Healing Adverse Childhood Experiences with Patti Elledge

In this episode of The Dr. Hedberg Show I interview therapist Patti Elledge in a deep discussion about healing adverse childhood experiences (ACE's), trauma, epigenetics, attachment theory, somatic experiencing, evolutionary biology, and much more.

Patti Elledge has specialized in therapeutic application of neuroscience for more than 40 years. She has a broad clinical background in developmental and attachment based traumas and worked directly with babies, children and families for more than 25 years prior to her SE training in the late 90s. She specializes in interpersonal neurobiology and how that affects social/emotional, language/cognition and sensory processing development. Her blending of somatic and body-mind techniques helps resolve over-coupled elements of the fight-flight-freeze that seemingly becomes intractable with the essence of loving/bonding and "belonging." By accessing these parts of the nervous system we can return to healthy regulation and functioning, greater flow and creativity. Patti studied directly with Drs. Peter Levine, Raja Selvam and Diane Poole Heller and holds Trauma Informed Touch Certification from Kathy Kain.  She serves as Faculty for Diane's seminal trainings for healing adult attachment wounds, called DARe.  Patti has an active private practice in Asheville, NC where she provides therapy as well as mentoring to other somatic practitioners learning SE and DARe.

To contact Patti call (828) 273-0323 or email at [email protected]
Here is a transcript of the interview:
Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome, everyone to "The Dr. Hedberg Show." This is Dr. Hedberg and I'm excited today to have Pattie Elledge on the show. We're gonna be talking a lot about adverse childhood experiences and trauma and we're gonna get into the things that she does in her practice. And as you know, I've been talking a lot, writing a lot recently about ACEs and what those mean. We're gonna get into that in some detail here. So, Pattie, welcome to the show.

Pattie: Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Hedberg. I'm really glad to be visiting with you today on this topic.

Dr. Hedberg: Yeah, thanks for joining us. So why don't we start by you just telling us a little bit about what you specialize in and your background and the types of people you've worked with over your career?

Pattie: Well, thank you. I've been a therapist for 40 years. Ad I started out, I always like to say, I started out really working with babies and children, moms and dads many, many years ago in a whole different field. But I learned so much working with those kids, you know, day after day, hour after hour, I worked with a lot of indigenous kids and indigent families, families that needed social services and I got to see a wide spectrum, that was when I was working in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but I got to work with a wide spectrum of population. And then I worked a lot with families later on that were, you know, had a lot of affluence and a lot of wealth. And so I got to see kind of what happens in the good, the bad, and the ugly early on in families and the perspective of really helping families understand the child that they had.

And then later in my career, I was introduced to Peter Levine's work and I just really turned in that direction. Peter's known, has been a very influential individual in the field of trauma healing. And Peter introduced the concept that trauma is stored in the nervous system and not in the story. So that in other words, talk therapy really wasn't touching it for healing for many people. And so Peter began publishing and writing and created a format called "Somatic Experiencing." That's a therapy strategy which I'm certified in and have assisted, oh, probably 40 or 50 trainings nationally and internationally for these wonderful three-year-long trainings.

And so I really consider myself a trauma healing specialist really in the field of neuroscience and neurobiology.