How To Regulate Your Nervous System: Anxiety, Relationships, and the Baggage You Didn't Ask For | Dr. Bruce Perry

July 1, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

How to Regulate Your Nervous System: Anxiety, Relationships, and the Baggage You Didn't Ask For

Dr. Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Northwestern University, has spent decades studying how the brain responds to trauma. But the most powerful insight he offers may be the simplest: the question we ask about ourselves and others changes everything. Instead of "What's wrong with you?" try "What happened to you?" That shift, he argues, is not soft sentiment—it's neurobiology.

The Three E's of Trauma

Perry defines trauma through what he calls the "three E's": the event, the experience, and the effects. The same event—a car accident, a school shooting—will be experienced differently by different people depending on how close they were, whether they felt safe, and what support they had afterward. And the long-term effects vary wildly. This framework helps explain why two people can go through the same thing and come out completely differently.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:04) **Introduction & The Power of Reframing** - Dan Harris introduces the episode and the core concept of shifting from "what's wrong with you?" to "what happened to you?"
2 (06:40) **Why "What Happened to You?" Changes Everything** - Dr. Perry explains the origin and power of this reframing question.
3 (14:45) **Defining Trauma: The Three E's** - A practical framework for understanding what trauma is and isn't.
4 (22:00) **Inherited Trauma: How It Works** - Dr. Perry explains the mechanisms of intergenerational trauma.
5 (25:39) **Personal Responsibility vs. Understanding** - Addressing the common concern that this framework removes accountability.
6 (29:11) **Healing in Community, Not Just in Therapy** - Why traditional mental health systems are ill-equipped for mass trauma.
7 (33:21) **State-Dependent Functioning & Fear** - A key concept for understanding politics and personal reactivity.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Plus: how trauma rewires the brain, why connection is the most powerful regulator, and small practices that actually work.

Dr. Bruce Perry is the Principal of the Neurosequential Network and a Professor at the School of Allied Health, Human Services and Sport, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria Australia. His work on the impact of abuse, neglect and trauma on development has informed clinical practice, programs and policy across the world. Dr. Perry's most recent book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, has been translated into 26 languages and has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for over 100 weeks after becoming #1 on the list in April of 2021.

In this episode we talk about:

EMDR and the importance of moving your body
The hardest type of trauma to deal with
The perks of getting in touch with the fact that, to quote Dr. Perry, everyone is wandering around in a fucking fog...and how this perspective helps us become more generous in our lives.. Both toward ourselves and others.
How it's never too late to heal trauma

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