From the Vault- Nevous System - 2024-03-10, 10.48 PM
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[00:00:00] Hi
there, it's Casey here. Just popping in quick to let you know that this podcast episode is from the Purpose Map Podcast Vault. So it was recorded in the past and we're bringing it back around to you now because, I don't know, I just have a little sense that it might be relevant to you in this moment.
Right now, of course, these podcast episodes are, in essence, timeless. The only thing that might be timely in them when they were first recorded is an offer that was in alignment at that time. So please, if there's any mention of an offer in this episode, or Let it go. What we'd love for you to do if you want to take things a step further is actually book a get to know you call with me or a member of our team.
It's really important to us that we know you and know your story and have an opportunity to engage with you. So there's a link in the show notes or a couple links in the show notes for you to book a call with [00:01:00] me or a member of our team. We just love that you're here, so enjoy this episode. I trust that whether it's the first time listening or the 10th time, you'll receive some bit of wisdom that can guide you to acting in alignment with who you really are and what you're really here for.
I so appreciate you being here and can't wait to check in with you at the end. You are in the right place right now. If you want to feel Peace and ease within yourself if you want to feel abundant in your sense of well being and reconnected with the truth of your own value, power, deserving, in other words, you want to feel good and you want to feel like feeling good doesn't have to be so hard to achieve.
Even if right now you're experiencing some sort of personal frustration or fear that's impacting your overall state of well being, maybe you have a fear that's related to an ongoing health issue. [00:02:00] I'm thinking of someone close to me in my life who is, you know, struggling to get the answers that they need in terms of some physical symptoms.
So maybe that might be true for you as well. Maybe you're experiencing some fear around money, around finances. I'm And, or a fear connected to a particular relationship in your life or multiple relationships in your life. It's completely natural if you are frustrated by the ongoing state of something and if it's impacting you mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and you know, it makes perfect sense that you'd want some sort of change.
You know, you wouldn't be listening to this if you weren't interested in upleveling your state of wellness, well being, self care. So, you're in the right place. We're about to go on a journey together. So, this episode, in this, in this, I guess training today in [00:03:00] this conversation and this dialogue with you, I'm going to do my very best to help you understand how your nervous system works so that you can see the connection between regulating yourself and overall wellness and well being.
You know, when. You think about wellness or wellbeing, it would be completely natural. If you went to thinking about, you know, eating well, exercising, sleeping time in nature. And of course, all of those things are really important. And I don't know, my experience has been that there's like tons of information out there about those elements.
And so today I actually wanted to speak to wellness from the perspective of the nervous system. Um, And, you know, maybe weave in those different practices that relate to nutrition and movement and sleep through the context or the framing of regulating your nervous system. Because to be honest, when I first learned this wisdom, it was a total game changer in helping me to understand.
How I was showing [00:04:00] up in different moments of my life and how I could, like, truly take a holistic and integrative approach to my own well being. So, That's why I care to share this with you. And, you know, I'm going to put my teacher hat on a little bit and also weave together some wisdom from other teachers, researchers, practitioners, as well as stories and experiences so that you can, you know, relate in the way that most resonates with you and receive the wisdom that's right for you right now in this moment in time, so that you can be well, so that you can experience that sense of ease and peace.
That I know that you're looking for. Okay. Um, I suppose I should. Define the term regulate. I used that word earlier. Uh, just regulating your nervous system, regulating yourself and how that is connected to your overall sense of well being. When I say regulate, really [00:05:00] what I mean is to affect or impact your nervous system in a positive way to help you come back into, let's say, homeostasis balance to become more integrated.
Okay. This is going to make more sense as we continue. So please do trust in this process and this journey that we're going on together. Um, on the contrary, dysregulation is a term that I might be using upcoming dysregulation. Well, some people call that being triggered. Maybe that's a more common language term that you might know.
Dysregulation means to be activated out of. An ideal state of being, um, dysregulation could also refer to a state of stress. We're going to go into this in more detail. So actually, you know what? Let's dig in with an example. Hmm. Let me think about one right now. Okay. So maybe [00:06:00] you've had the experience of, you know, going about your day and feeling great.
You feel like connected to yourself. You feel grounded in your body. You feel calm. You feel well. You're just like going along your day feeling. Great. You feel safe inside of yourself. Now, even as I say this, you might be listening and being like, huh, I don't feel that very often. Um, just take note and I invite you to meet yourself with like a observational quality, like a gentle, kind compassion, as you notice how you're reacting to what you're hearing in this episode.
So let's just imagine that you. Know that experience and that you have that experience of going along your day, feeling good, feeling grounded, feeling in your body, feeling safe, feeling like you can be present with other people. You can connect with them. This is what we would call you being in a regulated state.
Um, There will be [00:07:00] some terms that I'll bring in shortly here, like feeling safe and socially engaged, um, from a nervous system perspective, this is where your ventral vagal nervous system response is at play. If that, those words overwhelm you, just like, tune them out. I'll use, Plain language and, um, also some of those descriptive terms for those who are interested.
Um, but when you're kind of at your best and you're doing well and you're feeling great within yourself and you are embodied, you are regulated. Your Ventral Vegas Ventral vagal nervous system responses is dialed in. You feel safe and socially engaged. So you're going about your day. You're feeling good.
And then let's say on your way to work. So you hop into your car and you're driving to work the, the same drive you always do, you're feeling like peaceful, you're going along and then suddenly someone cuts you off and [00:08:00] you get this kind of. Whoosh of sensation in your body, like a stress response, you feel that you become activated and maybe because I don't know, you have some sort of like, I don't know, trauma around being cut off by another vehicle, maybe that makes you even a little bit angry and you react by, I don't know, I don't think you would do this, but like giving someone the finger and like swearing to yourself inside the car and You're just in a totally different state.
Um, this is what we would call you being dysregulated or experiencing an autonomic, like, stress response. It happens so fast. It's like 0 to 60. You're not in control. You're not thinking about it. It just happens in a split second. You're in a dysregulated state and particularly, this is where your sympathetic nervous system or your fight flight state gets [00:09:00] activated and you feel frantic, agitated, frustrated, you following?
Okay. So that is a totally different state of your nervous system. And then perhaps you kind of like settle back in, you take a few deep breaths, you sort of realize what just happened and you're like, Okay. Wow. That was a bit intense. I overreacted a little bit. Um, let me take a few breaths. Let me get back and back to work.
You what you just did there is you sort of like re regulated your nervous system. You're coming back to that sort of safe and secure state and then you arrive at work. And, you know, from the moment you walk into the office that there is like a frantic energy around you that like, Oh boy, today's going to be a day where it's going to be utter chaos.
You know that there's a lot of projects lined up. There's a lot of [00:10:00] tasks on the to do list. Um, your receptionist has been having a hard week, struggling, and I don't know, maybe she's been fighting with her partner. There's just a bit of a feistiness in the energy. And so you're at work and you're going about your day and then you have a meeting and you say one little thing and a colleague of yours raises their voice.
Interrupts you and they're having a reaction to you. They are dysregulated. They're in a stressed fight or flight state. And then because of that reaction, you react in response a little bit louder, a little bit faster, a little bit more short. It's only human to experience this sometimes. Um, so you get the point.
There's this dysregulation that happens and then. The day [00:11:00] continues and you realized you forgot to bring lunch or a snack. So you're hungry, but you don't really have time to go pick something up and it's turning into hanger. You feel like you haven't had a moment to yourself all day. You had to skip your workout at noon because there were too many priorities on the priority list.
And it's like the stress of the dysregulation just continues and continues and continues until. You get home and you completely tap out. It's like, you just, excuse me, like shut down, crash on the couch and you just can't do another thing, that state. Where you're a bit numb, collapsed, shut down, this is what we would call your dorsal vagal nervous system response.
So, in this example, I've shared with you three different states of being and we're talking about [00:12:00] nervous system states of being. We're talking about your regulated state, a man named Dan Siegel coined the term your window of tolerance. Um, I like to think of it like your window of resilience, but this kind of state where you can be, you know, socially engaged, you're grounded and you're alert, you're sort of like conscious, you're able to respond rather than react.
This is that sort of home state that we might call your window of tolerance, your window of resilience, even home, just home. Um, Deb Dana is a researcher who studies the nervous system, teaches about the nervous system, and that's how she might refer to this state as your home state. So, that was that first state that you were in, and then when you got triggered by traffic, and then, Continually were met with challenges at work.
You experienced a dysregulated state or a stress state, um, that we could [00:13:00] refer to as your fight flight state where your sympathetic nervous system is activated. You feel frantic, agitated, frustrated. So that's the second state. And finally, this. Last state that we're speaking about, the state where you feel numb, collapsed, shut down because you've had too much stress all day.
This is where your dorsal vagal nervous system response is at play. And each of these dysregulated states, so either when you're heightened or you're tapped out, these are states of being that are natural responses to stress. We feel typically like there's less stress when we're in our window of tolerance.
So why am I telling you this? What does regulating your nervous system have to do with being well? I mean, I'm sure as you hear that [00:14:00] question, you have some thoughts or ideas about that. Um, regulating your nervous system means both maintaining regulation. In other words, spending more time in your window of resilience or in that safe and social state.
And it also means knowing what to do to more quickly come out of a dysregulated, dysregulated state back to that home state in those moments of stress. So this is important because when we can build awareness around our nervous systems, when you learn this wisdom and you learn practices and techniques to support regulation, You get to be more responsive in your life and less reactive.
And when you're more responsive and you're more conscious, you get to choose what will make you feel good rather than unconsciously staying [00:15:00] in a state that feels really not good, stressful, anxiety ridden, et cetera. Let me remind you that it is only natural. Every single human on the planet has a nervous system that is dialed in to react in certain ways under certain conditions.
So it's actually like an adaptive, um, adaptive meaning, like it was useful to you at some point, it's very supportive, or it was supportive at some point in your life. It's adaptive for your body to react and respond. Only natural as a survival mechanism. So our bodies are kind of wired. Our nervous systems are wired to, in some ways, like protect us by kicking us into these different states of being.
And as we grow and we become adults and we want to exist in more conscious ways, and we want to feel better and feel well, we can use our, you know, personal sovereignty, our [00:16:00] will, our awareness, our consciousness. To bring more light to these patterns and autonomic automatic ways of being, um, so that we can choose wellness.
We can choose feeling well. So at this point, you might be saying like, okay, yeah, I know what it feels like to be stressed. Yep. I can think of a moment where I've been triggered and I've totally like lost myself and reacted. I can think of a moment where I've like tapped out and shut down. Uh, what do I do about it?
So as you relate with what I've shared so far, a couple questions I want to ask you first, what does it feel like personally for you to be in that safe and social state that regulated space where you're in your window of resilience? What are you like? Who do you be? Who, who, what kind of [00:17:00] person do you embody?
Um, what does that feel like to be in that state? Your home state? That's the first question. Second question, where is your home away from home? Or in other words, where do you naturally get triggered into? What state do you naturally get triggered into when things get stressful or when a certain circumstance is just like rattles your cage?
You know, some people naturally gravitate into like that fight flight activated mode and some people naturally gravitate towards shutting down. So for you, where is your home away from home? What state? What is your natural kind of stress response? For me, definitely, it's that fight flight state and, you know, if I'm there for a really long time, if I'm in an activated, frantic, agitated, frustrated place for a really long time, that can automatically lead to me shutting down or numbing out [00:18:00] or feeling like I just need to escape the world.
Um, that's a completely natural response. That's definitely mine. Um, but I don't tend to go toward. Shutting down and numbing out and collapsing. Like as my first response to stress. So my home away from home is when my sympathetic nervous system is activated and I go into fight or flight. What is your home away from home?
Okay. So now, how do we spend more time? In our safe, secure social state in our window of resilience now, this is where some of those, uh, I was going to say typical, uh, maybe typical in that the things that you think about when you think about wellness, like sleep and food and, you know, movement, how, you know, Those elements come in.
I'm gonna speak to those in terms of how they impact your [00:19:00] nervous system state. So there are wellness practices that you can do, and you might have your own unique ones. So I totally, um, give you permission to trust that you have the answers inside. You know about what's going on. What you need. So as I offer up potential ways to regulate, just notice what resonates with you.
Notice what you naturally do, what you naturally gravitate towards that feels supportive and like, trust yourself enough to go with that. You don't have to use all of the different bits of wisdom that I'm going to share with you. They're just offerings or invitations so that you can choose the one or two things that you want to start with.
Um, and let me also remind you that when you resonate with something, you know, like feel into what that feels like when you resonate with something, when someone says something and it's like, aha, that's for me, typically resonance for me feels like a relief or like an openness or an expansion in my body.
And that's how I [00:20:00] know when I'm listening to someone else's wisdom, that's how I know when a piece of what they're sharing is for me. Um, on the other hand, sometimes it like brings about this discomfort in my body because I know there's something true that I need, but it illuminates my resistance to it.
So, you know, assess yourself, notice what resonance feels like for you. Okay, so here's where we're going to start. I want to start by talking about how you can just. Spend more time in your window of resilience or in your home state, consistent practices or a consistent practice, um, can really help with preventing dysregulation in the first place.
And I'm going to even back it up even more a consistent. [00:21:00] Environment and consistent beings outside of you that are helpful can support you with staying in your window of resilience. I'm going to say that in another way. Mind the beings outside of you and your environment. So there's some really cool research around nervous system regulation and.
Something that is often talked about is this, um, term called co regulation. And what this means is that beings outside of you can be really supportive for helping you regulate your nervous system. Um, I'm thinking back to. The very first episode of this Worthy and Well Nourished series, uh, what babies can teach us about intuitive wellness, where I shared about how my nephew, [00:22:00] when he's crying or fussy or what have you, sometimes, oftentimes he needs to be picked up and held and cuddled.
This is co regulation. His nervous system is being regulated by me or his parents. Picking him up and holding him. They are co regulating with him. So, minding the beings outside of you and your environment, and the reason I say beings is like, yes, we co regulate with other people. Other people help us, um, regulate our nervous systems.
And, or they can contribute to us dysregulating our nervous system. So the people around us really matter. So minding the beings outside of you, yes, that does mean who are you spending time with and how do they make you feel? Do the people you spend time with help you come back to your home state or they, do they trigger you into your home [00:23:00] away from home?
So when we think about. Consistently staying in our window of resilience or in that safe space where our nervous system is regulated. If you're constantly spending time with people who dysregulate you, that might actually be the place to start in, um, supporting yourself with regulation. Now, co regulation doesn't just happen with other people.
It can happen with other beings. Like for example, I can co regulate with a tree. If I lean up against a tree, the tree helps me to feel grounded. I can co regulate with water. And I guess I think of water as like a being, because there's like an aliveness to it. It's like being in water can help to bring me back into my body, into my embodied state, my regulated state.
You could co regulate with a pet. I'm thinking about a really close friend of mine who just adores her dog. [00:24:00] And I know that at the end of the day, when she comes home from work, her dog, like cuddling her dog, spending time with her dog, helps her nervous system to settle and calm. So in order to regulate your nervous system and stay regulated for longer, looking outside of you, Actually can be a great place to start.
Some folks say that co regulation needs to happen before self regulation can. And, you know, in the case of my nephew, a baby, it's like he needs his parents to help soothe him rather than figuring out how to soothe himself. So how can you. Adapt your environment or the people you spend time with to make it easier for you to be well, to make it easier for you to regulate your nervous system and stay in your safe and secure and socially engaged home space.
So often I think with [00:25:00] conscious, ambitious humans, like people who want to grow, we can often like look at ourselves and just our internal processes and think that we need to figure everything out on our own. By ourselves, like on our own, and it can actually be really liberating to realize, like, no, we're social beings and our biology is wired that way and we need each other.
And so how can we be thoughtful about who and what we surround ourselves with? In order to be healthier versions of ourselves, um, one more quick example of this before we move on, right before I hit record on this podcast, I got a text from a close friend who works in academia and is definitely privy to the stresses and the tensions of academia, especially in like big city universities, and This friend recently accepted a role at a university in a smaller [00:26:00] community that is really close to nature.
And I got a text from her that she's like, being here feels so good. It just feels simpler. I feel more relaxed. I feel like I can do my job well. I'm, I'm like, uh, feeling really successful here. And this is such a great example of how her environment. Impacts her nervous system, spending time in nature impacts her nervous system.
So start with co regulation and mind the beings outside of you and your environment, and then discover what else is most potent for your feeling well. Consistently. And this part is around self regulation. So how, what are the practices that help you to stay regulated that you do on your own? I personally know that there are two things that are most potent for me.
Adequate sleep and Exercise or movement are the most potent practices for me to feel [00:27:00] consistently regulated and if I'm starting to feel more often than not out of my window of resilience or in my home away from home, my fight flight state, that's a cue for me to check in with my sleep and movement habits first when I let my like exercise routines fall off the wagon.
I feel more anxious and I feel more dysregulated when I'm not sleeping well or when I'm not like building in a consistent bedtime and wake up time. I feel it in my system. I'm short with other people. I get like frustrated more easily. In other words, when sleep and movement are not in alignment for me.
My window of tolerance decreases, it gets smaller. It's like that cup that can handle life and the stresses of life with ease, shrinks. So for you, it might be similar, it might be that there are certain practices that you know help to support that. Support [00:28:00] you with feeling like common grounded. It might be like regular eating practices.
It might be, you know, you might swear by your meditation practice. Of course, all of these things are useful. I just invite you to notice, like, what is that leading habit that makes everything else easier? What is that for you? So what we've been talking about so far are techniques that you can use to stay regulated.
These are sort of like preventative long term techniques. You know, as we're human beings on this planet with all the crazy stuff happening in the world, we're going to be subject to stress. Right. And so we need practices that can help us manage stress in a common grounded way. In other words, that can help us respond from a place of our window of resilience instead of those stressors triggering us into a state of dysregulation.
Now we're human, we're going to get dysregulated. So what can you do when you're, you catch yourself in [00:29:00] a really triggered moment? For example, like when I am dysregulated to a state of being like. Anxious and angry and frustrated and agitated. And, you know, let me remind you that this shows up in the physical body.
When that happens for me, my neck gets all red. My heart rate increases. My face becomes like flushed. I feel it, my armpits sweat, you know, it's that like typical stress response. Your body knows your body doesn't lie. So what can I do the moment I catch myself and I'm like, Whoa, I'm like, not in my home base right now.
There's a few things you can do and you know what, trust your intuition around this too. You naturally know what can help to bring you down. You know, um, like for example, a few deep breaths can be so supportive. A cold shower, just anything that brings you back into your body can help to bring you back into your window of resilience.
Um, again, don't forget about co regulation, calling a [00:30:00] friend who you know helps you to feel more grounded, helps to calm you. That can be the thing that you go to in those triggered moments, even if you don't have access to anyone else to help you co regulate or in the case of, you know, being socially isolated or at home or feeling like alone.
Even closing your eyes and thinking of someone or a being, thinking of a tree, even visualizing something that makes you feel calm can be a way of co regulating Even when you can't be in the presence of that actual person or being can be super helpful. Um, I mean, essential oils can actually be really supportive for this.
There's certain essential oils when you smell them, they help you to feel more calm. And again, when you connect in with your senses, so sight, taste, Touch, smell, your senses will bring you back into your body, um, coming back to [00:31:00] sight. If you turn your head all the way to the right and you slowly, slowly look around at your surroundings or you focus in with your eyes on one little thing in your environment, that mindful connection with your sense of seeing can help to ground you.
And what else? Like, you know, some people have, I don't know their own way and everything counts. I have a friend who said that she was really dysregulated in a moment. And the only thing that she could do to ground herself was do like a wall sit, you know, like you do in, or you did in gym class, where you like lean against the wall and sit down and hold yourself there until your legs start to shake.
That was how she regulated her nervous system from a fight flight state. If you're feeling numb, tapped out, shut down again. Co regulation, letting someone else help you, kind of activated back into that state of your window of resilience can be really [00:32:00] helpful. Um, the cold shower really works there. Um, standing up, moving around, getting more energy back into your body can be supportive for helping you come back into your home state.
So this all radically impacts your wellness and well being. When you can first identify what state you're in, one of the three states. Again, as a review, your home state or your window of resilience, where you feel safe and socially engaged, your fight flight state, or that state of feeling frantic, agitated, frustrated, or your numbed out, collapsed, tapped out state.
Where you just like want to crash on the couch and hide when you can identify what state you're in. You can know what to do when you can identify [00:33:00] what key practices lead the way and making everything else easier for you and helping you to stay in your home state that can be really supportive and when you can choose or try out even experiment with your own.
Bye. Various things that you can do, even starting with one. One thing that you do, you try when you're in a dysregulated state and see how it works for you. All of this can help you to show up in a more responsive way, in a way where you feel more. Good. And the more that you practice returning to your window of resilience and or staying in your window of resilience, the wider that window of resilience gets, and you get to live in a more conscious, intentional, present, calm, Feeling good sort of way rather than feeling super anxious.
Um, one little note here, uh, mental health issues are [00:34:00] real. And sometimes when we are dysregulated, there's an underlying reason why. So some people Need and, and should, I believe, take medication to make it easier for them to come back into their window of resilience. So these techniques that I'm sharing with you today, they might not be enough.
Like you might need other support, you might need medication, you might need therapy or coaching or support. And I think that is super wise to look into how you can make this process easier for yourself. You don't need to fight your way into a regulated nervous system. There are things that you can do to make it easier to stay regulated.
And I encourage you to explore that. So as we conclude today, I invite you to integrate this wisdom. I invite you to choose and again, do one of these three things or all of them, depending [00:35:00] on what is possible for you choose one action that's aligned with minding the beings outside of you and your environment.
So one action that makes self regulation or co regulation easier by shifting something outside of you. Then choose one action to help you stay self regulated and in your window of resilience. Remember my examples were sleep and exercise. What's the one thing for you that helps you to feel better consistently over time?
And finally, choose one action to try The next time you feel triggered or dysregulated and you catch yourself in that state. Okay, let me know if you have questions by emailing info at worthy and well. com. Thank you so very much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to take things a step further, your next step is actually [00:36:00] to be in connection with us.
I'd love to chat with you. And if you'd like to book a call with me or a member of our team, you can do that through checking out the links in the show notes below. In that call. Honestly, we'd love to listen, hear your story, maybe ask a few questions and get to know what's going on for you and what your big vision is.
And maybe there'll be an, a sense of how we as a community might support you. So thank you so much for listening again, and I hope that you choose to take that next step. Can't wait to talk with you soon. Bye for now.
