#172 Finding Safety in the Body and Freedom in the Voice

Today, I interview Heidi Fischbach who grew up in a strict, high-control environment where fear and rules shaped how she learned to speak and exist. From an early age, she carried the weight of right and wrong, heaven and hell, and learned to stay small to stay safe.

As she grew older, this constant vigilance became anxiety and self-silencing. Her turning point came when she began to understand how the body holds old fear-based patterns, and how healing the nervous system can restore a sense of safety and calm. Through curiosity and self-friendliness, she learned that safety isn’t just emotional, it’s physical, and that when the body feels safe, the voice naturally begins to emerge.

Today, Heidi helps others reset their nervous systems and rediscover what it feels like to be calm, connected, and expressive. She teaches that healing happens in small, steady increments, not through force, but through gentleness and presence.

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Heidi Fischbach is a nervous system coach and writer who helps people reset after high-control environments, whether that’s a fundamentalist religion, a rigid family system, or chronic survival mode. With training in Focusing, Polyvagal Theory, and body-based trauma healing, she helps clients feel safe, connected, and at home in their bodies.

She is currently finishing her memoir, Missionary Kid: How My Body Saved My Mind from High-Control Christianity, and offers a program called The Nervous System Jumpstart.
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Find Heidi here:
https://www.instagram.com/heidifischbach/

https://www.heidifischbach.com

Transcript

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #172 Heidi Fischbach

“Finding Safety in the Body and Freedom in the Voice”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing, host of the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast. Today I get to introduce you to a wonderful, wonderful human being. Heidi Fischbach is one of my friends that I’ve found online, and it’s amazing when you’re being more true to yourself, you start resonating with other people who are true to themselves, and you just easily become friends.

I’m sure anybody who’s listening to me today, because you are drawn to finding your voice and being more empowered to be true to yourself, you’ll get a lot from Heidi today. Hi, Heidi.

(01:01) Heidi Fischbach: Hi, hi.

(01:07) Doreen Downing: It feels like we’re two little girls in a playground right now.

(01:07) Heidi Fischbach: We just jumped right in, like barely two sentences before. So, hi. Hi, Doreen.

(01:07) Doreen Downing: Yes. Well, there’s a bio that you sent, and I want to read that so people can get a sense of what you do and who you are.
Heidi Fischbach is a nervous system coach and writer who helps people reset after high-control environments, whether that’s a fundamentalist religion, a rigid family system, or chronic survival mode. With training and focus on polyvagal theory and body-based trauma healing, she helps clients feel safe, connected, and at home in their bodies.

She’s currently finishing her memoir, tentatively titled Missionary Kid: How My Body Saved My Mind from High-Control Christianity, and she offers a program called The Nervous System Jumpstart.

Usually, in this podcast, I start with where you were born and how that affected you finding your voice. But I’m going to do it just a little different today. I just feel so glad and happy to be with you right now, so I’m going to start with this moment.

Right now, you have this reset program that you offer. Usually, I get to that at the end, but for some reason, I just want to start with it today. Tell us about what that is. Because I think the people that come to my programs are suffering from trauma in some way, and their nervous system is—we can call it—out of whack, haywire.

(03:14) Heidi Fischbach: I love that way you say it.

(03:16) Doreen Downing: Yes. Let’s start just by captivating our listeners first with what you do, and then we’ll go back into your story. How’s that?

(03:26) Heidi Fischbach: Sure. Yes. And they’re so related. It’s not a mistake that I do this work. My program, the Nervous System Jumpstart or Reset program, is a way to fundamentally reset old fear-based patterns. A lot of times, they were put in place when we were kids, when we didn’t have a lot of resources, when we were dependent on others.

To reset those patterns so that we’re not stuck in a fear-based way of interpreting and seeing the world and ourselves, so that we can be open and engaged and connected. When our nervous system is able to feel safe, then we can enjoy our lives, we can feel a hundred percent ourselves, and we can have a voice.

For me, for example, not feeling authentic and feeling like I had to be quiet came with this underlying sense that I wasn’t safe unless I was a certain way, unless I said certain things or behaved in a certain way. Once that assumption of safety can be different, so many things are possible.

(04:50) Doreen Downing: Thank you so much for that general insight around not only what you do, but there was something that you said that I think is important that people get. You didn’t say yourself. You said your nervous system.

It’s not like “I’m nervous,” it’s “my nervous system is nervous.” There was some kind of separation that made it feel like there’s a me that can learn how to regulate something called my nervous system. Is that right?

(05:24) Heidi Fischbach: Oh, I love that. I love that. And part of what constantly excites me about this lens and this kind of perspective to working with someone is that it destigmatizes and separates out what we think is us.

“Oh, I’m just shy,” or “I’m just,” all those things. And when we start realizing, oh, this is what a nervous system does when a creature—we are creatures, we are mammals—feels threatened. This is what happens. We either get activated and anxious, or if we feel really threatened, we might shut down and withdraw and get quiet.

Starting to be really aware of what our nervous system is doing gives us so much rich information about ourselves, about things that aren’t really us, that maybe were just survival strategies we got used to.

(06:26) Heidi Fischbach: As we feel safer and safer, those can drop away. It really does feel like that happens for my clients. And what can emerge is much more like who you actually are, when you’re not having to feel defensive and reactive and anxious all the time.

(06:48) Doreen Downing: What I got was that you have to have a level of awareness to be able to investigate. Because you said learn. It seems like we have to learn about our nervous system, not only what might have happened to make it that way.

I just love the way that you’re making it so normal that our nervous system is meant to do what it does, and maybe how it got stuck doing that thing.

(07:21) Heidi Fischbach: Yes, and can I add something to how you reflected that? The other thing I love about this way of transformation is that we don’t have to go back and figure out why exactly we’re the way we are. We don’t have to relive trauma. Trauma is there, and our body has all the information in what it’s doing right now and how we’re reacting.

It touches enough on what happened back then for us to be able to be with it in a way that isn’t going to overwhelm us. We can be with it in just the right increment now, so that even what happened back then can change in effect.

(08:13) Doreen Downing: That’s fabulous, because it’s like I love the way you just went like this with your fingers. For people who are only listening, it was like an increment, a small movement. It’s not like you go back and re-experience, because that’s not the point, to re-experience. But there is a point of touching it.

(08:34) Heidi Fischbach: Yes.

(08:35) Doreen Downing: Because the nervous system has to go, “Oh, oh.” So, you have to somehow touch it, right? That’s what I like, the increments.

I think there’s some kind of self-awareness that something happened in a way that created what you’re suffering from now, or what you’re stuck in now. There’s that acknowledgment.

So now I think it’s time to go back into your life, because you learned something. You learned something about how a nervous system gets stuck, blocked, traumatized, and not only how that happened, but you’ve designed, developed, and gone through a process that helps others move gently away and out of that experience of tension and nervousness.

Let’s open up the chapter and say, Heidi, you’re going to write a book about it.

(09:54) Heidi Fischbach: Yes, I am. It’s actually been written. I’m looking for an agent.

(10:00) Doreen Downing: Well, maybe somebody on our podcast will hear, because I said the title.

(10:07) Heidi Fischbach: Yes.

(10:07) Doreen Downing: Okay, go ahead. You were born into a very challenging life.

(10:14) Heidi Fischbach: I was. I was born, and the way I think of it is that I learned the words “eternity” and “hell” right alongside the days of the week and the word for “milk.” It was just part of everyday life. And it wasn’t just about the beliefs my family had, but why they were doing the work they were doing. There was a deep, deep commitment to having other people believe the way they did in order for them to be saved in the afterlife.

So, without going there too deeply, I’ll mention the effect.

(10:59) Heidi Fischbach: What that meant for me growing up was that there was a constant sense of hypervigilance. There was a lot of awareness, but it was not friendly. It was like, “What did I do wrong? What did I think wrong? What did I say wrong?” Because any of those things could wind up a girl in hell.

There was also this constant question, “Am I saved, and what can undo that salvation?” The stakes were just so high. When I look at it from a nervous system perspective, I see I did not feel safe. Not because bombs were going off around me, but because I was constantly on edge, worried about going to hell.

Looking at it from that perspective takes away a lot of the blame, although I do hold high-control religions responsible. It brings it back to such a basic level. No wonder I was anxious all the time.

At a certain point, missionaries sent their kids away to boarding schools. Mine was 3,000 miles from home. The loss, the uprooting from family and friends within that context of being hypervigilant and anxious all the time was a very bad combination for me. I developed an eating disorder and fantasized about death as escape.

It was just this horrible combination of things. The way I have come out of it is by cultivating friendliness for myself. That’s the most basic way of saying it. There was a lot of help, a lot of wonderful mentors along the way, but cultivating friendliness, curiosity toward myself, and respect for my own body and the wisdom of my body, which I also started learning how to hear.

(13:25) Heidi Fischbach: And the cultivating of those things happened before I felt friendly toward myself. That’s an important distinction, because I think a lot of people feel very critical and judgmental of themselves, and there are things we can do in order for that to change.

(13:44) Heidi Fischbach: And then change how we feel about ourselves.

(13:47) Doreen Downing: The awareness that you’re talking about — the learning, the curiosity of who we are, how we are, and how we got to be that way — all of that is learning. I think part of what our work is about is helping people learn more about what’s possible for them.

What you said about learning, though, is that the approach you take to learning about yourself is important. First, you have to say, “Okay, I need to learn about myself.” But you’ve got to do it in a friendly way, just being curious. I guess we call it putting the critic on the shelf.

I want to talk more about that. I want to talk more about what I’m getting to around how to be with yourself as you are self-discovering. But I’m going to take a quick break and be right back. We’re going to dive deeper into what this process of learning about yourself and resetting your nervous system looks like. Be right back.

Hi, I am back. This is Dr. Doreen Downing with my friend Heidi Fischbach, and we are talking about nervous system resetting and what that takes.

In the first portion of our episode today — go back and listen — she shared that she grew up in what you call high-control Christianity. Either way, it’s controlled. You grow up in a system with rules and regulations, and you can only get to that great place, which is probably “saved in heaven,” if you do certain things.

That’s the kind of background Heidi’s been talking about that disrupted her natural learning of how to be in this world with ease. So now, let’s move into the ease of living. How do we help people do that? You’re talking about curiosity and being friendly.

(16:19) Heidi Fischbach: Yes. Is it okay if I tell you a little story about a client who’s given me permission to share her story?

(16:26) Heidi Fischbach: The name she chose for herself is Carly. Carly had a friend who did the My Reset program and raved about it, but Carly was super skeptical. She said, “I don’t think this is going to work for me. Honestly, it sounds a little like snake oil. I don’t think it’s going to work, but I’ve really seen what it’s done for my friend.”

So, I said, “You do not have to believe that this is going to work for you.”

(17:00) Heidi Fischbach: So many times, we hear, “Just believe in yourself. Just believe.” Maybe it’s from growing up with such fundamental rules about what I should and shouldn’t believe, and being told what was true and what wasn’t, and just knowing the depths of despair I’ve been in when I didn’t have an ounce of belief in myself back in my twenties.

Belief is not required, and even friendliness with yourself isn’t required when you start this. What is, I would say, maybe not required but helpful, is just enough curiosity and willingness to commit to yourself and your care.

Because if you take that step of commitment, “I’m going to get support around this,” or “I’m going to do this a different way,” what happens is so much more valuable in a real, observable way than belief. It’s experience. You start experiencing yourself differently.

You start being in situations that used to trigger an automatic stress-based response, and you’re different. That builds on itself. And we’re back to those little increments that really start gaining momentum and traction, and people transform, how they show up in the world, and how they even feel about themselves.

Which brings in the critic piece. It’s so beautiful to watch when people start finding what we call their “no wonder.” When we’re used to being hard on ourselves, one of my teachers, Ann Weiser Cornell, used to say this all the time: “No wonder. No wonder.”

I like to use it as, “Let’s find our no wonders.” Like, “No wonder I’m so exhausted,” instead of, “What’s wrong with me? Why am I so exhausted?” No wonder you’re so exhausted.

And then, having specific ways to start cultivating friendliness, combined with body-based interventions and different practices, results in you experiencing yourself differently, and then your life begins to change.

(19:40) Doreen Downing: Yes. What I like about what you’re saying is that it is a process. It’s not that we’re just going to reach a new state of being by taking steps one, two, three, and four. What we’re going to do is start with an intention to learn something more about ourselves.

I really see that as a way to learn about yourself so that you can come to transformation, as you just said, that people truly do transform.

So, Carly, the client you talked about, what about her?

(20:21) Heidi Fischbach: Thank you. I totally lost track of that. So yes, she jumped in. She was like, “Okay, I’m all in. I’m a hundred percent skeptical, and I’m all in.”

About four weeks into her Jumpstart program, and sorry, my story is all over the place, one of the reasons she said she wanted to do it is because her partner told her, “You’re always at an eleven of reactivity. No matter what I talk to you about, you’re defensive and reactive.”

And she said, “He’s right. I can’t come down from that. I’m so reactive and defensive.”

About four weeks in, starting at that eleven, she said, “You know, I’m at about a seven pretty consistently.” Then, around eight weeks, she said, “I’m at a three.”

(21:25) Heidi Fischbach: And she said, “I don’t know if it’s a fluke, but I’m at a three.” The next week she said, “Yes, it’s pretty steady. I might lose it about something, but I come back to that three.”

I just loved it. She finished her four-month Jumpstart program, and in the next class I was teaching, I wanted to give the example of her transformation. So I called her the old-fashioned way, with my hand like a phone, and she picked up.

She said, “Heidi!” and I said, “Hey, how are you doing?”

She said, “It’s holding strong, this calm, this way to respond. It’s holding strong. We have a plumbing emergency in the house today, I’m not getting any of the work done I usually would, and it’s okay. I’m okay.”

(22:26) Heidi Fischbach: It wasn’t just a little mindset shift that she had one day. This was a fundamental change in how her whole system was able to be with the day-to-day things in life. At the end, she said, “I’m one hundred and eighty degrees different in mood and in outlook from when we started.”

(22:57) Doreen Downing: That was Carly.

(23:01) Doreen Downing: And it’s clearly not a switch. It takes weeks, as you’re saying. What you teach helps people transform and change. Let’s look at how this comes back to voice.

(23:17) Heidi Fischbach: Yes.

(23:19) Doreen Downing: You mentioned coming into the truth of who you are, not being reactive, but being able to be at ease with whatever comes at you and to self-regulate. How does this relate to having a voice and finding your voice?

(23:45) Heidi Fischbach: That’s such a good question. I’m thinking very personally right now. It’s not that I’m never triggered, and it’s not that I don’t sometimes feel reactive, but it’s more about being able to notice when that’s happening and to return to regulation more quickly and easily.

(24:17) Heidi Fischbach: One of the biggest ways that shows up for me is in my writing. I said earlier that I’ve written a book, and I’m hoping to publish it. I’ve been working on this book for years, and part of why it’s taken me so long is that it has a lot to do with being visible exactly as I am, and showing things that, in the past, I might have taken very personally.

My own history, for example. There was a time I would have thought something was wrong with me, rather than saying, “No wonder that young girl reacted in this way or said that.”

In this process, there’s been a change in friendliness toward myself that allows me to have a much more authentic and true voice. I don’t need to hide as a way to protect. I can still be discerning about what I share and how I share it, but as my system has changed, I’ve found much more friendliness toward who I’ve been in the past, and even toward the things that are still difficult for me.

(25:53) Doreen Downing: Does that make sense?

(25:54) Heidi Fischbach: Yes.

(25:54) Doreen Downing: Yes, and I think how it relates to finding your voice is first increasing awareness of the ways in which the pattern is there, whatever that happens to be, and then learning how to access a quieter, stronger place within, which has to do with the nervous system.

It’s also about knowing how to return — you used the word return — being able to regulate and come back to a calmer state of being. That, to me, feels like what helps us tap into truth more easily.

I’m looking at how your work and my work come together around this. Finding your voice means you have to find yourself.

(26:47) Doreen Downing: And then the self finally has a voice, because it’s the true self. It’s not the one who’s reactive or the one who was developed to protect yourself.

(26:58) Heidi Fischbach: Right. Or the one who was trying to please everyone else, to keep herself safe and keep everyone happy, saying things she thought people wanted to hear.

(27:10) Doreen Downing: Yes, absolutely. That’s a big one. Learning to say, “No wonder. No wonder I learned to be this kind of person. No wonder I learned that I need to protect myself. No wonder I learned that it’s better to...”

Another kind of “P” word that I have — the protector, the pleaser, the performer. There are some people who hide behind performance.

So there’s this process of coming out of hiding, and I think the nervous system is one clue. If you’re struggling with that, it’s a sign that there’s something more for you.

(27:58) Heidi Fischbach: Yes, absolutely. And one little thing that stood out to me in what you were saying is that a regulated, healthy nervous system isn’t always calm. Part of what has changed for me, actually, is also more energy.

(28:18) Heidi Fischbach: To do things and to have a voice. It takes some energy to have a voice, and when we’re shut down or withdrawn and afraid, there’s a kind of frozen energy too. So sometimes it is calmer, I love feeling calmer, but sometimes there’s also just more energy.

(28:45) Doreen Downing: But the energy is cleaner, that’s what I’m getting.

(28:48) Heidi Fischbach: Yes, exactly.

(28:53) Doreen Downing: Brighter and more effervescent. Just good words, I guess, as opposed to that forced kind of energy. There’s a force inside all of us. What you just said about shutting down or the ways we pull back and don’t express — that’s what we’re talking about. Expression does take energy.

(29:23) Heidi Fischbach: Yes.

(29:27) Doreen Downing: We’re coming to an end. I know there’s a lot more to uncover because of the richness of what you offer. But I always like to open up the end here and let you listen into this now moment and see what it is you’d like to leave the listeners with today.

(29:54) Heidi Fischbach: This moment has a big rainfall that I’m hearing and seeing right outside my window. It’s been a very dry summer here, and it just brings to mind what is possible.

Even when we’ve had a very long dry spell of not having a sense of possibility, or hope, or voice, when we have the right support and feel safe enough, we can then express our voice and be visible in a way that, when we don’t feel safe, we just can’t.

(30:58) Doreen Downing: The word I’m taking with me today, because it seemed to thread through it all, is “safe.”

(31:05) Heidi Fischbach: Yes.

(31:09) Doreen Downing: That’s what I’d like to leave our listeners with today: knowing that if you don’t feel safe, there are opportunities to work with coaches. I think Heidi will have show notes and ways you can connect with her so that you can reset your nervous system.

Thank you, Heidi.

(31:37) Heidi Fischbach: Thank you so much, Doreen. So nice talking to you.