4: Chapter 4 | Fight, Flight, Freeze, Appease with Jaycee Dugard and Dr. Rebecca Bailey

Survivor's Guide to True Crime

Jaycee Dugard and Dr. Rebecca Bailey join Kim and Kara in a conversation about their therapeutic relationship turned friendship as they explore the psychology behind survival instincts and the "appease" response.

Jaycee Dugard is the survivor of a kidnapping and spent 18 years in captivity at the hands of strangers. Since her rescue in 2009 she has used her freedom and voice to spread her unique survivor experience. Jaycee is the founder of the JAYC Foundation. She started the foundation to help other families that have suffered a familial or non-familial abduction or other trauma and has created educational programs and encourages the collaboration of various entities to provide “Protected Spaces” for families to heal.

Jaycee is also the author of “A Stolen Life” and “Freedom: My Book of Firsts”, both memoirs that she wrote herself detailing her eighteen years in captivity, eventual rescue, and recovery process. She has spoken at many venues across the country and hopes to continue writing. An important goal of hers is to educate the media and the helping professions that the term “Stockholm Syndrome” was a media-driven term and is degrading and insensitive to survivors and their families. Jaycee enjoys spending time with her family and her faithful four-legged companions in California.
Recently she has started the Polyvagal Equine Institute with longtime friends Dr Rebecca Bailey and equine expert Margie McDonald. They are excited to share educational programs, videos and workshops that focus on incorporating horses with polyvagal theory.

Rebecca Bailey, Ph.D. is a leading family psychologist and equestrian who has become a world-renowned professional teacher, speaker, author, and entrepreneur.

She is the founder of Transitioning Families, a group of independently licensed mental health practitioners dedicated to Bailey’s innovative ideas for helping families through crisis and difficult change. She is best known for her work with survivors of non-familial abduction and is on the advisory board of the JAYC foundation. Together with Jaycee they have created an innovative model which utilizes horses to help teach and educate judges, police officers, therapists and other professionals about compassion, kindness, and connection.

She is the creator of the Polyvagal Equine Institute and Connection Focused Therapy an organization dedicated to Equine-assisted psychotherapy and education with a focus on applying Dr. Stephen Porges research on the autonomic nervous system to a variety of populations. She believes that understanding the interaction between the nervous system and our thoughts and actions is key to compassionately responding to and addressing the complexities of today's societal demands. She has appeared on numerous Network shows including Andersen Cooper and ABC’s 20/20.

A graduate of The Wright Institute in Berkley, CA, Dr. Bailey was raised in the Boston area but relocated to California 35 years ago. She now lives in Northern California with her loving husband and countless animals.

Learn more from Jaycee:
Facebook: @Jayceedugard
Instagram: @jayceeleedugard
https://thejaycfoundation.org/

Learn more from Dr. Bailey
Facebook: @rebeccabaileyphd
Instagram: @dr.rebeccabailey
https://polyvagalequineinstitute.com/

Jaycee and Rebecca's CTA:
Learn more about the Polyvagal Equine Institute's educational video series and donate to their non profit foundations. Jaycee and Dr. Bailey have officially published their scholarly paper!

1. Rebecca Bailey, Jaycee Dugard, Stefanie F. Smith & Stephen W. Porges (2023) Appeasement: replacing Stockholm syndrome as a definition of a survival strategy, European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 14:1, DOI: 10.1080/20008066.2022.2161038

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