The BEST Way To Heal A Dysregulated Nervous System - Dr. Linnea Passaler

Where is this anger coming from? What is it trying to tell me? And what is my body feeling? And I really like to help people see physical ways in which that anger is showing up, physical ways in which they can understand what's going on in their body and really staying with those feelings.

For a lot of men, that form of dysregulation is, like, the acceptable one, right? It's like, it's unacceptable for a lot of guys to cry, to get dysregulated in a needy way. And so what happens is, for a lot of men, a lot of our emotions get channeled through the gates of.

Anger, having a space where you are allowed to talk about that and to say why there is this anger, where is it coming from? And just express it and let it out and then just sitting with it, allowing this message to be heard. And that's where I think the healing begins. And you can begin to release it and go past it.

Foreign.

Welcome to the Man Talks Show. How are you doing today?

Thank you. I'm doing very well. Thank you so much for having me.

I am very honored to have you here, and I'm very much looking forward to this conversation. This is something. This is a topic that a tremendous amount of people are talking about, are interested in, want to know about. There's also a ton of, in my opinion, crappy information that's out there. And so when I saw your book, I was very excited to have this conversation. So let's just start with the big question, and we'll kind of get in, you know, to the weeds on this front. But what is a dysregulated nervous system? And why should we know about the differences between dysregulated and regulated?

So I think it's really important because one of the problems that everybody struggles with is we see symptoms from the lens of fixing it, like, how can I get rid of this symptom as soon as possible? So we get into this analytical mode where, you know, we understand the problem, we are analyzing it, we are looking for solutions. We're scouring the Internet, we're looking, you know, we're speaking with our doctors. And so, you know, if it's anxiety, it's burnout, it's fatigue, or one of the many ways that dysregulation shows up, like chronic symptoms, you know, ibs, skin problems. So many people suffer from rashes and from skin problems, and they don't understand that most of the times the underlying cause is not necessarily in the skin. That's a manifestation of an underlying problem. And so the medical system, of course, is designed to help us heal these symptoms and treat these symptoms, but most of the times isn't really designed to help us understand the underlying causes and what's going on beneath the surface. And so we sort of need to become our own chief medical officers, where we start understanding the causes and understanding who are the medical professionals that we want to bring in, who are experts that we want to involve, and how are we going about healing these problems. So the thing I see the most is that people get frustrated because they start to work on a symptom, and then something they do works well, but then they either discontinue it or something happens. And so they sort of let go of this fix they have found. And so what happens is the symptom comes back or the another symptoms pops up. So it's really important that we understand that in order to really address things so that we are not constantly chasing symptoms and constantly trying to fix them, we need to have very comprehensive approach to our health. And so, of course, you know, if we have an acute situation, most of the times we just go to the doctor and we fix it. But when it comes to.

Symptoms that are much more complicated, again like anxiety, autoimmune conditions, burnout, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and even things that are very common, and I see this very much with young men, or men in general, things like depersonalization, derealization, dissociation, all these dissociative symptoms that can get really scary, can be really scary and hard to understand, or even things like extreme sensitivities and this just sensory overload. All these things are in one way or the other related to how our nervous system is working and whether we have all of what I call the pillars of nervous system health in place. And so essentially, it's the mind, the body connection, and spirituality. This is based on.

Actually something that emerged from the medical world. So doctors realized, I would say, about 100 years ago now, that there's something more than the method that we usually apply. But it's more complicated to apply this system, especially for doctors and for the medical system. So usually when we go to the doctor, they don't have the time to talk about how our body feels, how our mind feels, how our connection and social aspects go, and how spiritual we feel. But we did understand. And the biopsychosocial model, which was introduced many years ago, it's been around forever, but we have not been able to really implement it. And I think the single most important factor that is going to Change. This isn't really how quickly the medical system is going to adapt to this new model, but it's how much we are able to take this upon ourselves. This is our health. So once we understand and we know that this is the way to achieve that comprehensive health and eventually get rid of those symptoms and manage those symptoms in a long term way.

That'S when the change happens. So the medical system needs to work in a different way. It can really.

Support this way of healing yet. But once we take this upon ourselves and we, you know, we empower ourselves with the right knowledge and the right actions, this is going to change the lives of people. It's not just going to, you know, make those symptoms go away, which is what everybody wants, but it's just going to give people a clear path to more fulfilling life, to, you know, we have the research, we know very well that one of the single most important predictor of happiness, I don't like to use the word happiness, but I would say fulfillment and a sense of thriving is connected to.

How do we feel connected to something that is larger than ourselves.

Once you start having this comprehensive vision of these four pillars, you are really able to get there. So you're not only taking, you know, getting rid of the symptoms, but you're really starting to thrive.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting because I, I talk a good amount about the nervous system as well. And it's, it's something my mentor who's been doing Gestalt therapy and developmental psychology for 40 plus years.

Talks extensively about how our nervous systems wire and our brains wire up very, very, you know, in utero in the first couple of years of our life. It's incredibly important developmentally for our brains and our nervous system. But I've, I think one of the things that I've been talking about and trying to make sense of lately is. Well, one of the things I've been saying to people just in general is that individuals with a regulated nervous system are going to be, it's going to appear like they have a superpower more and more and more as human beings continue to merge more and more with technology. And I think we've seen this with social media where social media in a way hijacked a lot of our nervous systems unintentionally and just almost immediately because suddenly we had this external vehicle where we could present our beliefs, our feelings, our emotions, what was happening in our internal landscape and we could just spew all that out onto social media. And so in a way we kind of wrapped our nervous systems with social media. And you can see this in a lot of people's behavioral patterns when they're interacting with social media. Right. They're flying off the handle. They're emotional, they're reactive. It's, you know, it's all of that stuff that's. That's getting activated. And, and I think that their nervous system has a lot to do with that. So it's interesting from a health perspective, as you're talking about and as we're going to go very deep into, I think. But I think it's also interesting from a social perspective and how we interact with one another. Let's. Let's take an even broader look, because I'm interested to hear what you have to say about this. How do you des to people, just in sort of a layman's way, what the nervous system actually does? What's its core function? Why is it there? Why is it important?

Well, I mean, there's. There's many ways to. There's many lenses through which we can. We can approach this. But I think one of the most helpful ways to understand it is that the nervous system really shapes our experience of reality. So we, you know, it's like a lens that takes in all this sensory information, and based on that sensory information, creates an experience in our brain and in our body. And so it is really the way through which we experience our internal world and our external world, and it also is what guides all the other organs and systems in the body. So it's not just the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us, but it's also how that information then decides how our body should respond and how our coping strategies, emotional reactions, et cetera, should be. And so that's why when you're trying to have this comprehensive vision of health that we're talking about, this is really the core of it all. So that's why nervous system regulation and nervous system health is health, because you can't really. There's no other ways in which you can influence.

The processes that happen in the body, like the nervous system. The nervous system is what really brings everything to life. So it influences.

How we perceive our mind, how our body feels, which is what really determines our everyday life. It determines how we connect to other people and that. It's also that thing that allows us to go beyond ourselves and to really think about what's, you know, what's what. What exists beyond us, what is, you know, what is that big thing that I feel connected to.

Yeah, I've always thought about it as like the bio interface with reality. You know, it's like we have our brain which is, is like the processing center for how we interface with reality. But then our nervous system is like the, the bio, the, the data collector of all of our senses, including the, the energetic senses that we normally don't think about.

Right.

I think I was having a conversation with a group of friends the other day and I was like, you know, when you think about the, the, the statement that 80% or whatever it is, 80% or 90% of communication is non verbal, we sort of take that statement for granted because what it's really saying is that your senses and your body are picking up on a tremendous amount of information that you're not even cognitively aware of. And it's that information that is running through the body, that energy is running through the body. And the more attuned that we are with what's happening in our body and our nervous system, the more that we can pick up on the, on that energy, on that communication, on the information. What are some of the quote unquote symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system? Like if somebody's nervous system is out of whack, what's that going to look like? What's that going to feel like? What's going to be happening inside of them?

So I would say that the best way to understand this rather than just focusing on single symptoms, you know, because symptoms can vary a lot, but it's really understanding what's happening. So a regulated nervous system is able to move through different states of arousal and come back. So we may feel.

Nervous or have a big reaction, a big emotional response to something, but then we're able to go back to a state of baseline, to a state of regulation once that stressor goes away or once the situation has changed. And so the crucial thing for a regulated nervous system is that it's able to really return down to states of rest and essentially go back to a state of deep rest, which is a fundamental state for the body and the brain because it's where all of the repairing and rejuvenating processes of the nervous system and of the body happens. So once our nervous system becomes wired up and becomes dysregulated, we are not able to return to that state of baseline and access that deep rest as easily. And sometimes we cannot access it at all. So that's where things really become a problem. So for example, let's say you have an interaction with someone, you get angry.

And then you both go about Your life. When you continue ruminating on this, and even maybe later on during the day, you still feel in your body that sense of tension, that sense of you feel disrupted. It means that your nervous system is having a hard time returning to a state of baseline. And sometimes you keep ruminating on that, even at night, even during the evening, and it disrupts your sleep. So when this becomes the reality of your life, like your everyday life, you're constantly triggered, you're constantly having a hard time returning to a state of regulation. Maybe you work so hard and then even during the weekend, you can't really log off and relax completely, right? Maybe you're constantly checking your phone or you're not in a state of full regulation. So when this only happens for a few days, even a few weeks, sometimes even a few months, it's not a problem, because your nervous system is equipped to navigate through these periods of intense stress and then recover. But once this becomes the norm, and it goes on for years, for months or years, your body and nervous system get to a state where they begin to accumulate the damage. So you're not maybe able to see it in the beginning, but this constant state of being wired up, not being able to access a state of restorative sleep or just rest, just calm, this really takes a toll on your body and your nervous system. And that's why over time, you can start seeing all those chronic symptoms. The anxiety, the autoimmune conditions, the chronic pain, chronic fatigue, the tension, the inflammation, ibs, all of those symptoms start to pop up. So I think the way that it's really important to.

Start thinking about dysregulation is how does my nervous system respond, how does my stress response work, and how flexible is it? Because if we wait for those symptoms to pop up.

It'S not too late, because we can still reverse them. But we want to be able to identify the problems much earlier than they start showing up as symptoms. And so what we say to people is we give them ways to sort of self assess their dysregulation. We don't have a lot of validated assessments yet for this. And I think it's absolutely crucial that people spend time understanding and learning about their stress response and what are the components and how their stress response is, because it's different for each of us, and then understand how dysregulated they are. And so that's why we created this assessment to help people sort of get a feeling of where they are. Because if we start waiting for those symptoms to accumulate and show up the damage is already there. And then we need to work a lot more and a lot longer to get rid of those symptoms and to just bring our body and brain in a state of health and regulation and thriving. And so that's why I'm a big proponent of learning about your stress response, learning about what's going on, and starting to see the signs of dysregulation early on.

I really love the way you describe that, the flexibility of being able to.

Go through something conflict oriented or go through a stressful situation and then return to a kind of homeostasis or a baseline. And I think it's interesting because as you were talking about that, what came up for me was like hrv, you know, like your heart rate variability. And your heart rate variability is linked to your heart's ability to increase rapidly, right? So to rise, your heart rate to rise and then after going through some type of extraneous output, to then return back to your resting heart rate. And that plays a huge role in your hrv, which is a very important indicator for your heart health and just your general overall health. So I love this notion of being able to go through that peak, go through that stress, and then to be able to return back down to a baseline. And I know for a lot of guys, myself included in my past, it was very challenging for me to do that. Where I almost needed external substances to help me return back to baseline. You know, I needed to go watch porn, I needed to go smoke some weed, I needed to go have a drink. You know, I needed to do something to help me return back to a sort of like a normal state. And I've noticed that for a lot of, a lot of men, we outsource that quote unquote, downregulation, as I'm sure we'll talk about. I would outsource to external things to help me down, regulate to help me feel a little bit better. You referred to stress response. Are you just referring to external things causing us stress? Are you talking about our internal response to stress? I just wanted to clarify that.

Yeah, well, so there's one thing I wanted to say, I think you really touched on an important point, which is that, that what I see particularly, like this is a widespread problem, but I think particularly men, and I see that, you know, with my partner and with my, with my young kids, a lot of it is about suppressing those emotions. It's just checking out in a way so that we don't need to work with them, we don't need to process them. And that's how we create the conditions for anger to show up later in life as a way. Like, anger is a very cognitive emotion, and.

It'S a very smart emotion. It's a way for us to store everything that we don't want to face because it makes us feel vulnerable, it makes us feel weak. And so we store that away and we cover it with anger. It's a very interesting emotion to study and to understand. And it's always the first one, very often the first one to show up for people who apparently have everything together. But anger shows that there's something down there underneath all these facade that needs to be addressed. And so I see a lot, particularly of men who. This anger shows up as sometimes a very functional coping strategy because it allows us to use that anger in a positive way. Something that is also that you hear and then you hear about.

These management strategies for anger. But the reality is that anger is just a messenger. I like to consider anger a messenger. It's a messenger for something that is underneath, something that maybe you have avoided addressing because maybe you checked out through substances, through hard working, through going through one relationship after the other. So there's many ways that we are checking out.

But once we really want to go deeper.

We sort of need to understand, okay, where is this anger coming from? What is it trying to tell me, and.

What is my body feeling? And I really like to help people see physical ways in which that anger is showing up, physical ways in which they can understand what's going on in their body and really staying with those feelings. So anyway, this is something that.

I think you touched something really important.

With that idea.

So I was pulling up this. It's a poem by David White. I'm not going to give you the whole thing because that would be excessive. But I was pulling up this poem by David White. He's this Irish English poet, and he's done some great writing, but he wrote this book called Constellations. And in the book, he basically does a poem on different words. And so he'll take the word anger and then he'll write about it in this very poetic way to define the meaning of anger. So I pulled that up. It says, I was going to read you the first line. Because I think what you're saying is so relevant, that anger can be a very meaningful emotion that we've often discarded, men and women alike. I think we've sort of disregarded it from our culture. But he said, anger is the deepest form of compassion for another, for the world, for the self, for A life for the body, for a family, and all our ideals, all vulnerable and all possibly about to be hurt. And I love that notion that.

Anger is the deepest form of compassion, right? That it's actually trying to protect, it's trying to evoke some form of action. And he goes on later, I'll just give you one more line that I found to be very interesting. He said, what we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our inner powerlessness. I always loved that line. I always thought that that was so good that when anger is showing up in a really, especially in like a really volatile way, that often what we're experiencing internally is some type of emotional powerlessness that maybe we don't know how to communicate and we don't know how to express, but it's, it's there, you know, it can be very strong. So on the note of anger, how do you help people identify.

When they're feeling anger, where they're feeling it, how to move, move through it, or how to process that emotion? Because for a lot of men that that form of dysregulation is like the acceptable one, right? It's like it's unacceptable for a lot of guys to cry, to, you know, get dysregulated in like a needy way. And so what happens is for a lot of men, a lot of our em. Emotions get channeled through the gates of anger. And so I would love to just talk about that for a little bit. So how do you help people identify that and then how do you help people who maybe get very dysregulated when it comes to the emotion of anger?

So I think again, the first thing is seeing it as a messenger because it really changes your perception of it. And so if you start seeing it through the lengths of self protection like you just described, it's a meaning we attach to this protective reaction that is happening beyond our control. And it's essentially a response that our nervous system gives to something that feels unfair, feels threatening, feels beyond our control. And as I was saying.

It'S interesting because it's one of the first emotions to surface in the early stages of a healing journey. A lot of times it's. At least, I see this a lot with women in particular, it's a response to some family dynamics because sometimes, you know, we don't feel, you know, we don't feel like we are allowed to be angry with our family. And so we. And so it really feels uncomfortable to experience that anger. And so it can lead to a lot of confusion, feelings of shame, feelings of guilt. And so the typical response is we try to go to cognitive strategies and to behavioral control, but often it doesn't work. And the reason is because this is attached to this is something that we learned as a coping strategist when we were young. And it is a way of protecting ourselves from these overwhelming feelings of pain, of sadness that we didn't really know how to handle when we were kids. And maybe we picked up the idea that we just needed to get to be tough and be strong and move on. And so at that time, it didn't feel safe to show these intense emotions. And so we bottle them up, we store them in our subconscious brain, and then they start popping up, and they are typically connected to specific bodily sensations.

That have been shut down, and they just resurface as anger, which is a more acceptable emotion, a more socially acceptable emotion that makes us feel less vulnerable. And so the interesting thing is that it can be triggered by things that apparently make no sense. So we feel angry for things that we don't really understand. And when we are healing, when we want to address those things, it's really important to create space to process that anger and really make space for those underlying emotions to come up. And so this exploration leads to understanding that there's something we need to accept, something we need to let go, something we need to process physically and emotionally. And that's actually what's causing us to remain stuck in that cycle of shame and anger. And so what I tell people is typically.

First of all, to welcome that anger because it's a sign, it's a signal that our nervous system is giving us. And it's tricky, but it's an easier symptom and it's an easier response than.

To deal with and to heal than chronic physical symptoms. Right.

Ideally, if we could take that dysregulation and manage that stress response in that state when it's showing up as anger, we could prevent so many more problems later on. And so switching to a kind, compassionate voice and speaking to that, you know, little wooden, wounded person that learned to use anger as a strategy. And I understand that that's really hard if you don't have a model for that or if you don't have an environment that allows you to do that. But you can really be that advocate, be that warm voice for yourself. And that's something that has to do, you know, with attachment, with a lot of. With a lot of things that we have learned in our lives, how to deal with stress etc, and so I'm not saying it's as easy as, you know, switching to a compassionate voice. It's a long process, but that's the way, like, the way is learning to speak to that anger, to that person inside, that showing anger. That is anger. That is angry. Showing. Switching to this compassionate voice, so allowing whatever it is, that sadness, that pain, to come out without feeling ashamed of it. You know, being able to be with that person inside yourself that needs to, you know, accept those feelings of, you know, vulnerability, powerlessness, pain, and feel the body sensations that are associated with these emotions. Feel those body sensations which we typically try to shut down with checking out and all the other things. Right?

Yeah. Right. I mean, like, I think. I think that's one of the big things for a lot of guys is like, you know, it's. I can kind of hear some of my audiences, like, well, that shit's intense. You know, it's like. I think for a lot of guys that are out there, it's like, you know, it's. It's like, well, I wanna. I feel like I want to punch a hole in the wall or, like, I want to kick something or, you know, it's like, it's a very. Sometimes it's a very intense, this experience internally. And, you know, I remember Jack Kornfield once talking about. I think he was working in a workshop talking to an individual who had rage problems. And he. His. His advice to him was, you need to sit and build tolerance. You actually need to sit when you're feeling that intensity and learn that you're safe with that intensity. And that always stuck with me because it's. It's something that I used to do, and I would feel very angry. I called it the fire meditation. I would just sit and I would meditate when I was feeling overrun and overwhelmed and frustrated. And it was like, the last thing I wanted to do. And maybe that doesn't work for every single human being, but for me, it was what I knew I needed to do, and so I just wanted to drop that in there because it's like. It's hard, right? It's like that intensity that shows up can be hard to deal with sometimes.

I think for many people who have problems with rage, like, very intense anger, it's also about processing that with someone else, like within the context of a therapeutic relationship or a community, because it's really hard to do that alone. For other people, it's also about allowing that anger. They feel that anger, but they bottle it up. And I know for me, one of the crucial things was being able to process this, you know, with my mentor, with my, with my teacher being like having someone who gave me the space for that anger to, you know, that I didn't feel like I was entitled to it. So having a space where you are allowed and to talk about that and to say why there is this anger, where is it coming from and just express it and let it out and then just sitting with it, sitting with those sensations, sitting with those feelings and just allowing this message to be heard. And that's where I think the healing begins and you can begin to release it and go past it. And so I think it's about going past it, getting to the core of the message that it's trying to convey.

So good. How much of how we as individuals, how we relate to our nervous system is a byproduct of how we saw our parents dealing with their own. Like how much of our nervous system is wired to our parents. I think it's like the question that a lot of people have, have.

So it's a very tricky response because there's two sides of this. One is of course your childhood and how you grew up has a huge impact on how you particularly how you regulate stress.

There's a wonderful model, the calibration model by Marco Delgici. I think it was published in 2014 and I, I love that model because it's this idea of your stress response constantly calibrating to the external circumstances and learning how to respond to stressors depending on the circumstances. And so we have of course there is a genetic component to this. So some of the things that are related to how we respond and cope, you know, emotional strategy, physical strategy, bodily strategies, all our coping mechanisms are in part related to our wiring. Right. So I talk a lot about sensitivity. We all have a different level of sensitivity and that is of course something that depends a lot on our genes. But then other components.

Are completely related to what you're exposed to. And so of course the way you, you are raised in your childhood and not just what your parents taught you in terms of, you know, emotional regulation and self regulation, but also the circumstances, you can have greatly skilled parents who taught you everything about emotional regulation. But if you're living in poverty, if you're living in war, if you're living in extreme conditions, that stress is going to affect your nervous system no matter how great your parents strategies are. So there are situations that are beyond our control. But I think the really important thing and the really important message that this calibration model gives us is that this way of responding to stressors gets recalibrated throughout life. Life. It's not fixed. We can train it, we can change it. External circumstances and life, things that happen in life. You know, getting married, getting divorced, having children, going through life events, present. All these situations present major opportunities for our nervous system to recalibrate.

The way we respond to stress, but also our.

Our willingness to go through a healing journey and to learn these skills. Our nervous system.

Is tremendously flexible and can really change and can be reshaped in many ways. Our stress response can be reshaped. And so, yes, there's a lot of this that is determined in childhood, but that does not mean that you're stuck with it for the rest of your life. You have plenty of opportunities and plenty of ways to change that. Now, of course, if you are struggling with a situation where you have accumulated a lot of traumatic stressors in your life and a lot of adverse events, it can feel overwhelming. It can feel like you are disempowered. But what I really want people to take away is that, yes, those adverse circumstances are tough, and they have definitely taken a toll on your life. But on the other hand, you have the power to change the situation one little step at a time. It is absolutely possible to get out of that sense of disempowerment, that sense of overwhelm, that sense of not being able to do anything to help yourself.

I couldn't agree more. And it's interesting because as you were talking about that, I had memories of my son testing my stress response. And then he does this wonderful thing. He's a little. He's just this beautiful little hellcat. Like, he's got such a big energy and he's very playful, but he's. He's a boundary tester for sure. He's like in that mode where everything is a boundary test. And, you know, he's going through the no phase, but he's also going through the phase that when he hears no, he has to do it. And. And he's gotten into this habit that I've noticed where he'll test a boundary and then he'll. He'll look straight at me to see what I'm gonna do, you know, and it's like, are you go. Are you gonna be okay? Are you gonna react? Are you gonna respond right? Are you gonna lose your temper? Are you gonna become stressed out Out? And it's funny because as you were talking, I had this moment the other day where it would just been a long day and my wife was exhausted, and I'm trying to wrangle him and, like, put his pajamas on and get him ready for bed, because she usually reads him stories and then put him to bed. And he is just being a tornado. Like, he is not listening to anything. And I, you know, it's like 8 o', clock. I'm exhausted, and I'm definitely, like. I'm starting to, like, lose my patience. And he can tell, and he thinks it's funny, you know, I was like, oh, man. And it was so funny because I definitely. I was definitely worked up. And I got my wife and I was like, look, I am. I'm not gonna be good at handling this anymore. You need to take over right now, because, like, Daddy's about to be pissed, you know? And so she came in and she started reading him the stories. And I said, okay, night, night, night. And he looked at me and he did something that he never did. It's almost like he could tell that. That I was on that edge. And he looked at me and he said, dada kiss. And so he wanted me to come and give him a kiss. And I was like, oh, you're such a little. You, like, you're so dialed in. You're so tuned, and you're such a little monster. Like, brilliant, you know, But I just. It's. It's so interesting how kids.

Like, they're so tuned in. He's so tuned in to my system and to my wife's system and where our nervous system at and where our stress levels are at and, you know, trying to figure out for himself, can I be okay when you're stressed? You know, can I do something wrong and still be okay? And my mentor has this great saying, which is, you know, that attachment is built in the moments where we go through a hard time and come out the other side, okay? And the more that we can do that, go through hardship, go through conflict, go through a hard time and come out the other side with somebody in relationship, with connection, right? With intimacy. That that's what builds secure attachment. And I can just see it in him in all of these beautiful moments where he's pushing my buttons intentionally. Like, he knows he's pushing my buttons, and he's trying to see, can you and I, dad, go through a hard time and come out the other side okay? And I'm like, yes, buddy. Like, of course. So it's just interesting because as you were talking about that, that was all. All playing out inside of me. And I was like, man, it's so Interesting.

And I think. I think one of the things, I don't know. I think I particularly relate to this because as a mother of four, you know, I had four kids in. In less than five years. And so you can. You can imagine the amount of dysregulation and of.

Craziness, lack of sleep.

How did you sleep?

Oh, we didn't. I had a lot of issues with sleep for a long time. Yeah. And interestingly, you know, I had. I was already well into my healing journey, and still I became completely dysregulated for some time. But that just. I guess it shows the power of this work, because even through, you know, all the dysregulation.

Being able to, like, understanding that and knowing that I had the power to bounce back from this and that it was okay to go through that. It's a part of human life. Billions of humans have gone through it before us, and we don't need to be extremely concerned. And I think not just for ourselves, but I was talking about the adaptive calibration model before. One of the interesting things about this model is that one of the. One of the findings was that actually a little bit of stress and a little bit of adversity in early childhood is not necessarily a negative thing. So what they found was that when you are actually able to. When the child goes through a little bit of adversity and a little bit of stress, it's one of the most resilient models that they studied afterwards over the years. And so I think it's really important for people who either struggle with relationships, but especially for parents, it's really important to also normalize the idea that we don't always have to get it perfect. We don't always have to be brilliant at regulating ourselves. It's okay to become dysregulated at times. It's okay to go through periods of intense stress. It's really important, whenever possible, to repair those ruptures. You know, whenever we are in a situation where we just lost it and we didn't go through the best parenting model, you know, we didn't show the best parenting model to our kid, and that's okay. And so I guess to answer your question.

I'm just very compassionate to myself and to my kids, and I know that that good enough is. Is the. The best way to. Is the best goal. I don't need to aim for perfection.

I love that. Yeah. Because I always see these, like, you know, the Instagram reels of, like, gentle parenting and. And all these parents like, talking so Softly to their, to their kids. And I'm like, yeah, that's like, that's not me sometimes, you know, I'm like, you here now, let's go.

Because he's like, he gets it. You know, he gets it. Anyway, let's, let's continue on, let's shift gears a little bit. I want to start to talk about, in the book you write about the five stage plan to reverse nervous system regulation. I would love to dive into that a little bit. I want to just first talk about sensitivity. Is it important to develop a sensitivity within your connection to your nervous system or is it more about understanding your pre existing nervous system sensitivity?

For me, it's very much about understanding, you know.

The biology of dysregulation. So.

First of all, when it comes to sensitivity, it's really important to frame it as not as, you know, like this idea of, of.

Vulnerability or being weak, which is something that we were sort of conditioned to think about. But it's just a biological norm. Like we all sentient beings across species have a different way of responding to external stimuli. So there's. Some of the individuals within a species are more sensitive and some are less sensitive. That's just the norm. And we all fall somewhere on that spectrum. And so we know the research has now, now shown that it's a spectrum. It's not like something that you have or don't have. We're all sensitive to a certain degree. So there are some people who are more sensitive who respond more to external stimuli and to internal sensations. And there are people who are less sensitive. So it's not about, you know, being. There's no better option. You know, there are advantages and disadvantages with, you know, being highly sensitive and with being less sensitive. So of course, those who fall on the lower end of the spectrum of sensitivity are more resilient in many ways. They come, they are more biologically, you know, it's biologically easier for them to get over certain stimuli. Whereas people who are highly sensitive.

Process things much more deeper, much more deeply. They respond more intensely to things. And so they have the advantage of having this extremely creative way of dealing with the world of just feeling things more. They feel poetry, they feel art, they feel things that happen in the world. They feel them much more. So that comes with a lot of advantages, but it also comes with some downsides and we know that, that people who fall on the higher end of the spectrum of sensitivity tend to become dysregulated more. So that's not to be mixed up with dysregulation so you can be highly sensitive and you can be regulated and you can be dysregulated.

Not being highly sensitive, but manifest and show up with some symptoms of sensory overload or hypersensitivity to certain things. That doesn't necessarily mean that you are highly sensitive. It can simply mean that your nervous system is over responding because of dysregulation, so it gets overwhelmed and saturated more easily. So I think it's really important to understand this thing because a lot of people tend to think that they somehow overlap and they're completely different things. So that's why I was saying it's really important to understand the biology of dysregulation and understanding.

What'S going on. And also another thing that always.

Comes in the way. We hear a lot of talks about trauma, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think it's really helpful to see this through the lens of how is my brain wired to process stress. So we've talked about how we learn to respond to stress in our early years and how that is the single. The way we respond to stress is absolutely.

The foundation of how well we can go through life. And so if we are experiencing symptoms of dysregulation, that's the first thing we should look at. But it's also important to understand that the way our nervous system has learned to respond to those stressors can be influenced by our fear response. So.

Our brain is particularly.

Quick and particularly smart in learning from experience. And so whenever we go through something that triggers our fear response, we are disproportionately likely to learn from that experience, from that, that negative or fearful experience. And so this again is a very good feature.

When you need to survive in an evolving world, when our ancestors needed to survive, but today, it can lead to some consequence, to some unwanted consequences. Like, for example.

We can become highly dysregulated and highly activated when we experience things that leave a trace, that leave a memory that becomes embedded in our nervous system. So there's a lot of talks about everything being trauma or on the other side, like on the other side of the spectrum that we hear, just get over it. Nothing is trauma. So I think we need to somehow return to.

A balance here where we understand that there are terrible circumstances and.

We don't get to define what are the circumstances that people find overwhelming. But what matters is that when your nervous system becomes overwhelmed by the circumstance, by adversities, it's really important to know that your body is very well equipped to process those things. And to.

Essentially flush them out over time. It may take time and it's completely normal to go through. Depending on how difficult it was for you, and depending on the circumstances, it could take time to flush out those difficult responses. But in the majority of situations.

Your body and brain are equipped to get over it and to eliminate it over time. There is a small component and a small number of situation where this can lead to conditions like ptsd, et cetera, that require help and require treatment. And then there are situations where you get a sort of alarm embedded in your nervous system. And so, for example, you went through a particularly overwhelming experience. And then over time, whenever you know something triggers that memory in your body and brain, you feel overwhelmed all over again. And so that doesn't mean it's ptsd. That doesn't mean you need to feel like you are.

At the mercy of this response. So I think understanding all these different pieces and sort of putting them into context and learning to build a coherent narrative of your life and understanding this is my degree of sensitivity. This is what led to.

This is how sensitivity impacted my life in a positive or in a challenging way. And these are the events that brought me to having this set of coping strategies. Putting together all these pieces of the puzzle is really going to help once you go through that journey. So building really this coherent narrative and understanding what the biology of dysregulation, what role it plays in this narrative.

What's interesting, I mean, there's so many strings that I could pull out with what you just said, because there's a few different threads in there that I think are really important. But I remember interviewing a Navy SEAL about a year and a half ago who had been.

In, I think he had stepped on an IED.

And had his. Basically it went off and it blew off his legs. And he was on the show and we were talking about what it takes to be a Navy seal. And one of the things that I found was interesting was a lot of those men have an inherent.

Heightened threshold for stress, you know, that they. They are able to process and break down stress at a very high level, and they're able to be under very stressful situations. Like you're probably not having somebody that's like a hsp, like a highly sensitive person that's. That's a Navy SEAL out on the battlefield, right? Like going. Going through buds, like that. Probably not going to happen. And we talked about that and I said, you know, what do you. What do you think allows guys to go and be Navy SEALs? And he said, that there's. He said, you know, it's. It's this high tolerance for stress. And sometimes, you know, sometimes there's other pieces in there, like high levels of psychopathy and, and, and whatnot. But, but that was a huge piece of it. Just before we move on, do you feel like we have covered in a robust enough way the biology of dysregulation? Do you feel like we've painted a good picture or is there anything else that you would want to touch on?

I could introduce this alertness elevator, which is a model that I explain in the book.

What are the different stages of the alarm and how can people tune into it?

Yeah. So I think this really helps with understanding your stress response in real time. Right. So we have sort of painted a picture understanding.

What causes this stress response. Why is my stress response this way versus someone else's stress response and understanding it. But I think then when we are in real time, we're dealing with certain body and physical sensations or mental and emotional responses. How do we understand what's going on? And so we created this alertness elevator model, which is based on the research of Elisa Epel and other researchers in the field of the stress response, which, by the way, in the last 10 years, especially with the COVID pandemic, has blown up. So we have so much new research coming out, and that's why we understand it so much better. And so we understand that it's a lot more complicated than previously thought than previous models. And so this alertness elevator, I think, can help people in real time to understand what they're going through. And so the first. First. So if we imagine this, I have an illustration in the book. But if we imagine this as an elevator moving up and down, at the bottom, there's the blue state. Now, this is the state I was referring before when I was talking about accessing deep rest. And that's where we need to spend time, because that's where we feel calm, relaxed, and our heart, heart is beating slow. We have this slow, deep breath. So this is the state where all those.

Reparatory processes of the body happen. And that's why we need to access this state on a regular basis. And so that's why sleep is so important. But also meditation and other states where we are deeply resting allow us to access this state. And so. So.

From an emotional point, of course, if you're not sleeping, you may feel very peaceful, serene, completely at peace with the world. And so also your vision of the world is as a peaceful place in this state Right. You feel completely at rest. If we move a little bit up the elevator, we get to the green state. This is where our parasympathetic and sympathetic.

Nervous systems, you know, these different branches of the autonomic nervous system are sort of at balance. So they, they are both activated, but the sympathetic response is not too predominant. Right. So this is where we feel in our flow, in our flow state. So we are present, we are very focused, we're doing our best work. We have a steady pulse, we have our breathing reaches our belly, so we're in a state of flow. Our muscles are relaxed and we feel positive, we feel calm, we feel like we have things under control. We feel like we can do our best work and we are creative. This is where we do our best creative work and we connect with other people. And so the world feels like really a place where we can, like a place of opportunity where we can connect with other people. We can do great things. Now if we move a little bit further up, up, and we go to this yellow state, which we call the yellow state. I call this, you know, the treadmill of cognitive activation. Because this is where we tend to spend so much time, especially in our busy lives. You know, in, in the modern world, where we are constantly, you know, there's, there's something going on constantly, and our brain can never return to a state of calm. So spend spending a lot of time in this yellow state. This is where we are ruminating, catastrophizing, worrying. We have all this stream of thoughts, stream of worries going on in our brain. And so this is where our nervous system really feels unsafe because it's like there's a constant little stress, little threat going on in the background. And so, so when we spend a lot of time in this state, it becomes much harder to go back to the lower states. And then of course, there's the extreme, the red state, this extreme response, which is a full blown.

Fight or flight response. And it's the traditional one that we hear a lot about, but we don't necessarily need to spend all of our time in this red state in this big, big emotional responses or big physical responses to eventually accumulate the damage that leads to dysregulation. Because if we spend most of our days and sometimes our nights in this yellow state, constantly ruminating, constantly thinking, constantly busy, our nervous system essentially learns to spend most of the time there and it becomes wired for that state. It becomes a lot harder to move down to the, to the states, you know, to the green and blue states and, and that's why the retraining process really.

Involves spending and moving down from these states, like becoming cognitively aware, becoming aware and taking the steps so that our body and mind can return to those two states. And this creates a process where our nervous system and our stress response learn to let go. And so that inflexibility, that rigidness that we discussed in the beginning that is associated with dysregulation, can return to a state of flexibility and regulation, because we learn and we teach and we have to sort of force our nervous system to go back to those states in the beginning. But then it becomes, it learns again to go back to those states. And so the more you practice it, the more times you teach your nervous system to go from an activated state, from an activated state state, back to that green or blue state, the more this becomes an automated response, and the more your nervous system learns to return to that state, and so the more time you will be able to spend in those states, which is the whole purpose of healing and doing this journey.

I love that. Well, thanks for breaking that down, because when I got your book and I started to go through it, that that alertness elevator was definitely one of the things that stood out to me. I was like, this is so good. This is so simple. People can. It's a good visualization of like, you're starting to get elevated and moving into these more stressed states, the alarms are going off in your body, et cetera, et cetera. And then to be able to move down into this more calm, grounded space. And so I really appreciate that orientation.

Let's close out with spending some time on the five stage plan to reverse nervous system dysregulation. So where does all of this begin?

So, well, I would say it begins in the structure, which is essentially a foundation of the five states. And the structure for me is essentially behavioral and everyday habits that we can start taking on that really supports the work. So things like.

Physical movement, but especially, I would say, especially for people who have a high degree of sensitivity, it's about giving the right sensory stimuli to your body and brain. And so there's a wide range of things that go from nutrition, circadian rhythm, sleep, et cetera, et cetera. And these things really provide the foundation because it's really hard to take on a healing journey if you don't have the basics at least starting to get them right. Sleep, starting to work on sleep, starting to work on nutrition, that doesn't, you know, further dysregulate you. So I would say that is like A sort of premise to the whole thing.

But I was going to say, I was going to say like, if you're, if you're pounding red bulls at 10 o' clock at night.

And when you wake up in the morning, it's probably going to be pretty hard to find a good, calm, balanced, regulated place. And I think the nice thing that is, you know, that, that you've laid out is like stage number one is awareness. And I feel like we've been kind of inadvertently talking about this throughout this conversation. Like recognizing your nervous system patterns I think has really been a big part of what we've been discussing. But is there like, is there anything that you want to lay into that? Is it about relief, understanding the physical sensations?

So it's a lot about what we just discussed. But I think one crucial thing that is absolutely foundational to the awareness stage is what I call the pause. Like really creating a space between your, whatever trigger, whatever situation you're going through and your response. Like giving that time is what creates, creates that space for something new to emerge. So it's not just about.

Becoming aware and paying attention to the fact that you are having this response and why this response is happening, but it's also taking a moment before you go to your.

Habitual coping strategy, which can totally be what you do next. But creating think that space, that gap is what with time allows something else to emerge. And so that's where, you know, we start laying the foundations for this work. So that's why stage one is so important to create this habit of not going immediately to the response, but just slowing everything down. Especially for example, we talk about anger. So that's definitely one of the examples, right? Instead of like going full blown, get angry, but just give yourself some time before you do whatever coping mechanism you are used to do. And that's the first step in stage two, regulation. That's where we bring in the body. So we introduce these short body based interventions so that you can essentially create.

Change how you're feeling by creating a sense of safety, a state of regulation in the body. So, so this is the stage where we see a lot of results and aha moments for people because they realize that by doing these very simple practices, they start feeling more in control of how their body and brain respond to situations. And so this is, you know, like I would say these two stages alone are enough for people usually to get relief within, you know, within the first few weeks. But then comes the restoration part which is where we need to go.

Can you give an example of the body based exercise when you're saying that? Because I think that just to contextualize it for the listener and so that they have something that they can be like, oh, I can go and do that, I can try that.

So this is where somatic practices come into place, right? We hear a lot about somatic practices. Somatic practices are simply physical.

Practices, body practices where we are essentially changing something in our physical response. And that change at the body level creates a change at the central level. So for example, the physiological side, or just a relaxation meditation practice, like things that engage a certain group of muscles or a certain group of sensations that essentially create a change and sort of force the body to relax. This relaxation, this letting go at the body level creates a change in the way we perceive that emotion. Because physical response and emotional response are the two sides of the same coin. So if we change one, we are bound to change the other. And so because it's very difficult to change the mind with the mind, we're changing it with the body. So we're using the body essentially to create that change, that shift at the emotional level. And it works really, really well. And so once you start doing that many times, you're retraining your nervous system to move from those higher states in the alertness elevator that we discuss discuss to the lower states. And when you start doing that again and again and again, that's where neuroplasticity comes in and your body starts to do that automatically and you learn to let go more easily without having to put all the effort into it. So that's why these two stages are so foundational.

And does, does the, does the embodiment exercise or the somatic exercise, like can you give a, a tangible example? Like would it be doing like a box breathing? Would it something like, you know, laying on the ground and bringing.

So if we want, if we just want to keep it to, to the breath, which is a very, it's a, it's a very powerful way to regulate in the moment. One of the most effective that's, you know, that's been proven by research by David Spiegel and Stanford, that even more effective than meditation, this physiological side, I can show it to you. It's essentially, essentially two in breaths. But like, so you're doing two in breaths and then a slow long out breath. So in these two in breaths, essentially what you do is first you reach, let's say halfway through your lungs and then you completely feel your lungs in the second part of the in breath. So it's.

Like, you're really, you know, the out breath is really, really long and slow, and if you do this several times, it completely changes your biology and your regulation in the moment. So it's one of the most effective practices to regulate in the moment if you're experiencing anxiety, et cetera. It's just really, really powerful. I'm also a big proponent of somatic practices that essentially relax the neck and shoulder area because these are areas where we typically tense and carry a lot of tension whenever we are stressed. And then releasing.

The area of the abdomen and the lungs, et cetera, really releasing all of the upper part of the body, like the tension that is held at the upper part of the body. And so I have a few practices in the book that I show. But yeah, really, I think depending on what people prefer and what their specific areas of tension are, they can mix and match and choose different things. But I would say say.

Start with the, start with the physiological side and then test all these other ways to essentially release different muscles groups.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's funny because. So my background was in music. I was a classical singer. And I joke around on the podcast a lot that I have a degree in breathing. And like, that's, that's really all that I did. It was, was learn how to breathe from properly and effectively and, and in prolonged ways. And one of the fascinating things, like, I was a hockey player growing up, and so I carried and I, you know, work construction and worked out a whole bunch. And so when I actually started singing, I carried a tremendous amount of tension in my shoulders, across my chest, in my abdomen, in my upper back. And so I spent years, was inadvertently doing somatic releasing exercises. You know, I, I went through Rolfing and what's it. It's like Feldenkrais or. I don't know. I went through all these different, like, modalities and learned how to like, release tension in all my body. And, and it really was incredibly powerful because in, in hindsight, once I started to study psychology and, and the nervous system and the body was like, like, oh, that's what I was doing that entire time. Like, I was learning how to breathe and release tension and regulate my body. It's like, this is so wild. So, yes, I'm sure that people can definitely refer to the book because there's some really, really phenomenal exercises in there and we'll have the link for that. Okay, restoration. Let's get into restoration. How do we begin to rebuild that nervous system? Flexibility.

What's important, important so restoration is where you really go into the tough things, right? So you, you, you work on things like, you know, attachment. You work on things like, you know, traumatic stressors and things that have really created and accumulated that damage over time. And the reason it's so important to, you know, to not do it before and to address this after stage one and two is because if you go straight to those really tough things, you know, it's, it. It can really backfire at you because in stage one and two, you're building the basic tools that you need in order to regulate yourself and to sort of bring down a little bit, like, bring down a notch your level of dysregulation. So restoration is also a great time to work with a therapist if you, if you are, if you can, if you can, and you're willing to do so, or with a group. So this is where you really go and work on all those coping mechanisms that we discussed before, you know, like anger or what are the things that are really constantly showing up in your life that you need to address and that require digging deep into, you know, your demons and your. The things that scare you. So when you are equipped with those, those tools before you go there, you are much more likely to stick with it because it's less scary. You have learned how to create a sense of safety in your body, even in a state of activation. And so you're able to process all those things and know that you can return to safety. And.

I think it's still really important to, to go through this stage with some help. So be it with a therapist, be it with a community, like heal your nervous system or be it with, you know, whatever is the situation, it can be a friend, it can be a mentor, different things for different people. But I think it's really important to see it as a stage where you're going to need to have someone with you you don't want to go through, especially if you have to deal with very deep and very complicated matters. You want to do this with someone. And then we move to stage four, connection. And this is where you are starting to become more regulated. You are starting to, you know, untangle all of those problems. And so it's time to start connecting with other people in a different way. And so you can, you know, you can repair the relationships that you have struggled with, be it with your family, be it with your partner. And this is a stage where oftentimes you start feeling this sense of interconnectedness with others. You have developed a sense of compassion for Other people. And so you can really become a parent, a leader from a different place, from a place of someone who has done the work and who is ready to give back to others. And I think that's a really great stage to be with. And I have to say, whenever I see people. People reaching that stage in our community, it really. It's where, you know, they're ready to become mentors, they're ready to become. To give back. And it's a wonderful. A wonderful experience to go through, through that stage. And then the fifth and final stage, which I call expansion, is where essentially we have reached the full capabilities of our nervous system, and now we're ready to expand. We are ready. Ready to.

Use stress intentionally. We can use stress to expand our capacity, and we can use experiences of awe, which I talk a lot about in the book. Awe has become one of the hot topics of research. We know that it's so powerful to help us expand our capacity for intensity, for vitality, et cetera, et cetera. And so. So I'm not a big proponent of seeing a healing journey as a way to improve yourself or to sort of conform yourself to the outside narratives that we hear about, you know.

Performing in a certain way. But I think expansion is really that opportunity to.

Leverage the amount of.

The big potential that our nervous system gives us. So we get to a place where we are thriving in our life, we're thriving in our relationships. We can still do more. It's almost limitless, the possibilities that we can achieve with a regulated nervous system. And so this stage is really very personal. And so I think when people have this big connection to something important, which can be parenting or it can be being in a relationship, or it can be social justice or spirituality or just anything that they feel matters to them, being in that expansion phase is where you really start feeling, you know, how you can contribute in that great way to the world. And so it's a stage that I wish. I wish everyone could go through.

I agree. I agree. I've definitely found that I have more capacity, you know, the more that I've done this work for. For all sorts of stuff, whether it's my family, my friends.

My mission. Right. My purpose in life, so. Well, thank you so much. I feel we could keep going. We are overtime. I hope I'm not making you late for anything else, but this was a really good, good. This is a really wonderful conversation, and I'm sure that people have lots of questions, so we might have to have round two at some point. But for everyone that's out there listening. Where can they go to learn more about you, your work and the book?

So they can go to healyournervicesystem.com or find me on Instagram. We're also about to release a YouTube channel so soon they will find me on there too. But yeah, and then of course they can find the book anywhere books are sold. And I look forward to connecting with with you, with your audience.

Awesome. Awesome. We'll have all the links to that in the show notes definitely. Go check that out. I can't believe that you got healyonervasystem.com well done. Well done on that domain. That's amazing. The crushing it on the SEO marketing.

I guess it was before this became mainstream, right?

I guess so. Yeah. You nailed it. That's well done. Done for everybody that's out there listening. This is definitely an episode to listen to with your partner, with your friends. This is something to man it for, to share it with somebody in your life that you know is wanting to regulate, wanting to heal their nervous system, wanting to find a better sense of grounding and calm. So definitely man it forward, send it to them. And as always, thank you so much for tuning in in. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.