Nervous System Care is Self Care

In the work that I do, the nervous system is a main player. I tell my clients often that I think through the nervous system to make sense of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is not uncommon for me to ask clients, “What do you think your nervous system is telling you?”

You see, our nervous system holds the blueprint to how we function. It’s been with us every single day of our lives. For all of our experiences, our nervous system has been present-collecting data. Your nervous knows you, like REALLY knows you. It holds memories and experiences that you may not even have conscious memory or verbal ability to articulate. That’s right, our preverbal experiences also live in our nervous system. 

Despite it’s importance, we can forget it’s such a big role in our emotional, cognitive, and behavioral functioning. I strongly encourage my clients to think about what their nervous system is signaling to them during times of excitement, discomfort, avoidance, fear, or worry. This practice also supports building self-acceptance and love towards the self. Taking time to learn your nervous system and what activates it leads to knowing how to respond and regulate it.

Traumatic experiences are overwhelming by definition. They are experiences of such significance and severity, our current operating system is unable to cope with what is occurring. Traumatic experiences can be so excruciating and painful, we will block memories out altogether. The fascinating thing is though, even if we cannot consciously grab hold of a memory, our nervous system often still has reactions that are reflective of our trauma. Isn’t that wild? 

There is so much power in learning what both regulates and dysregulates our nervous system. Often, traumatic experiences can make down-regulating very uncomfortable. We can become accustomed to the level of activity in our nervous system, even if that level of activity is inappropriate. If for example, we were raised in a household with lots of anger, conflict, and loud arguments; in turn, our nervous system can become accustomed to that level of chaos. We can even find ourselves unsettled and out right uncomfortable when we experience regulation because to the nervous system it feels so foreign. Learning what our body needs in the context of stress and dysregulation to settle itself into regulation is called self-soothing. Traumatic experiences, particularly those experienced in childhood are a direct interruption to us learning how to soothe ourselves. Any guesses on what helps us regulating our emotions across our lifespan? That’s correct, our ability to self-soothe.

In a world that is bombarding you with messaging about self-care, I ask you today the following reflective prompts listed below. I invite you to sit with and consider how your daily life routines and activities either support a healthy nervous system OR replicate a pattern of activity that may be familiar to previous trauma experiences. 

What events in life may have impacted your nervous system?

What do you do to tend to your nervous system?

How does a resting state feel for you?

Do you find it difficult to find comfort in stillness?

What things have you learned about what helps you feel settled in your body?

Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen.

Dr. C

Defending protects & blinds us from our wounds

How often do you take feedback from others? 

What are you willing to admit you need to work on in your relationships?

How aware are you of people’s experience of you in relationships?

Are there things that are patterns across relationships that others have told you?

Are there specific relationships that seem to be the only spaces where you have difficulty?

These are just a few examples of reflective self-work prompts. As we develop and grow, we don’t always take the time to reflect on our relationship data. We often take the time to think about our own experiences, but what about how others receive and experience us? 

From both a trauma-informed and attachment-based lens, this is important data. How others experience us is intimate and important information. Now, to be clear-this is not a recommendation to live your life according to others or to be a people pleaser or to be hyper focused on being what other people want. Not at all. This is a recommendation to consider how the people in our lives that we love dearly experience us. This is a conversation to apply to safe and trusted relationships in our lives.

How others experience us is often different from how we see ourselves. As humans, we are used to who we think we are and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Read that sentence again. Sometimes, as a result of trauma or strained attachment relationships, our perspective can get skewed and we can even find ourselves in denial about how we come across to others. Experiences related to trauma, grief, and attachment involve very intense emotions. Our nervous system will seek ways of being in relationship that feel or give the illusion of feeling protection, even if those behaviors cause strain in our relationships. Take example anger. Boy oh boy, will we defend our righteousness to be angry. We will give a whole speech about why we are right and why that anger was warranted- often without ever stepping into a space of reflection to understand truly what is bothering us. And then we will double down when a loved one brings it to our attention-completely losing out on a moment to acknowledge what is happening inside the relationship and someone else’s experience of us. Another one is control. Anyone willing to admit this is a space they cling onto with the jaws of life? Control is a natural response to trauma. It also gives us the illusion of safety. While it may provide that illusion, it makes our relationships tough. 

When we are so focused on defending ourselves, we often are not available to receive feedback. **Again-this is within the context of safe, meaningful, and loving relationships.** When we are not available to receive feedback, we are contributing to the strain in our relationships. We are communicating back to the relationship that we aren’t safe and need to self-protect through defending. By deciding defending ourselves is the most important thing, we also rob ourselves of safe but difficult conversations. Working through receiving feedback in safe spaces not only helps us better understand where our wounds are, it also validates that the relationship truly is a safe place. Not only that, it allows for personal growth. That’s the thing about safety, it lowers the need for self-protection-if we will let it. 

I encourage you to return to the questions above and spend some time. 

Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen. 

Dr. C

Anger: Protection at the risk of collateral damage

Set the stage with me. We’ve all been there. When what we had in mind for a conversation, well; the exact opposite happened. Although there was every intention to keep our cool, stay level-headed, and communicate the way we practiced in our head…..the interaction brought out something entirely different.

As frustrating and disappointing as this is when it happens, it’s human. Interactions that involve tension, aggression, and intensity can make it difficult to stay regulated. Not to mention if the relationship has preexisting trauma within it. If that’s the case, anger can be sitting right beneath the surface, on-call, and ready to jump in at a moment’s notice. Our nervous system works so hard to take care of us. Even if it is at the risk of damaging our relationships. How exactly does our nervous system protect us in these difficult interactions? Anger. And don’t get me wrong- you may be thinking to yourself “Well, don’t I deserve to get angry?” or “Dr. C if you knew what they did you’d be mad too!” Of course you deserve to feel anger. Today’s conversation isn’t about that empowering anger that fuels us to stand up for ourselves-no, no, no-today we are talking about the anger that gets the best of us and results in hurting the people we love.

It all happens so fast. The calm and collected version of ourselves is so quickly replaced by yelling, rudeness, and overall defensiveness. This is the part where I repeat, we’ve all been there-to remind both myself and you that this happens. I know I need the reminder because it can feel icky to acknowledge that part of myself.

So what flips the switch? How can something go so differently than how we intended it to go? Typically the answer is anger. Anger is interesting…..fascinating really. It’s an expressive emotion-it takes up space and is accompanied by notable behaviors. Take a moment here to think about how you display your anger. Does it show up in your tone? Body language? Criticism? The thing is though, when it comes to anger-what we see on the outside is often covering up what is happening on the inside. Anger you see, is referred to as a secondary emotion. Secondary emotions show up as a result of feeling something else first (the ones that come first are called primary emotions). Now remember, I said this all happens so fast. When we get angry-we just feel angry-we don’t always realize that it’s coming out because we are first internally feeling something more vulnerable.

What are some of the more vulnerable emotions that anger comes to protect? I’m glad you asked: sadness, worry, fear, disappointment, loss, and discouragement to name a few. All of these emotions, by the way, can and do occur in our meaningful relationships with the people we love.  Today also isn’t about solving it. We will tackle that in a later blog. Mostly because we cannot tackle something we don’t know or recognize. So, today is about getting to know the anger that shows up with your loved ones.

If it feels safe enough to do so, return back to that stage you set at the start of this. Here are some starter reflections to support you getting to know your anger. With increased awareness and understanding-we can then start to problem-solve how to allow that anger to be felt while minimizing collateral damage to those we love.

In what relationships does my anger come out?

Can I identify the underlying (primary) emotions involved (remember-things like fear, sadness, disappointment, loss)?

How do I show my anger toward others?

What is my own comfort with feeling vulnerable?

 Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen.

 Dr. Cunningham