Parijat: Oh my goodness. I feel like everything is IN TRANSIT at the moment. I think parenting is one gigantic transition from conception through end of life, it seems. So keeping up with the changing demands from the children and as a parent in this world. I’m in the middle of a big transition business-wise in incorporating some of this work to provide the support for providers and practitioners to really meet their patients, where the patients need to be met. So that’s been really exciting.

And a lot of personal transitions about where we want to live and where we want to be, and how we want to move around in the world, given that we are a high-risk family and we’re still an ongoing pandemic. So I would say we’re at the point of transition with lots of questions and not a lot of answers quite yet.

Sundae: That’s a lot. Yeah, that’s a lot. So, when you think about that journey for you, oftentimes when we’re in transit in so many layers, there is an internal transformation that happens. Or external, for example, the pandemic, or something performance led. It kind of sounds like you’re going through all three transformations at the same time.

Parijat: It seems like it. Yes. That would probably be very accurate. I think I’m definitely most inspired by the internal transformations for sure. Once I can understand, imagine, visualize, whatever we want to call it, what that next step can be, it feels like everything clicks into place. So, a lot of the work for me has been internal, even when there are external transitions happening.

Sundae: And I’m guessing because one of the things I talk about is we do – I think this is where our work is aligned when we’re in transformation, we can shape it, right? Because that’s what you’re doing with your clients, you’re helping them shape their experience, maybe even shape the outcomes, even though we can’t always control the outcomes. What are you doing now to shape your transformation?

Parijat: I think I am spending a lot of time getting really clear about what I want. For me, I think that helps me to know where I’m headed. If there’s any level of clarity about that. If it looks like a mirage to me, I won’t move. But if I can get some kind of shape around it, even if it’s not super clear, I’ll at least start to take several steps forward. And in those steps forward, it becomes clearer and clearer. Are we going straight? Are we going a little left? Are we gonna have to turn right? What does that look like? But so I think for me that’s a really, really big part of the transformation process.

Sundae: It’s good. And I’m guessing you’re doing all of your work, like your embodied work to stay grounded in that process. So in terms of ambitious, what is your definition? Or what does ambitious look like for you right now?

Parijat: Ambitious right now, is starting to look like playing by my own rules. Recognizing which rules don’t work or never have worked. And I’m not going to play by them anymore. Really rewriting them for what makes sense for me, my family, life, health, all of that, regardless of what it sounds like on paper.

Sundae: Right, you know what’s so interesting? I just talked to one of my groups that I have about that right now that we feel like we’re in a time where we used two, maybe even three, four years ago, we used to look to best practices. Or we would look to thought leaders, gurus or whatever and we would absorb that. But now we’re at a position where it’s like, “No, we have to look inside.” Like you said, “Your own rules.” But it’s noisy. There’s a lot of noise out there. So how do I shut out that noise? And listen to myself and do my script. Not someone else’s script.

That’s interesting. I’m seeing that in many conversations I have with people. And my hunch is that all that we’re seeing with this environmental crisis, racial reckoning, pandemic polarization, we’ve been put into that state of, “Wait a minute. Now, I decide. I have to make my choice.” Because it is hard when we are in polarization depending on where you are like, “There’s two rights. Oh wait, there’s two wrongs.” You know what I mean? It’s like, “No, wait a minute. What is right for me? What do I need to do?” So it’s interesting you say that, and so wonderful. Thank you so much for everything you’ve shared.

I want to hear more, Pregnancy Brain is a brilliant book that you’ve written, can you tell people a little bit about Pregnancy Brain and where they can go to find it?

Parijat: Sure. So that is the book I wrote, it’s going to be about four years now. It’s hard to believe. Pregnancy, Brain was a book I wrote specifically for people who are going through a high-risk pregnancy, though, I have heard from people who are not yet pregnant who have really benefited from the book as well. And it’s intended to be a resource to give hope and to give agency and show where we have some agency. There’s actually an entire chapter on surrendering so that resonates very much about really showing you where you have the power to influence the change or the direction of your pregnancy. None of us who are going through a high-risk pregnancy or are naive to the fact that anything could happen. And also it’s really meant for people who are looking for, “Okay. But even if anything could happen, is there something I can do to influence that?”

So it talks a little bit about the introduction to stress physiology and its impact on pregnancy. It has a little bit of my story, a little bit of client stories for motivation and hope. And you can get that from my website parijatdeshpande.com there’s a link there for the book, it’s available on Amazon, and you can ask your local independent books stores and libraries and all of that to bring that over to you.

Sundae: That’s so good. Well, we’ll make sure that we put the link in our show notes. Thank you so much. Do you want to tell our listeners, what you’re working on next?

Parijat: So I’m building out the consulting piece of my business to work with and partner with clinics and organizations and hospitals. Anything from fertility clinics, all the way through niques and anything in between, to really help them implement trauma-sensitive practices, which includes not only how they work with patients but also how they support their own employees to be able to show up for patients the way that they need. So that’s kind of next.

And then building out some more opportunities to speak on different stages about this concept of stress physiology and pregnancy outcomes and how we just cannot afford to ignore this anymore. We cannot afford to keep talking about stress as a cognitive thought based mental health issue, we have to incorporate it as part of standardized prenatal care. So that’s just one of the many things that are going on over here.

Sundae: It’s so wonderful for me, I just love watching how your work has grown, and the impact has just multiplied over the years. I think we met over 5 years ago, I know maybe 6 years ago. So it’s just been wonderful to see what you’re doing and I think you’re such an amazing steward of your talents.

Parijat: Thank you.

Sundae: That you’re making such an impact in people’s lives. So thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with everyone. And thank you for those who are here listening to IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean, I appreciate you being here as well. I’ll leave you with the thoughts from Albert Schweitzer said: “The doctor of the future will be oneself.”

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The post 296: The Stress Monster with Parijat Deshpande appeared first on Sundae Schneider-Bean, LLC..