68: Vincent Perrone Discusses a First Step to Making Your Best Decisions About Your Loved One
“The first step is really just seeing what the pieces are at play and accepting the pieces at play as they are.” -Vincent Peronne
Sometimes what makes our fight harder is not the fight itself, but the things that we can’t control. In that event, what are we to do? Vincent Peronne sheds light on this topic and expounds on the inside out of neurology. He also shares about the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP), a type of sensory-intervention developed by Dr. Stephen Porges and how it can complement recovery. You can move through adversities and win your battle. This conversation will help you determine the best possible steps to help your loved one.
Highlights:
03:33 Learning the Inside Out of Neurology
12:48 Strength of the Family vs Strength of Addiction
24:44 The Safe And Sound Protocol and Sensory Healing
33:17 What’s In and Out of Our Control
38:50 Effective Handling of What’s In and Out of Our Control
46:52 Groups and Nervous System Regulation
49:46 Increase Your Resiliency
Strengthen your resiliency as a family as you move together to recovery. Tune in as @TFRSolution and Vincent Peronne discusses the inside out of neurology. #neuroception #SSP #SensoryIntervention #resiliency #psychotherapy #mindfulness… Share on X
Quotes:
03:14 “Healing doesn’t exist in isolation.” -Vincent Peronne
16:30 “The first step is really just seeing what the pieces are at play and accepting the pieces at play as they are.” -Vincent Peronne
17:27 “Everybody… has a very unique, brilliant way to figure out how it needs to feel and then take actions.” -Jeff Jones
18:43 “When you’re able to start seeing trends and seeing “dysfunction” or bad things… as information, then it opens up a lot.” -Vincent Peronne
20:33 “It’s human to feel safe and to be able to connect with others…” -Vincent Peronne
35:29 “Healing is not about trying to change that impulsive behavior because then you’re fighting a very deep rooted survival mechanism.” -Vincent Peronne
About Vincent
Vincent Peronne is a trained professional in the field of psychotherapy and is seasoned in the healing work. His expertise includes addiction, trauma, suicide intervention, sex therapy, mindfulness and many more. He has a private practice in Boulder, Colorado and also serves as a Mindfulness Instructor in Naropa University. Growing up, Vincent also experienced extreme mental health challenges. In his journey to recovery, he discovered effective intervention that combines modern Western Psychology and Ancient Mindfulness practices. He personally experienced genuine healing for himself. Since then, it has been his passion and goal to “support the fullest expression of well-being in all people.”
Telephone: (720) 59- 1194
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions:
Jeff Jones: Welcome everyone. This is Jeff Jones on the podcast, Families Navigating Addiction & Recovery. And today, I am here with a special guest, a guest that I kind of learned about him and sought him out specifically because what I saw as his interest, expertise, and area that he’s going in, that I’m very excited to learn more and more about. And that area is about the nervous system. And so, as people may know who have been following stuff I’ve been doing, I’m very passionate about families with a loved one in addiction, being empowered and acknowledging that family members have an impact. And one of the impact is incremental, more stress, and more stress, and more stress. And that manifests in their body in a way that impacts their nervous system. And the guest today, Vincent Perrone, I really look forward to learning more about individual and a family managing and navigating their own nervous system. So Vincent, thank you very much for agreeing to have this conversation, welcome.
Vincent Perrone: Thank you, Jeff. Yeah, I really appreciate being here and being sought out by you to start to have conversations about evictions, and families, and the reality of needing a team effort that healing doesn’t exist in isolation.
“Healing doesn't exist in isolation.” -Vincent Peronne Share on XJeff Jones: Well, thank you. Thank you. So, can you start just by talking a little bit about yourself, about who Vincent Perrone is, so when people are listening, they have a good sense of you.
Vincent Perrone: Great. Sure. Well, I’m a first generation Sicilian American. My mother came over when she was young and grew up in New York, born and raised and made my way out to Boulder, Colorado to really connect with the community around here, around psychotherapy, and Buddhism, and then healing. You know, for me what inspired that, when I was younger, I went through a lot of difficult mental health challenges. I’ve experienced what I would say is pretty much the entire spectrum of extreme states of experience in ways in which that, we never thought by traditional means could be quote unquote, healed or cured. But it didn’t, it wasn’t like that, for me, it felt different, my experience was different. So I went seeking answers for the last decade. So it brought me out to Naropa University where I did my masters, and being around a Buddhist Community, the Benton Buddhist Community who has an awareness, and appreciation, and an understanding of consciousness and psychology that isn’t fully understood by traditional Western Psychology, but they both support each other.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: Which started to allow me to feel more comfortable with who I was, and things that were happening in my own consciousness in my own mind that felt a little frightening or uncontrollable. And since then, as I’ve gotten curious, as I found successful ways of finding more stability in my own life, it led me to Stephen Porges and the polyvagal theory.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: Susan Johnson and Emotionally Focused Therapy, which she does with individuals and families, but primarily it was founded for couples, and some of the other, The Safe and Sound Protocol, which comes out of Porges work. And along with the lineage based traditions that I study in the spiritual traditions that I’m also supporting, I’ve learned about the nervous system from the inside out, in a sense. For better or for worse, I was thrust into that kind of learning experience. And the successes that I’ve had, not just with myself but with my clients and the people around me in my life, not necessarily just my clients, my family as well, have just continued to reinforce and validate the principles around healing and what it actually looks like.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: So yeah, that’s really what brings me here, right now I do, I work in private practice with couples and individuals. I’m using that Safe and Sound Protocol, which is a short term supplementary program for people to significantly reduce their baseline–
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: –in the nervous system, which, you know, I’m sure we’ll get to, and why I’m doing that. And previous to that, I actually worked in a crisis services, and first responder services alongside Law Enforcement, and in emergency rooms in 24/7 clinic setting. So, I really have the whole sense of what people are experiencing. I have a sense of what the field looks like out here, Boulder County. And so all of that is kind of starting to hone where I want to offer support and what’s missing based on what I’ve learned and what’s really readily available in terms of systems and services for people to find healing today. So that’s what I’m doing here in a nutshell.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. So wow, you said so many different things that I tried to take note of, wow, I need to ask more about that, and more about that. But you know, one of the first things I heard is when you were saying, that you’re a first generation Sicilian and your mom immigrated, and, wow, how powerful. Like, immigration is a huge transition and it can be traumatic, of course there’s a ton load of hope and grieving. I mean, one end hope, another end grieving. Yeah, that’s really, really huge. And then the other thing that you said that caught my attention is that you yourself have experience with a, I think you said, I understood like a continuum of extreme states. And so, gosh, when I hear that, I really, one of the things that I think about is there’s an, there’s an internal world with any one extreme state. And then a lot of times, you know, the medical community, or the psychological community, our healthcare system is set up in such a way that we see that, we don’t see that, but we see symptoms that come from it ,and diagnose them, and try to work at that level. So gosh, when I hear you say that, I’m thinking, wow, here’s someone who has personal experience with inner world extreme states and my guess is you’ve navigated some of those to get to where you are today, and this nervous system regulation thing that has been a big part of it for you.
Vincent Perrone: Yeah. Wow. Thank you for that reflection, Jeff.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: And thank you for bringing in my heritage. You know, we talk about family, and you and I have been doing that, and immigration being so close, growing up with a second language spoken in the house, I don’t speak it myself, and the culture, and being around her family, and understanding the stories of what happened through cultural assimilation from the Sicilian culture which this is something people over many years have been conquered and oppressed. So coming into America and figuring out, going from a simple way of living to a very capitalistic survival, doggy dog way of living, really created a lot of tension in the family, and that travels, that travels down the generations. So it, you know, families, it’s not the family’s fault, it’s just noticing that quality of, you know, I know what I’m living with, and what some of the wounding of my family heritage is, and it sensitizes me to understand others.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: And there’s a lot of forces at play that aren’t the one individual or two individuals. It’s just really, you know, families exchanging with culture, exchanging with environmental circumstances. So it becomes this very complex experience which offers so much acceptance for the individual. And I think that’s the piece of the nervous system that I think is so important, and many spiritual traditions talk about it as well as learning how to accept and have acceptance for the things that are happening that seem out of our control.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: And for me, having to find that in very extreme felt sense experiences, very extreme cognitive distortions, recognizing, you know, finding that acceptance and soon enough, those symptoms, as you say, start to clarify and they start to draw me back to what’s actually happening in my psyche and in my life, which helps me understand how I can then treat the root.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: And too many people are so obsessed with pulling the roots. They’re like, Oh, I’m going to go pull the root of this. No, if you get rid of something, like, then you’re pulling a part of yourself away.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: You know, typically we’re upset about something and it’s very appropriate. Maybe the ways in which it gets expressed is inappropriate. But if you pull over, then you’ve taken a part of yourself away. But if you learn how to tend and nourish the root, and that’s healing, and that’s permanent healing. And that’s really, I think, these new sciences speak very well in our language–
Jeff Jones: Sure.
Vincent Perrone: –to the Western psyche, but I mean, this is human. This has been happening for thousands of years as well. So it’s a very interesting intersection that we’re in today.
Jeff Jones: Oh my gosh. Yeah. And just listening to you talk about this, one of the things I think about, well one, when I’m working with families, one of the things that I do is like a three or four generation map.
Vincent Perrone: Wow.
Jeff Jones: Family map, to try to really understand, you know, what was happening in past generations, what were the challenges that ancestors had, and the strengths that those ancestors had, or coping skills, or coping strategies to deal with the challenges. And you know, oftentimes, I’ll be talking to someone and they’ll say: “Jeff, my family didn’t have any strengths at all.” And I’m going: “Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I disagree because you’re here, you’re in front of me, you’re breathing. And you wouldn’t even show up to this thing unless you had interest, so something’s going on here.” You know, so, and I think it’s pretty natural for people not to acknowledge or identify strengths, and so, what they see is deficits. And then the past story in this case with addiction in the family, the story of addiction in the family comes out of deficits, you know? And then that affects belief systems, and from belief systems come how we think, which drives behavior, et cetera, et cetera. And it reinforces all beliefs. So you know all this stuff, I know, but it’s just like your story sounds very raw, and your mom was in your family, the first to come to this country. And so what, you’re second generation? Or first generation?
Vincent Perrone: Technically on her side, I’m first, and my father’s grandparents came over, so he was here for a few generations. I really appreciate what you’re saying about addiction and about acceptance. I think there’s so much about learning how to understand the strength of addiction.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: Because, once you start to turn towards something, it doesn’t become something outside of you. And as long as a part of you is outside of you, or rejected by you, or intended to, it’s inaccessible. But the strength of addiction is such a powerful urge to survive.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: Actually, it’s a powerful urge to cope and to regulate a nervous system. It has a brilliant kind of aspect, or way of going like intelligence that it has, but to not see that strain and to not be able to distill what’s happening, you know, in the process of addiction, it keeps it to separate, it keeps it as this all powerful, all pervasive experience that is bad.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: And I know in many ways what I’m saying is not just like requires a type of courage, but it also seems a little counterintuitive.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. We can’t have people accepting addiction, but that’s what starts to actually give you some traction for healing and growth. And that’s what I really love what you’re doing with the families is because you’re helping the families understand. Really, the first step is really just seeing what the pieces where I play and accepting the pieces at play as they are.
“The first step is really just seeing what the pieces are at play and accepting the pieces at play as they are.” -Vincent Peronne Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah. And it’s like the pieces at play are part of an impersonal pattern and it’s like we put a value judgment on this was good or this other thing was bad. But yeah, they’re just pieces at play that were a part of our family, and you know, how we cope with them, how we deal with them, and like families that we grew up in, how we saw our family members deal with them. That got modeled to us and those impersonal patterns took those on and we personalize them. So, like, yeah, if we look outside of ourselves to lower our nervous system or feel the way we want to feel, one of the things I have said over and over is that everybody, every organism has a very unique, brilliant way to figure out how it needs to feel, and then take action, and part of that survival, you know? But it’s like the definition of addiction is a brain disease and all that. And the brain is definitely a part of the body that’s impaired. But for family members just to see, Oh, it’s just that, and if you just get your brain fixed up, then the rest of us would be fine here and would all live happily ever after or something. And there’s, like the brain impairments stuff is real. There’s no doubt about it. But it’s like that AND what surrounds it, what’s the context, what’s the field, what’s happening in the family? So yeah. Thank you very much. I’m glad we kind of dove into this piece.
“Everybody… has a very unique, brilliant way to figure out how it needs to feel and then take actions.” -Jeff Jones Share on XVincent Perrone: Yeah, no, I think the family, you know, you have the individual which, and then you have, you can have like a unit, like a partnership, and then you have the family, but you know, and then it grows, right? It’s like the community, the neighborhood, and then society, and global trends. And I think, when you’re able to start seeing trends and seeing, you know, quote unquote dysfunction or bad things, when you started to see it as information, then it opens up a lot. And the first thing it opens up for me is typically grief. When I have couples come in or individuals, or when I’m connecting, when I was out in the field doing the crisis work, or with my friends, and my family, anywhere, you can start to see that we’re still learning about ourselves. You know, as a species, we’re still learning how to contact our emotions and connect with others, and we’re still discovering what’s important in life. And that’s a huge conversation. And when I see addictions, or when I see quote unquote like maladaptive coping strategies, they’re maladaptive to what? Right? Relative to what? Well, the maladaptive like very skillful. Well what the hell is a skillful coping strategy? You know, I learned skillful coping strategies, here’s a piece of privilege. I learned skillful coping strategies in advanced training after my master’s degree.
“When you're able to start seeing trends and seeing “dysfunction” or bad things… as information, then it opens up a lot.” -Vincent Peronne Share on XJeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: I mean, this is kindergarten stuff.
Jeff Jones: My hand is raised, as in, me too.
Vincent Perrone: Yeah. So, okay. So, we’re okay. Our profession is getting it, you know, at the soonest, like 20, late 20’s maybe, by the time there’s enough education and maybe financial resource, you know, if you’re able to even get that far. And this is basic stuff, right? It’s so, it’s basic, it’s human, right? To feel safe, and to be able to connect with others, and to be playful, and to recognize when someone’s feeling scared and acting maybe not so savory, and not just react back at them, but to go, Oh, this person is scared and that’s why they’re yelling, or that’s why they’re pulling away from me.
“It's human to feel safe and to be able to connect with others…” -Vincent Peronne Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: So, that always impacts me, and it’s shifted the way I see, you know, issues in the world. There’s almost, not to be too political or something, but there’s almost like a miseducation, or misuse of time and resources. But again, it’s just coming from my perspective, you know, from this one perspective where I see a trend in suffering, and people, and the root, they’re always, you can see it even in the movies, it’s everywhere. There’s a root of neglect, a fear of abandonment, of not belonging, you know, and it’s so pervasive, and your masculinity wants to shun that, right? We want it to say it’s weak, we want to condemn it. And yet, from cradle to grave, we strive to be connected, and nourished, and safe, and to nourish, and to give. So, I don’t know what happened, or how all of these values kinda got skewed. And that’s an intergenerational and cultural.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Thank you very much for what you’re saying about the larger context here and it makes me, you know, think about the mental health system of care, and the addiction system of care, and how challenging it is. And it’s just like this, you know, incrementally, like we’ve changed slowly over time, but a lot of the old roots are still there that keep the system the way it is. And again, this is my opinion, like it limits healing.
Vincent Perrone: Yeah.
Jeff Jones: Well, like for insurance companies, they need to, as you know, therapists need to do certain things like diagnose, and then their treatment plan comes off of that, all the progress notes have to, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And it doesn’t really allow for, like, to look at this larger context, to look at the trajectory over time, you know, several generations, and the internal world of potential. What was that individual experiencing in their internal world? You know? So, anyhow, yeah. So, what I wanted to jump into, and I’m trying to, I’m transitioning here because I’m realizing, Oh, my God–
Vincent Perrone: Yeah, I got you, yeah.
Jeff Jones: –we could have this conversation for a while, but it’s like, what my interest in this podcast conversation really is, is about, you know, hearing from you, how you’ve been using this Safe and Secure Protocol from Stephen Porges, and you know, just what your experience has been with the nervous system, and how you have seen people, ONE, become aware of what’s happening in their body, and then, TWO, start doing something different so that person, once they become aware of a body activation, or a body sensation, or something that they can do something themselves to calm themselves down, to lower their nervous system, bring the baseline downers. As you know, Stephen Porges would say this all back to social engagement.
Vincent Perrone: Right. Well, thanks for the kind of course correction. I do feel like we were giving, were riffing on something there. There’s a lot here, so I very much appreciate your family’s perspective and that larger perspective. So, maybe that’ll be another time to connect. And I actually think it used to be called Safe and Secure Protocol. I think it did have a different name, but they shifted it, it’s now Safe and Sound Protocol.
Jeff Jones: Safe and sound.
Vincent Perrone: They shifted it I think, just to really highlight that it’s actually a listening program. So, Dr. Stephen Porges partnered with ILS, which is Integrative Listening Systems, I’m pretty sure. And they had a specially designed headset created for this five day audio program. And the audio program is, it’s just, you know, there’s a kid’s version, and an adult version, and they kind of process the music to really support and train the middle ear muscles, to start to attune to higher frequency sounds, which is one of the signifiers that the system, your body, your nervous system is shifting into a safe state. You can hear higher frequency sounds that are connected with the human voice. Whereas, when the dangerous state starts to come online, the middle ear muscles have been found to shift, to drown out human voice and to really start scanning for low frequency sounds like footsteps coming up behind you or grouse.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: So it was based on that understanding, then it’s been seen to actually have profound effects beyond that. And each day kind of has its own arc. They had set kind of expand your system, or in a sense escalates it, and then deescalates it. It’s a very gentle noninvasive program. And typically, you might experience a lot of activation outside of the program, but throughout the day, you know, and maybe on day three or four, it can feel like something’s happening where you might get connected with some of your deeper fears and longings, but typically it brings you back. So I got connected to it, and this kind of journey of me getting connected to it as synonymous with my own path, my own journey of healing through the practitioners who are connected with this program and with Dr. Stephen Porges, and have kind of helped me really understand my nervous system, and much more, I would say, clear and experiential way.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: So, right now in Boulder, Ana do Valle, she is creating a model around The Safe and Sound Protocol, it’s a trauma informed model.
Jeff Jones: Yes.
Vincent Perrone: So, I actually went through her program, like, everything that I offer, I go through as a client to make sure, ONE, to learn it, to get healing. TWO, to learn it and to understand it experientially. And THREE, just really, just that aspect of learning it from the inside out, and from understanding the experience of what it’s like to go through the healing process, to really be able to offer that in a very authentic way.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: So, she’s doing, she calls it Saigon, and it’s a very sensory based model that uses our poetry movement, so many different things, pieces that you’re processing in non-cognitive way. So there were a couple of reasons why that’s important, and there’s a couple of reasons why it doesn’t, it’s not the whole thing in a sense why it can be used as a supplementary program or a preparatory program. I don’t think I’d be doing it any justice if I didn’t say it was first began treating children with auditory, or people with auditory sensitivities.
Jeff Jones: Right, right.
Vincent Perrone: But it is now being adapted for people experiencing trauma, addictions. And in many ways it’s very new, even though the science and philosophy backing it is, actually, it’s many decades old now.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Yeah. So Vince, what drew you to this work?
Vincent Perrone: You know, I’ve been doing the healing work for so long on myself and cultivating the methods that really I feel connected with to offer to others. I’ve been doing it for quite a long time. So you know, how my path has unfolded for me is, you know, I practice, I feel called for something, or I’m having an issues so I kind of seek out support or I do some research, maybe I get tutoring and something and I practice it. So it’s just kind of like me. I’ve just been swimming in the waters, and one of the practitioners that I connected with, she’s an RA for somatic experiencing professional for Collins, and Benton Buddhist practitioner. I met her, you know, on a retreat. So she’s part of some kind in that way. And she was connected with Ana do Valle, and a student of hers, and started introducing me to some more of that work. And it was profound. This is now, SSP for me just came in a year ago or not even around that. And I had been doing this stuff, like I said, almost a decade. And it completely, you know, shifted.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. So, when you say shifted, what does that mean? Can you say a little bit more? And I’m asking specifically because I know family members who will be listening to this, and you know, that’s a word I use a lot about shifting one’s attention, what’s happening out in the world inside, or shifting from one role to another. But when you say shifting, say more about that experience, from a family member’s perspective perhaps.
Vincent Perrone: Thanks. Yeah, no, I’ll try to do my best to be clear about what my experiences were like, and the experiences after going through the program, and the experiences that I’m seeing in my clients. Dr. Stephen Porges coined a term called Neuroception. I’m sure you’re familiar with, but I’ll just bring it in.
Jeff Jones: I’ve heard it.
Vincent Perrone: Okay. Well, the definition, this I think is really one of the most, I’m assuming terms for how powerful and how significant it really is. Neuroception speaks to the automatic, and I’ll really highlight that word, the AUTOMATIC PROCESSING SYSTEM of our body, right, of our nervous system. And then we have a conscious evaluation system that comes after. And so mindfulness is, you know, it’s a word talked about a lot, you know, I’m trying to bring this in to help define another word, but mindfulness is that idea of being aware of what’s going on as it’s happening, right? This is very, quite lofty in many ways. But Neuroception is pointing to the fact that our nervous system is going to pick up a sound, or a movement, or a thought, and respond to it immediately before we’re even aware that we’re responding, before we’re even aware that something is happening.
Jeff Jones: Oh, my God, what you said right there is so huge.
Vincent Perrone: It’s huge, Jeff. And when people start to hear this, I know when I heard it, it starts to change things about how we perceive ourselves, but there’s always these and these very traumatic experiences, people always, there’s a tendency to judge yourself for freezing, or to judge yourself for yelling, or to judge yourself from running away, about running away and leaving, and these are these common fight, flight, freeze reactions. Well, Jeff, based on neuroception, those are all happening out of our control.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: Because our body is looking to preserve our safety. Now, the trick of this whole thing is, is that system gets very, very impacted when a traumatic experience happens, or when there’s a particular difficulty, or stressor over a long period of time. Then the nervous system kind of like you talk about the baseline activation is very high and the nervous system is primed to react, right? Just like that. And it’s automatic. It’s out of our control.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: So this is when you start to take out that personhood and that personal quality to quote unquote maladaptive coping strategies. Addiction is one of those things that actually is out of our control, their response is. Healing is not, and this is the setup for the shifting.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: Healing is not out of our control. So if we get triggered all the time and our baseline activation is high, so very small stimulus, a very small sound, or a very small thought can just kind of compel us into a coping strategy automatically, right? That’s out of our control. But healing is not about, see, this is where I think you’re doing brilliant work and you’re really speaking to directly, healing is not about trying to change that impulsive behavior. Cause then you’re fighting a very deep rooted survival mechanism.
“Healing is not about trying to change that impulsive behavior because then you're fighting a very deep rooted survival mechanism.” -Vincent Peronne Share on XJeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: That’s incredibly sane and healthy, right? So healing requires us, first understand what the hell is happening.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: Right. That seems really bad. So that’s what this whole beautiful thing is.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Wow. So you’re saying so much here.
Vincent Perrone: Yeah.
Jeff Jones: And in part when I listened to you, I have one thought of, you know, Oh my gosh, then family members who are in a stressful situation, or they’ve been in a situation where there’s been a little stress and then incrementally more and more, and then a crisis, and then it gets better, and then, you know, maybe another crisis or something like that. So the way they react to that, they can’t control, there’s this automatic DEFAULT thing.
Vincent Perrone: Right.
Jeff Jones: And so, part of what I’ve seen that happens in the addiction world is families do their very best and till they totally get burned out,and then, it’s like, they start making very rash decisions.
Vincent Perrone: Yeah. So baseline activation has grown.
Jeff Jones: Right. And they make rash decisions when that baseline is up, and up, and up.
Vincent Perrone: Perfect. Yeah.
Jeff Jones: And so, what I really like about the nervous system kind of approach, like, is there a way for family members to get around that automatic default of how they would respond, or even like having a pause, and in that pause, the world can change, a perspective can change, you know, the energy can go from one’s head to one’s feet or whatever. And so, I’m just wondering how might a family member who’s aware of this automatic reaction to, and automatic reaction could be to avoid, or to blame, argue, or could be to try to help, and help, and help. Or the automatic reaction could be, you know, I’m outta here, kind of thing.
Vincent Perrone: Exactly.
Jeff Jones: And so, it’s like, from what you know about the nervous system, how can people who are in this context of being in a family with addiction, how can they start to become aware of that and then do something about it to where they have more blood flow to their cortex, where they can make the best decision for their situation?
Vincent Perrone: Yeah. That’s really well said.
Jeff Jones: So, answer that question please. And put it in a bottle, and mark–
Vincent Perrone: Yeah, here we go. I already, let me just fill out this bottle over here. And, you know, the funny part is that the answer is actually very simple.
Jeff Jones: Great.
Vincent Perrone: But doing it is the most difficult thing that can possibly be done. It’s the hardest part about being a person and human, the path of healing. So it’s very simple, I can say it, right? So you have cognitive education. So what we’re doing right now is great. Like it helps you see, Oh wait a minute, I’m at, those are the parts of me that are out of control and that’s okay, but when you’re NOT in the trigger, is when you need to work. And it starts with being okay with the unfortunate circumstances, and the cycles, and the triggers. Because if you’re not okay with the trigger, and you don’t understand how the trigger is born and how it perpetuates itself, then you’re stuck in.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, right.
Vincent Perrone: You’re kind of in the room of doom.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: Right. And then, when you have some space around the trigger, and you have some space around the patterning, which comes really from acceptance, you stop beating yourself up about it. We know that’s actually our hard wiring system and it’s very intelligent. Then you can start to have some space and create more space. And when there’s a sufficient enough space, and there’s a bigger, a large enough container and capacity to work and to experience difficulty and pain, then we can start actually moving down into the healing worker up or to the side, it doesn’t really matter where we’re going from a metaphor. Then we can actually start treating the ROOT of what’s causing it. So there’s a number of factors, I can give you the map, it’s very easy. But then to create that space when you’re in the grip of reactive triggers is very difficult, and it doesn’t have to be anything like rocket science. I mean, a lot of times when I have clients in this phase of their work, of their healing, all I’m trying to do is to help them have like a moment or half hour in the session. Maybe 10 minutes out of their whole week, they get a breath of fresh air, that’s a big success, and they keep coming, that’s a big success, right? We’re just creating space from your normal pattern, and we’re just creating, we call it resourcing or grounding, just like taking a walk, you know? It’s like, Oh, well what do you like to do when you get overwhelmed? Oh, I take a walk or watch a movie. Good. You know, like distract, distract, distract. Nobody likes the word distract. No, you distract until you’re ready to do the work. You will lift the weights and then you rest so your body heals, so you can lift weights again. So it’s kinda, you think of it like a workout program.
Jeff Jones: Sure.
Vincent Perrone: You’re building your compassion muscles, or your emotional muscles. And you do that by stopping doing what you can to stop the harm. So if a reaction creates harm, you learn to accept it because if you don’t accept it, then you’ll get mad at yourself and do another reaction to create harm.
Jeff Jones: Get mad at yourself, or get mad at the other.
Vincent Perrone: Or get mad at the other, right. Thank you for that. Like the family system. But when you start to understand and accept the triggers and the reactions, you can then spend some time trying to just take a breath, and take a breath of fresh air.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: It can be very hard to pause while you’re in the middle of something depending on the intensity.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. So one of the things that I hear you talking about, and you started talking about acceptance, and that was the word that I had on my mind here, but it seems like acceptance of the external, whatever’s happening around me and in the case of like addiction in the family, there could be any number of activating things that are happening in the environment, but then also accepting what’s happening inside of myself. You know, whether it’s like acknowledging I’m having an impact here from what’s in my environment, and I have some thoughts and feelings, and some, you know, perhaps really strong positions about it. But it’s also like accepting my own feelings about something. And, I mean, one of the things that I’ve seen that happens with families when there’s a lot of crisis, and you’ve probably seen this from the crisis work that you do, is that people are focused on the crisis. And it’s like just get the crisis to go away and I’ll be better, and that will take care of what’s, like, I’m good here, just get this crisis to go away. But when we’ve been living with, like crisis after crisis, or an activated nervous system for a long period of time, it doesn’t just go away when the crisis gets better.
Vincent Perrone: Yeah, I think that’s really well said. And the simple response to that is, of course not. The crisis is like a pimple, you know, it’s just like at the surface, right? It’s just like right at the surface and you can get rid of it. But if you’re not treating the causes, right? It’ll just, your system, the family system, the individual system, the cultural system, will just keep creating crisis. So it tends to be a very accepted way about going. A way of going about things is to kind of do crisis and damage control.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: And it’s like, Oh, we got through that. But then on the emotional level, there’s actually no understanding of how or why the crisis was created in the first place. So we don’t have preventative care for emotional crisis. We don’t, and that’s why I left the crisis work.
Jeff Jones: That’s what I, like this Safe and Sound Protocol from Stephen Porges that you’ve been into for some time, it’s like, when I was reading about that, that’s what I really, what I really loved is, you know, this seems to be an environmental strategy to bring someone to calm, bring someone’s body to calm, you know, or have tools to start to move from, you know, bringing the baseline down a little bit. And so, I don’t know, are there, I hear that you’ve done this with your individual clients and some couples, and I just wonder, do you think this is possible for larger group kind of thing? Because one of the things I’ve seen is that, when people just get listened to, in a group, their nervous system calms down. And I was, what you talked about is this, you know, this audio program that sounds that really, I dunno how best to say it, but it sounds like audio is an avenue in to lower a person’s activation levels, you know, maybe without them having to think about lowering their activation level. You can’t think your way out of this.
Vincent Perrone: Yeah, you definitely can’t think your way out of it. You can use thinking to plan to act away out of it, but you can’t really use your logic. Groups? I think groups are just part of how we’re wired, that social acceptance, or social rejection.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: And being heard in a group or by another can have very profound effects on nervous system regulation. I think the issue, and what I’ve really come to understand through working with couples and attachment where, is that most people don’t actually understand how to open themselves up and to speak about what they want to be heard, and how to receive being heard and seen. So a lot of the training that I’m doing with my couples is training them how to actually discover what’s going on with them, and to share it, and to open up and receive contact. You probably see it all the time. There’s people who feel, you know, they’re committed relationships, and they don’t feel satisfied, or loved, or connected, or desired. And it’s surely not the case that the other one doesn’t do that. There’s something happening in the bond between both of them and the individuals that are unable for them to receive, and connect, and to express.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: So the Safe and Sound Protocol, the only person I know doing it in groups is Heather Wright up in Fort Collins. She’s the only person now that I know of. She’s the one that I was speaking about with a colleague, Phil Carl, but I won’t speak to SSP with groups. I mean, you can kind of speak to it with couples, but what is so exciting about the Safe and Sound Protocol is how, without, with pretty much like very little effort in many ways–
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: –the body can be guided into a much lower like baseline, the baseline activation threshold can be lowered. Meaning that your nervous system can access new levels of relaxation, and rejuvenation, and calmness that maybe you have never been experienced or haven’t been experienced for some time. It has the power of doing that, just the audio alone.
Jeff Jones: Right, I’m guessing also increase an individual’s resiliency and their capacity.
Vincent Perrone: Right, exactly. So as the baseline of activation goes down naturally, the resiliency is increased because little things that might trigger you instead of throwing you out of your window of tolerance will just trigger you and make it very uncomfortable for you. But learning, your nervous system gets starts to get used to being more quiet and more regulated. So it can be used as a preparatory tool for therapy. Because if somebody is very much struggling, they might not even be able to take into therapist’s words. They might not, if they’re triggered all the time, if they’re in the grips of addiction, they might not be able to actually receive any benefit from any type of treatment.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: But this is just such a passive and noninvasive program that it’s accessible for people, right? Cause it’s, you just listened to it, and it kind of gets in there to lower the activation of the nervous system so that healing work can kind of begin.
Jeff Jones: So anybody listening to this, could they, like, if they wanted to do this for themselves, how would they do this? I mean, you have an office in Boulder, Colorado, but maybe people listening to this who are out of Colorado, and it’s like, is there on Stephen Porges website? There are practitioners who are trained in?
Vincent Perrone: Sure, sure. There is, I’m pretty sure on the ILS website, you can find a directory of people they have certified through their online certification course.
Jeff Jones: And so, that’s what ils.com? I’m just really curious here, people listening to this, if they really wanted to take a step, how might they do that?
Vincent Perrone: My encouragement would be to find, you can find people like that, and also to name that, the system has also been given at home where people would take it home and listen to it on their own. I’ve done that myself. I took it home, I took the protocol, the headset I have, and I tried it out to see what would happen.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: Because I’ve also done it in the container of a trauma therapist, and I had good effects, I noticed shifts. I’m also a trained professional and seasoned in healing work. So I have the resources to kind of navigate and kind of get a little bit more. But when I was a client, it was paired with in-person therapy. Talking in it necessarily, but I’m processing through poetry, I was processing through art and movement. It created a whole different experience that I think more harness the power of the tool. Finding a practitioner who understands that the headset protocol is a tool and it can be a harness through understanding how to use it in therapy because you’re also getting this safe regulation from your therapist.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Vincent Perrone: You’re also feeling in a container that’s not maybe your home that has extra triggers, or stressors, or to do lists. You go to this special place and you listen cause the headset can be evocative. There can be little road bumps as you go through the protocol and it can bring up some of your material that’s looking to get resolved, and secured, and healed. So my encouragement is that, if you look through this cause I don’t know, this is newer, it’s a newer product, and I don’t know the national community around it too well, but my encouragement would be to find a practitioner who’s doing it in the office.
Jeff Jones: Okay. Okay.
Vincent Perrone: And check in about that because I think you’ll get more out of it.
Jeff Jones: Okay. And if people are local, listening to this and they want to connect with you, or learn more about you, how would they do that?
Vincent Perrone: That’s great. So, I have a website, it’s my full name, Vincent Perrone, P-E-R-R-O-N-E.C-O-M. And you can also email me, it’s my full name with my middle initial, So Vincent M (for Michael) Perrone, vincentmperrone.com, and you know, you can also contact me and leave a message at (720) 593-1194, and I’m happy to just talk about really anything going on, and to really just let you know as much as I can about how I see whatever issues that arise in your life, and how, what the work would kind of look like.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Vincent Perrone: You know, and I really believe in offering in person complimentary consultations just because it’s such a big risk to find somebody who’s a good fit, I think for both sides. So I really want to stress that there is no risks, there is no anything, just trying to, if you don’t feel connected with me, I would love to try to connect to you, people in the community because I actually know how hard it is to find practitioners, especially, and I’m even in the field, and it’s hard. So that’s kind of my bugbear.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you very much for this conversation. This has been great.
Vincent Perrone: Thank you so much, Jeff. I really appreciate what you’re holding and the work that you’re bringing into the world and how you’re doing it. So these conversations I think are really rich resources, and I’m happy to be a part of it.
Jeff Jones: Thank you.