How To Regulate Your Nervous System

Hi, I'm Sara, and welcome to You Make Sense. I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner and expert on trauma resolution, attachment, parts work, and nervous system regulation. This podcast is a manual to understanding your human experience so that you can navigate the world with freedom, ease, empowerment, and create the life that you desire. Remember, you make sense. All parts, always. So in this episode, we're going to talk about the practical road to regulating our nervous system. I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step process on how we do that, what to expect along the way, and what you can expect as the result of doing this work. I just want to name that because so much of the time healing can feel so elusive. I don't know about you, but I've named this before, but I read so many books, I listened to so many podcasts like this one, um, but I just gained a lot of information, but but I didn't actually have the tools that were necessary, the therapeutic tools backed by science that were necessary to change my experience. So my goal in this episode, but really in every episode of this podcast, is to really equip you with what you need in order to make the changes in your life that you're desiring. So when it comes to regulating our nervous system, I've said this before, I'll say it again, I've said it to you already and we're not even that far into this podcast, but your nervous system really creates your whole experience, right? It creates your thoughts, behaviors, feelings, sensations, the perception of self, others, and the world around you. It creates everything that makes up your human experience. And so the benefits of regulating our nervous system are quite profound because of that. It is what allows us to— I'm just going to name a few of the things, just rattle them off, but there we could go on and on, and that could be just a whole episode. It is what allows us to build our capacity when we have regulation in our nervous system to navigate stressful experiences. So it means that we have greater capacity in our stress stress response. The result of that is I can navigate challenges in life, and instead of becoming overwhelmed by them, I can maintain consistent regulation through them. Doesn't mean they'll be pleasant, but I'm— they're navigable for me, and that makes life a whole heck of a lot easier. Other benefits of regulating your nervous system are health in your body, because research shows that your nervous system is directly correlated to health in your body. When we're dysregulated, our nervous system or our organ systems become quite taxed, and as a result of that, we can we can experience chronic illness. So regulating your nervous system is literally like medicine for your body. As somebody who was chronically ill most— a lot of my life, I spent tens of thousands of dollars trying everything under the moon that you could possibly imagine. And of course, there's benefit to a lot of those things, but without having regulation in my nervous system, they did not actually give me the changes that I was looking for. Regulating our nervous system is how our sleep gets better. This is how you actually step into your calling and your purpose and get unstuck in your life. You cannot will feel your way towards that if you're stuck. The only way to that is through showing your nervous system that the things you desire are safe. So it allows you to get unstuck in your life. It allows you to experience greater abundance because what's not talked about enough is that the good things that we desire in life have activation to them. So they're not gonna feel good at first. The more you regulate your nervous system, the more you build your capacity to receive greater abundance financially, emotionally, and so on and so forth. It's what allows you to have ease in your relationships. So if you struggle in relationships, the same patterns over and over again, this work helps to facilitate that becoming better in your life. It is what allows you to know what your truth is, to know like you know like you know. It's a powerful thing to know our truth. And it's what allows us to make choices in our lives that are actually guided by our highest truth rather than choices that are based in survival. A lot of us are choosing things that are not actually for our highest good. We're choosing them because we wanna feel safe. So we stay in relationships or jobs or things that might not actually be for us, but we are trying to look for safety. Or we leave jobs or relationships that are for us, but we leave them because our system is saying, that's not safe. So the more we regulate, the more overall what this means is you live the life that you are here to live, only you can live, it literally has the power and will unlock the life that is waiting for you. And so I wanna talk about the process on how we do this. And by the way, again, I can name as a person who was highly dysregulated for decades, that the work that I do professionally, the work that I'm gonna about to talk about now, is the only thing that changed that. And that's what research shows too. So each of us have, which we talked about previously, something called a vagal tone. And that simply means it's a shaping, current shaping of your nervous system. So some of us have— think of it like kind of like a muscle. So some of us have nervous systems that are shaped in our sympathetic nervous system, which means you experience a lot of anxiety, worry, frustration, fear, terror, rage, racing thoughts, go, go, go all the time. Others of you have a shaping that's shaped to your dorsal vagal complex. And so for you, you're really used to having low energy, feeling apathy or malaise, hopelessness, disconnection. You feel like you can't, everything's so hard. Some of you have a shaping of your nervous system that's in the state of freeze, which is equal parts dorsal and sympathetic. So I have to, but I can't. I have to, but I can't. I have to, but I can't all the time. But you feel really trapped. And others of us, which we're looking for, have a shaping of our nervous system that's shaped to regulation or ventral. And that means the predominant amount in your life, you feel really good and at peace and at ease. And when challenges happen, you can navigate them and so on and so forth. What I wanna also name is, you can have a different shaping of your nervous system based on the area of life. So some of us might feel really sympathetically toned in terms of the shape in relationships. I get really anxious and I make sure you don't go away. But then when it comes to my purpose, I'm really avoidant. So that means that I'm sympathetic in relationships, I'm dorsal when it comes to purpose or making money or whatever it might be. So, so just know that there might be a predominant state across the board, or there might be different states that you resource based on where you are in your nervous system. And what I wanna name is the reshaping process is very practical. This is not some mystery thing that only happens for some people if they wish really hard and doesn't happen for others. It happens very similarly to working out, like going to the gym. If I was to consistently go to the gym and also nourish my body with foods that are healthy for me, if I consistently went to the gym, what would happen? My muscles would become stronger. Every time that I lifted weights, the muscle fibers actually tear a little bit and then they grow back stronger. And if I consistently did that, you would notice a difference in the shape of my body and the muscles. I would become a stronger person with time. And you wouldn't think, well, maybe that's only gonna happen for some people and not for others. No, it would happen for all of us. Now, certainly our bodies will look different, but the overall strength would be something that we could guarantee. The same goes for your nervous system. And when it comes to working out, how does this happen, right? Does it happen because you go to the gym once every 2 months and then you suddenly are, um, you know, a bodybuilder? No, you would have to consistently work out, and also quite aggressively if that was your goal. Um, you'd have to do it consistently. And no one would say to me if I said, oh my gosh, well, I went to the gym twice this month and I did deadlifts, and I just don't know why my legs and butt aren't stronger. What's going on? Why? You would say, well, I think you have to do deadlifts and other exercises more than twice a month in order for that to change. The same is true for our nervous system. And what people people, again, I've worked with so many people, our general inclination is we want tools when we're highly dysregulated. So we want something that's gonna change our experience when we're dysregulated. But what we don't understand is the way that we actually lessen those big moments of dysregulation and make them different is by consistently regulating when you're not so dysregulated. What we are doing when we are doing what are called consistent neural exercises, it's like a rep at the gym. Meaning I am doing something that is going to support my nervous system to see I'm safe when it doesn't think I'm safe. That's what a neural exercise is. And we're gonna talk in a moment about creating resources for that, but that's what a neural exercise is. And if you do enough of those, what begins to happen is your nervous system reshapes. And the result of that is you go from somebody who's anxious all the time to not very anxious anymore. You go from someone who's depressed or hopeless to not feeling depressed and hopeless anymore. And I have, I've worked with people who have gone from, and I can share this because they've shared this publicly in testimonials after doing some of my programs, but going from things like needing a Xanax to just leave the house to not needing it at all, being totally bedridden and chronically ill to having health in their body and being back to work. People have gone from not being able to actually lean into their relationship and say yes to it to literally, this actually happened to a client of mine, I reached out to her about another, sharing more about her experience in the programs because she previously had, and then she said we could share this, but publicly shared that she was not only able to fully lean into her relationship but was able to actually have a child, which is the thing she always wanted and couldn't seem to step towards. This is the kind of stuff that happens when we embody this work. People that have gone from not being able to write their book, their memoir, to writing it. And I could go on and on and on, but that's the result of what happens when we bring regulation to our nervous system, and we do that one neural exercise at a time. So before I go to the process of what I want you to do and what to expect as you're doing these neural exercises is I just want to talk about the difference between what a regulating resource is and what a coping strategy is. Now, a regulating resource, those are the things we're going to do when we're doing a neural exercise, or like the rep at the gym. A regulating resource is anything that actually gets rid of, or what's called discharges, the activation in our body. So it actually makes us feel different when we do it. A coping strategy is anything that covers up the dysregulation. So I've given this visual before, but imagine I'm making a fist right now. So make a fist and imagine that that's all the dysregulation or activation in your body. A coping strategy is anything that covers it up. So take the other hand and cover up your fist like a blanket. It numbs you or disconnects you from the activation. And we all have coping strategies. Why do we have them? Well, because nobody taught us when we were young what to do with the dysregulation we were experiencing, all that activation. So if you didn't know what to do with the activation, it's a real adaptive smart thing to find something to cover it up, right? Instead of— the other option would be to be perpetually with that activation, which would just overwhelm your system. And so again, coping strategies don't get rid of the dysregulation, they cover it up. And here are just a A few that I can name. I've used so many coping strategies, we'd have to do a whole episode on my coping strategies in my life. But anything like drinking, for example, that's a socially acceptable coping strategy. There's of course nothing wrong with having a glass or two of wine and with friends and connecting, but we have a society that created something called happy hour, which essentially is a coping strategy, right? For $6 after a stressful day, you can do something to cover up your dysregulation. That's what it's doing, it's covering it up. We can use exercise to cover it up. So I over-exercise to numb. We can use food. I binge food to numb or I restrict food to control. All coping strategy. Shopping to numb, gambling to numb, sex to numb, hair pulling to numb, cutting to numb, drugs to numb, watching television to numb, incessantly buying your pet toys to numb. Not that I've ever done that before. What else can we do to numb? There's so many things. Those are just, you know, just to name a few. Scrolling Instagram to numb. Now I want to say that all of the things I named aren't necessarily coping strategies, right? Like, you can be really engaged when you're watching a television show. Um, I was going to say television program. I did that the other night with my partner, and it was like, wow, I'm really old. I'm calling it a television program. That's something my grandmother did. Um, anyway, television show, you can watch that in an engaged way, right? I'm really present to it. You can also eat food, of course, in a present way, or have a glass of wine, or whatever. All those things can be, of course, sexual Intimacy can be highly connected and regulating, but what we wanna look at is, am I doing this to be more present or am I doing this to disconnect? Write that down. Not if you're driving, but if I'm, am I doing this to be more present or am I doing this to disconnect? And if I'm doing it to disconnect, it's a coping strategy. Now the thing about coping strategies is we never ever want to pull a coping strategy away, 'cause guess what you're doing? If you do that, you're getting rid of that cloak that's over the fist, right? Other hand that's covering the fist. You're getting rid of that cloak and then you're gonna be left with all this activation, which is gonna be too much for you. So what's going to occur? You're just gonna find another coping strategy to cover it up. I used to binge, binge eat. And again, I did all the things that I have already named so far. Gambling wasn't one, but everything else that I named has been. So I would binge eat and I usually did this at night because nighttime, and this is true for a lot of people, is a time we have to be with ourselves more. We're not distracted. And so this is a prime time for coping strategies for most people in the world. And so what I did was, instead of being with the pain and the loneliness and all of the trauma from my childhood, I would use food to help numb it. And it was, it felt very out of control. Like I would just keep eating and I would tell myself not to, and then I couldn't help but get up and get more food. And then I would feel horrible, and then I would shame myself and be so unkind. And then I would, the next morning, say, well, you're not gonna eat. I'm gonna starve myself as a punishment to this. And then the next night I would do the same thing. It was a vicious cycle of a coping strategy. Now, if I just pulled away food, something else was gonna have to come into its place because it was too much for me to be with all of that activation. So instead of pulling a coping strategy away, here's what we wanna do. When we notice that we are going to use a coping strategy, and most of us have like, have a habituated practice of using them, like there's times of day that we use them, So when we notice that, what we wanna do is we wanna pause and we first wanna use a regulating tool. So, and we're gonna talk about regulating tools in just a second. So we engage in something that actually addresses the dysregulation. A regulating resource, what that does is it discharges or gets the dysregulation, which is just energy, out of your body. It literally causes it to leave your body forever. The result of that is we no longer need things to cope. So the process here is before going to use a coping strategy, you wanna pause and you wanna do something that's regulating. For a simple example, instead of me going to just, you know, have the food I was about to eat, maybe I call a friend, a loved one who I feel really close to, or maybe I go for a walk. And then I don't pull away the food, I let myself have it. And the more that I do this though, practice this, I'm gonna consistently discharge the energy that's underneath the coping strategy, till eventually getting to the point where I no longer need the thing to cope. And now it's not a struggle to not use the thing, I simply don't need it because I've actually addressed the underlying issue, which is the dysregulation. Now let's talk about creating this toolbox. I call it a regulating toolbox, but what are regulating resources? Now we've previously talked about it a little bit in another episode, but regulating resources are anything that supports you to feel more present, here, and good. And if In my work, I provide somatic therapeutic regulating resources. I have a program called Nervous System Essentials. You can find that in the show notes at the bottom of the episode. That's a beautiful way to deepen the work that we're doing here and also gives you tangible tools and resource, therapeutic tools that you can begin using right away to regulate your nervous system. The thing is, we also all have tools in our own lives, meaning things that support you to feel more present, here, and good. The thing is, most of us are not consistently engaging in those things. And the reason is because when we're dysregulated, our nervous system doesn't think we're safe, right? That's the 101 of dysregulation. Your nervous system doesn't think you're safe. So if your nervous system thinks that you're running from a lion, do you think that it would think it was a good idea for you to take salsa lessons? Probably not. It's going to say, why would I go dancing when I'm trying to evade a threat, right? Not a smart move. Why would I cook a wonderful dinner with my loved ones if I feel like I'm in imminent danger? Why would I go for a walk? So your nervous system is actually going to avoid regulating resources at first, meaning it's not going to feel, um, easy to follow through on. Another reason why it's not going to feel easy at first, and I just want to prepare you for this, and doesn't mean you're doing it wrong, is because we're creating new neural pathways. And these are— think of it like highway systems in your brain. And creating a new neural pathway or a habit is literally like bushwhacking through a jungle with a butter knife. It's not like you have machinery that's helping you here. So your system is, you really have to put some effort in in order to create that path. This is a normal part of the process. And I'm gonna talk in a moment about some tools, some things you can do, an action plan that's gonna make it more successful for you to follow through. But all of this is to say, if you find like, yeah, it's really hard for me to consistently follow through on the regulating, this is why. So when we create a regulating toolbox, what I want you to do is literally write down the things that support you in your life feel more present, here, and good? Who are the people that you can be around or talk to that make you feel more present, here, and good? What are the hobbies that make you feel that? Being in nature, being with animals, engaging in creativity. How can you move your body that makes you feel more present, here, and good? And of course, a number of other things. I want you to also add in things that you've never done but always wanted to try, like things you see other people doing and you thought, oh, that would be nice to do, but I don't do that. Or my friend is always playing music at their house. It's really nice. I never do. Maybe playing music at your house then. If you say that's really nice, it's probably a regulating resource for you. Now, if you're thinking, eh, I don't need to write it down, I know the things that make me feel good, you need to write it down. And the reason I'm saying that is because we're creating new neural pathways, as I mentioned, and so your system is not gonna be oriented towards doing this, and it's not gonna be oftentimes even remember to do this unless we have a real action plan around it. So creating that toolbox is extremely important Extremely important. The next thing that we want to do is I want you to set a certain number of reminders to go off in your phone, or if you're like me and you like Post-it notes, I have so many around my house, you could put Post-it notes around your house. And when the alarm goes off, again, this could be 2 alarms, 5 alarms, 20 alarms if you want to be, if you really want to go for it. Make sure it's, by the way, a sound that's nice for your system, not a sound that's dysregulating. And when the alarm goes off, your job is to ask yourself, where am I in my nervous system? Nervous system. Go listen to the previous episodes where we talked about the different states in your nervous system. But am I in my sympathetic nervous system? Am I in my dorsal vagal complex? Am I in my state of freeze? Those are the 3 states of dysregulation. Or you can just ask yourself, am I regulated or dysregulated? Then what we want to do after you ask yourself that is to engage in a regulating tool. So anything in your toolbox that registers as good for you, I want you to go dig After you do that, your job is to rest and notice, is anything different? Really, really important. The rest— and one of my mentors says the rest and notice process is just as important as the regulating. One more thing that I just want to say about the regulating before I go to the rest and notice process is this, that what we want to do before we go to engage in the regulating tool, when I said ask yourself, are you regulated or dysregulated, or are you in sympathetic, dorsal, or freeze, we want to see if we can come into our embodied experience in a tolerable, titrated way. So when we experience trauma, we become disembodied. Most people are disembodied. They're not connected fully to their embodied experience because their bodies weren't a safe place to be, because I don't know what to do with all that activation. So part of our healing is we have to come back into our body. Our body is the only— is the place where our aliveness is, and it's also the place where the dysregulation is. So we're building our capacity to be with the dysregulation so we can discharge or get it out. So what I want you to do is just sit for a moment when the alarm goes off and ask yourself, what am I noticing in my body? What sensations are here? What feelings are here? Is there a thought that's present? If the thought could have a color or a shape, what would that be? If there could be a shape to the dysregulation, what would it be? It might be like, oh, I feel there's like a heavy stone in my chest. You can even ask yourself, if that heavy stone could talk, what would it say? All of the prompts that I just gave you are ways to come into your body a little bit. So we want to start small, whatever feels tolerable, and then once you notice like, that's enough, I feel like I'm noticing a lot of activation, I don't really like that, then it's time to discharge it. Or it's like you're dumping it out of your body. And the way that we discharge or dump it out of our body is through the regulating resources I named. So we first attune with the experience, name what it is, What's going on? What state am I in? Then we regulate, use a regulating resource. And then after that is the rest and notice. Rest and notice. What's going on? What's different? And here's the thing about regulating. If you want to live the life you are here to live, if you want a regulated nervous system where you feel good most of the time, the way to it is not just that overnight you feel that. The way to it is through these consistent neural exercises or reps at the gym. Gym. And what we have to notice when we're doing these reps at the gym are subtle changes. That is what we're looking for. I want you to be an investigator, an expert in noticing subtle changes. Now, some of the overarching things that you're going to be a clue that you came closer to regulation are things like you took a deeper reflexive breath, you notice, just like I just did, you notice that you feel more grounded in your body. You notice that things like yawning, burping, even passing gas are all clues of regulation. That's because your GI tract and your stomach is turning back on. I know that might sound super weird, like, fart— what does farting have to do with regulating your nervous system? Uh, a lot, because your GI tract is turning on. Um, so if you notice that, that is a really good sign. And you might be thinking, what kind of podcast am I listening to right now? Could this really be true? This is all very true. True. Other things you might notice is an overall better sense of the room you're in. So I'm actually present in here to what's around me. I can see the room and everything that's here. If you're in your sympathetic nervous system, so that's where there's too much energy, a clue that you're coming towards regulation is there's less energy. It's not overwhelming, as overwhelming. If you're in your state of shutdown, that dorsal vagal complex, what you're going to look for is more energy. So instead of feeling like a bear in hibernation, I feel a little bit more present in here, more energized. And if you're in your state of freeze, that's the tonic immobility, so sympathetic and dorsal together. What you're going to look for is that I'm dropping some of that dorsal energy and I don't feel quite as stuck, I don't feel quite as immobilized, I can move more, more of that sympathetic energy present. And we aren't looking for going from being anxious to feeling like I'm relaxed on a beach in Fiji. We're looking for literally something like Okay, I just shook my body. I just did some shaking because shaking is a very regulating resource. Your animals do it. If you have a dog, you've seen your dog. My Truman does this all the time. I give him a bath, he thinks he's gonna die, he goes into freeze, he's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm gonna die." He's 13 and still thinks that's gonna happen. And then I put him down on the ground and he does this running jag where he sprints around the house and he shakes. And what he's doing is he's saying, "I know how to run a program on regulating your nervous system. I will do it right now for you." But truly animals all know how to do We do this and we're animals and this is coming back into this innate knowingness. So shaking, let's say you do that and you notice, okay, I still feel anxious but the energy is 10% less in my body. Amazing. You just completed a neural exercise. Complete. Done. And if you add up enough of these, you will literally reshape your nervous system. This is how you get to the life that you're desiring. I know, my friend, it doesn't sound glamorous. I know maybe sometimes we're hoping there's some kinds of magic pill, but this is the magic pill and it's practical and tangible. And how much better than that is that than something that's elusive and feels like it happens for one in a million and doesn't happen for me. This happens to everybody who embodies this work one tolerable step at a time. When you do this, that's what's going to occur for you. Something that I say a lot in the programs that I run is, um, that it's so important that we not only befriend our nervous system, but befriend ourselves. And befriending our nervous system essentially means really seeing it for what it is, which is it is your friend, it's your closest friend, it's protected you your entire life. And the more that we can get on board with it and be a cheerleader for our nervous system, the faster the healing process goes. So a lot of times I'll say, when in doubt, think about how I would talk to you when you're regulating. That's how I want you to see if you can talk to yourself. A lot of times what we do is we talk to ourselves, we'll talk about this in a later episode, the way that we were spoken to. So I regulate and then I tell myself, eh, nothing changes. I'm still anxious, I suck, it's not gonna happen for me, nothing changes. That's what we can generally do. When we do that, we prolong the process and make it go a lot slower. And think about this, imagine, this isn't going to happen, but imagine that I was in a car accident and I was also suddenly duplicated, there's two of me. I know this might seem strange, just go with me for a minute. And I lost my ability to walk. And you see two of me, same experience. I'm in a hospital room, unable to walk. And the doctors are saying, we're not sure if she's gonna be able to walk again. So in one of the rooms, I am in both rooms, I'm working really hard in physical therapy every day, doing all the things. And in one of the rooms, you are in there and you are encouraging me. And when I finally move my big toe, it brings you to tears because you know how much effort it took to make that happen. And you might say to me, if you can move one toe, you're gonna be able be able to move all your toes, and I believe wholly and completely that you're going to be able to take a step. And not only are you going to be able to take a step, but you're going to be able to walk without support, and then you're going to be able to run again, and you're going to be able to be exactly who you were. If that was happening in one room, can you see how that would probably make my process go by faster? Because I'm having that positive reinforcement, and that reinforcement that's also just based truth. Now imagine there's another hospital room that I'm in and the person in there, not you because you wouldn't speak to me this way, the person in there is saying, wow, I move my toe and they say, wow, that's nothing. You're a loser. It's never gonna happen for you. You're never gonna walk again. People are running marathons. Look at you, you can't even move your toe. Of course, if I was in that hospital room, I would not walk as fast, hands down. Of course I wouldn't because I'm not having that positive reinforcement, which creates more regulation. So if you want this work to go faster, You must, you must, you must begin speaking to yourself in your nervous system exactly the way I described, the way I would to you, and the way, of course, I do with everybody that I'm working with. And I can tell you that if you do this, these subtle changes that aren't subtle at all add up to a life predominantly lived in regulation. That is what happened to me as somebody who was predominantly dysregulated. I spent so much of my life I took an SSRI for a really long time because I needed to. I didn't have all of these tools, and for some of you, you might not have had these tools, so I want us to be really kind to ourselves about that. That might be our only option at some points in our lives, and for so many reasons, I just thought it wasn't able to, wasn't going to change, and it's through this work that I'm able to live a life predominantly anchored in regulation. There's nothing special about my nervous system. It's just like yours, and I already shared some words previous folks in my programs have reported in not very long periods of time, by the way. The woman who I told you who used to take Xanax to leave her house every day to not needing it in 3 months, that was the case for her. And that's profound, a profound, profound shift. The same with people stepping into their purpose, not feeling depressed anymore, and so many other things. So it's the consistency that gets you there. Last thing I just want to name is that The process of regulating our nervous system is one of expand and contract. So if you can see me, if you can't see me on video, I'm putting my hands in front of me, and every time they're butted together, so that's like being in dysregulation. Your nervous system is protecting you. When you have a moment of regulation, it's as if an opening occurs between the hands. Now that opening allows things to come towards me and allows me to go towards things. My nervous system's saying, maybe you're safe, but I'm not sure how safe you are because I have a lot of data points in the receptacle of past information where you weren't safe, so then it contracts. So we regulate, we feel better for a second, and then we don't feel good again. And then the next time you regulate, because that experience, the prior one, got stored in your database as your nervous system saying, maybe we are safe, the expansion becomes bigger and the contraction becomes smaller. So now I feel regulated for a little longer period of time. Oh, and then I have that racing thought again. I'm dysregulated. Contract. And then we expand and contract and expand and contract and expand and contract until still were predominantly living in regulation. So that's a part of the process. If you notice a contraction after expanding, I don't want you to get discouraged. That's how it looks. It would be very weird, right, if you've had a life where it wasn't safe to be regulated in the past, and then you regulate once and your nervous system says, okay, I think you're safe. That wouldn't be really adaptive, right? It needs data, it needs evidence, and the more you you do this, the longer the expansions become, the shorter the contractions become, the more you step into the life that is here for you. And you can do this one tolerable step at a time. We all need support on our healing journeys, so if you think I might be the right practitioner for you, I'd invite you to get on the waitlist for one of my upcoming programs. All waitlisters get access to limited-time reduced pricing before the course or program opens. Link in show notes to learn more. So now I'm going to answer some questions as they relate to this episode. Just a reminder, if you ever want to submit a question, you can do that in the show notes below. You can click on the link to do that. You can also find a link in my Instagram or send a DM to my team, or you could even email media@sarahbaldencoaching.com to do that. And the reason why I say this almost every episode, but the reason why I do this question and answer part is because it's so important to see what this work looks like in the lived experience and what I care deeply about is you seeing that you're not the only one, because so many of us feel like we're the only one experiencing what we're experiencing. And the truth is there's so much commonality in the human experience. So I think you're going to find that with these 3 questions that we have today too.

I noticed in a recent post you had mentioned that trauma is relational, so a lot of our healing would come from being in healthy relationships. Um, I was wondering I was wondering how you can go about feeling better if you just don't have any family or, like, really any friends, if you live somewhere that's like a really small town and you— I have been in a free state for years. I just didn't know it until I found your work a few months ago, but I pretty much end up spending all of my time either just, like, running errands or doing stuff that has to be done, working, whatever. Like, I don't really have a sense of community. So it feels like I've had an intuitive sense that that was holding me back for a long time. But is there a way to heal if you don't have that?

Thank you. It is so brave. You all are so brave. I just want to say that. It's my first time listening to that question. Sometimes I don't like to listen to them before so I can just be present to to the question when I'm hearing it for the first time. And to this person and to all of you who might struggle with connection, it is such a brave thing to say, you know what, I'm gonna reach out and I'm actually gonna record this and I'm gonna actually show myself and express what I'm experiencing. That is actually healing emotion. So when this person's saying, you know, how do I actually heal that? Well, we do it through safe connection. And I just wanna name that I spent the majority of my life, because people were so dangerous in my past, I spent the majority of my life having very few people in it. And there was a lot of people who even wanted to be friends with me, and I, I, I couldn't. I would disappear on them for years or months at a time. I didn't have a sense of community. And, and I remember, I can't tell you how many Friday nights I remember, um, going to pick up food, like takeout, because I wasn't going to go to a restaurant by myself. I felt too much shame around it. And I felt so much shame even going to a restaurant, picking up food, when everybody else, it seemed like, was with other people and I was the only one that wasn't. And that's what it felt like. And I was gonna go home by myself. And I'm sharing that because so many of us are living that. It's so much more common than we know because all we see with social media, right, is people that are showing this like magazine of their life that's, remember, not fully real. They have other parts of their life that they're struggling in, but all we see is that. We see people connecting and having so much joy and fullness, and that isn't the case for a lot of people. And so personally, I just want this person and anyone else listening who resonates with this to know that was my experience for so, so, so, so long. And I want to name that the way that we come back into connection connection and connection being filled with ease for ourselves is through tolerable steps towards it. You know, for me, that started with 13 years ago with my dog Truman and Jerry. Jerry was only 11. He passed away recently, or it seems recent, it was a year ago. But they were, they were really some of my first really safe, secure attachment where I could be totally vulnerable in myself. And they helped me heal in a profound way. It would've been too much for me to just say, I'm gonna join this community thing and go do a static dance on the beach. That would never have happened. But instead I started with that and it showed me safety. And then I started, I worked with a somatic practitioner one-on-one and that created some safety. And then I joined online experiences. It can be challenging, especially if you're not in a major city, like it sounds like this person, to find your people. But the beautiful thing is technology has allowed us to do that virtually now too. And I can tell you all of the programs I run are essentially virtual and with, you know, thousands of people in them from small groups to big groups. And what I find again and again is how many, how much of the time people have a sense of community, so much so that people even stay in connection for years, literally after. And so it doesn't have to be one of my programs, but, but any kind of, it could be a hobby, it could be a healing container where you can come together with people who are like you and like you might even be a commonality of, I don't feel like I I belong. What a common thing that so many of us experience. When we can actually talk about us, it gives us a greater sense of belonging. So that's where we wanna start with. I even started with nature. You know, we are nature. We come from the earth, we go back to the earth. Everything is made of the same thing. And, and literally, I'm not kidding, would sit with trees with my hands on them and feel the connection because you are connected to them. You actually share 50% of your DNA with them. I don't know if you knew that, but we are We are them and they are us. And this illusion of separation is just what dysregulation brings. So I'm giving all these examples because these are ways that we begin coming back into connection and showing our system, hey, it's safe. And then it might be like smiling at somebody when they're bagging your groceries and just saying hi and letting your nervous system see it's safe. And then again, it's safe. And the more we do this, the more our systems see maybe it is safe to reach out, maybe it is safe to to be seen, to be known, to be heard. And I don't know what it is. I am so lucky that every single one of the communities that I have ever had, and including the community of, we have over 100,000 people on Instagram, are filled with such incredibly loving, kind, compassionate people. And that is you, whoever is listening to this, that is you too. And you're gonna find people who are just like you when your nervous system sees that it's safe. And so it's all of these moments of connection that show our nervous system, oh, I'm a little bit safer, I'm a little bit safer. And, and to this person that submitted this question, that will change for you. What a gift you are. I can feel it from your energy and your essence just from hearing your voice. You are such a gift, and the people who come into your life are gonna be so lucky to have you in it. And, and that goes for all of you, everybody listening. One tolerable step at a time, that's how we get there. And we can't talk our way into it. We have to show our nervous system that connection is safe. At one point, had a— one of my therapists said to me, uh, he's also my mentor, my somatic experiencing mentor. At one point he said, Sarah, it's time to get into a relationship. And I, I was married for, um, 10 years. I was with my ex-husband for 13 years, so from 22 to, um, you know, well into my 30s. And, um, and then I was single, alone for, I don't know, 3 or 4 years. And, um, I've done 15 years of healing and all and all of that and did a lot of healing in my, my marriage. But he still said, Sarah, it's time to get into a relationship. And I was like, what do you mean? I'm doing great. I'm doing great work. And what he meant is there are some things that can only happen in a relational container. They have to happen there because our nervous system needs to see, and through, through action, that things can actually be different. And so healing isn't just what happens in a program, like programs that I offer or in an individual, you know, experience. It happens in our living, and we need the support in order to be able to step into that. But when we do, our nervous systems see it's safe. And lastly, we are social creatures, you know, just like the chimpanzees, who are closest— our closest relative. We are meant to be in communion and connection. And when we heal, our nervous systems come back into that because it's innate in the know how. So let's go to the next question we have today.

Hi Sarah, I'm so excited for your podcast. Uh, working with you has changed my life, so I cannot wait to get my weekly, monthly, whatever cadence it is, dose of your wisdom. Um, my question that I wanted to ask was, can you explain energy wells and how as we go deeper in our healing our nervous system opens up more capacity to hold different things? Because that was really like an aha moment for me. And then can you explain how different parts can have a different autonomic tone? So there can be a 7-year-old that's in sympathetic and then like a 10-year-old protective part that's sympathetic— did I say sympathetic?

Whatever.

One's dorsal, one's sympathetic is what I'm trying to say. And how do you come to both of aid.

All right, so energy wells is a term coined by Peter Levine. Again, he's the creator of somatic— you might be saying, again, what do you mean? You didn't talk about Peter Levine. I think in a previous episode I have. Peter Levine is someone I consider a mentor. He's the creator of somatic experiencing. That's one of the, the somatic modalities I'm trained in, and he's really a pioneer in, in the field of trauma resolution, along with Bessel van der Kolk, who's a mentor of mine, and, and a few others. Of course. Anyway, he talks about energy wells. Essentially, the concept of what an energy well is, is it's activation that has been waiting, waiting for resolution that lives in our body. So trauma— and again, all of us have experienced some kind of trauma in our lives— if it's not resolved, it lives in our body. It actually lives in our tissues, and it's waiting for an opportunity to discharge or leave our bodies, um, and for us to complete what's called the incomplete experience. So whatever wasn't able to happen, our our body, our psyche wants that to happen still. Like, I wasn't able to protect myself, I want to. I wasn't able to use my voice, I want to. So, so that's all inside of us. Now, our psyche, our nervous system, our body, our soul, it's, it's, it's all so brilliant to, to ensure that we aren't overwhelmed in, in our lives as much as possible. And in the process of of healing. So when— think of an energy well. I want you to think of like, um, um, a bucket. Okay, so at the beginning of healing, I might have this very small bucket, and that bucket, like maybe it's a half-gallon bucket, it's pretty small. That bucket is the capacity for activation that I currently have in my life. So it means what I can hold in my body, the level of discomfort and dysregulation and when we're early on in our healing, it might be very small. For example, my energy well when I started was so small that I was totally disconnected from my experience, meaning— I mentioned this in a previous episode— but people would ask about my history and everything that happened to me, and I would talk about it, I would actually feel nothing. And I would notice that they felt a lot. They would be, you know, crying or really overwhelmed because it was quite an intense childhood that I had, but I didn't feel anything. That means my energy well was very very small, my capacity to hold dysregulation, because my system was so overwhelmed or inundated with activation for so much, for decades of my life. Now here's the thing that happens as we heal, that in some ways it's not talked about very often, and in some ways I'm like, well, is it better to not know? And the only reason I'm saying this is because healing is not for the faint of heart. It's a hero's journey. It is maybe the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life. It is the hardest thing I've ever done and the thing I will always be the most proud of no matter what happens in my life. What I mean by that is this in terms of energy wells, as you regulate your nervous system, what you're doing is you're building capacity to hold stress response, capacity to hold discomfort, capacity to hold dysregulation. And so as you build capacity, your nervous system and your psyche says, oh wow, I think Sarah can actually deal with some of this stuff that is stored inside of the tissue, right? The stuff that's inside. And so what occurs is now my energy well increases. So now it's no longer a half a gallon, but it's a 3-gallon bucket. And that means all of that which was inside of me can now come out, which is why I might start to notice that I'm feeling frustrated all the time. I feel angry. I never used to feel angry. What is this? Well, this is the repressed anger that wasn't able to come out until now. Or maybe I notice, you know, now I'm going to a bigger energy well 'cause I built more capacity. Now it holds 10 gallons, and I notice that I'm experiencing some panic I haven't been connected to, and I'm not sleeping anymore, and I'm having panic attacks. What is that? That's old dysregulation that has been waiting for you to have the capacity to deal with it. And oftentimes people think they've gone backwards. This is not backwards, this is forwards. That part's not talked about enough because it makes us feel very confused about the healing process. It isn't just this linear experience an experience of feeling better. It's an experience of we build our capacity, we feel better, and a greater energy well arises. And what occurs is that energy well, the more that you are able to be with it and regulate your nervous system through it, it actually discharges out of your body forever. So you might literally be finally dealing with activation that's from 20 years ago that has affected every part of your life or your relationships or caused you chronic illness. And once you're able to discharge that, you have freedom. And so, you know, the only way out is through with healing. That's why it's the hero's journey. And when you do this, you reach those greater energy wells, you regulate through them, you actually gain freedom. And that is the process of it all. Lastly, I just want to say to the secondary question, there's going to be a lot of episodes on parts work that we're going to get to very soon. But what's true is that at any given moment, there's a version of us in our in our embodied experience. The way, just really quickly on parts in case that's new to anybody, is that when we're born, we're a whole being. And when we go through life, we experience traumas or things that overwhelm us. It's as if that part, they don't have a resolution of what happened, like getting bullied in school. It's like that part gets fragmented off of us. That 6-year-old, let's say, that got bullied, they're connected to us via like a rope, but they're fragmented off. And they're kind of stuck in that experience of being 6. So, and then we have maybe a 10-year-old part, a 20-year-old part, a 30-year-old part, whatever. They're all fragmented off if they didn't get resolution. And the way the threat detector works, neuroception, is when it looks out into the world and it's reminded of something where I felt bullied— like maybe you go to a dinner and everyone knows each other except for you, and they're all talking about this shared interest and they're not really inviting you into the conversation— neuroception might say, oh, this This reminds me of when I was 6 and bullied. Even though it's different, it reminds me of that. And then what occurs in that moment is the 6-year-old me embodies my experience. So no longer do I feel like a powerful, intelligent, capable, able woman that I am. I feel scared, small, inadequate, out of control, less than, and all the painful feelings I felt when I was 6 because that 6-year-old is actually embodying my my system. And I, and then I have the autonomic tone or shape of my nervous system, uh, is shaped to how it was when I was 6. It literally goes right back to how it was when I was 6. And then, you know, 2 hours later you might feel like your adult self again and your nervous system is now shaped how your adult nervous system is shaped. I know this might sound like The Matrix or something really wild. It is really wild. Um, but this is what science confirms for us that happens as we are navigating getting in and out of our parts. And in later episodes, I'm going to talk about how we actually address our parts so that they don't show up so much, and that rope that's fragmented them actually brings them back so they're integrated with us. And the result is that adult you gets to show up in your life predominantly instead of these scared younger parts.

Hey Sarah, hope you're well.

So I'm really interested in learning more about the nexus between long-term dysregulation and chronic illness. I've been dealing with chronic illness for most of my life. I'm 26 years old, and I remember being sick from the age of 10.

And I know that my childhood and other things have led me here today. Um, and so I understand that dysregulation can impact the systems in our bodies, and so, and so they don't work at optimal levels, but I just want to, um, further my understanding about this. And, and it would be great if you can discuss this more because a lot of why I feel horrible is because of my health, but I just don't know if it's because of my health or the dysregulation or both.

So there's so much research now around the correlation or connection between having a trauma history and chronic illness. I talked about this in an earlier episode, but your autonomic nervous system is filled with thousands of nerve endings. So your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system— these nerve endings surround every organ system in your body. And when you're dysregulated, the nerve endings— think of it like they constrict. And what they're doing when they constrict is they're communicating information to the different organs in your body, letting them know that we're danger right now, or imminent danger, or danger. And we need everybody inside of this body, all the organs, everybody, to get on board with helping us to survive this. So the result of that is when the, the, they constrict, every organ essentially says, okay, I can give up this amount of energy for survival, and I can give up this amount, and I can give up this amount. And so your kidneys, your liver, your gallbladder, your small intestine, large intestine, immune system, digestive system, and so on and so forth, all give up energy that can go towards survival to ensure we have the greatest chance to survive threat. Now, in short-term stays in dysregulation, this isn't a problem because after we come out of dysregulation, the nerve endings release. That communicates up to your brain that you're in safety, and all of the energy that was going towards survival goes back to those organs systems, and they're able to function again optimally. So they have no problem functioning for short periods of time without having the full resources that they need. The issue is when we've experienced past trauma, what occurs is our nervous system does not know that that thing is yet over, and so it perpetually thinks that that trauma is still happening or could happen at any given moment. The result of that is that we are going to experience long stays in dysregulation. So our nervous system doesn't come into regulation for very often, it stays actively self-protected. And so over the course of a period of time, over days and weeks and months— and not just days, rather weeks and months and years— these organ systems begin to say, I don't know if I can do this anymore. I'm trying, but I don't have the resources I need. And we start to develop chronic illness. And so, and I, I've named this before on this podcast, but I'm somebody who experienced chronic illness for a lot of my life. I had fibromyalgia, colitis, IBS. I was sick probably every other week of my life. I had hair fall out. I had many skin issues. My eyes were so dry they would bleed. Like, just lots and lots and lots of things, all resulting from chronic dysregulation. And there was no amount of, you know, holistic wellness and functional medicine and IVs and all the stuff that I did that actually moved the needle until I gained regulation of my nervous system and, and started to regulate it. That is the best medicine you can give your body, and then it allows all these other treatments to actually stick. Now, what I also want to name is that it's kind of like a chicken or the egg, right? Because when you have chronic illness, as somebody who had it, it's extremely isolating. Um, you can feel like you're the only one. People can tend to not understand it. Doctors can tend to not understand it because they don't understand the nervous system connection a lot of the time, and so it can make us feel really isolated. Not only that, but it actually can immobilize us where we feel like we can't go out and connect and do all the things that are gonna regulate our nervous system. So as we're chronically ill, then we have the life circumstances that aren't actually nourishing us in the way that we need to be regulated. So a couple of things that we want to do. Number one, the consistent neural exercises that I have talked about is the best medicine for you. The best medicine. The more you do this, the more your nervous system regulates, the more health you have in your body. Other things that we can do is, number one, we want to start orienting to pleasure and what works in our bodies. Because when we have chronic illness, our body, for neuroception, the threat detector, um, our body is not a place of goodness. It's a place of pain and suffering. And so what's really important is that we reorient towards also noticing the things that are working in our body and the ways we can experience pleasure through it. That is not negating or gaslighting out of the pain we experience, but it's saying, can there be a both/and? So I notice this pain, and can I also notice what's working in my body? So when I'm working with someone with chronic illness, well, I literally would want them to somatically connect to my organs. For example, can I connect to my heart My heart that's working and beating for me. Literally feel your heartbeat. It's beating just for you, for no one else, and it is working well in doing that. Your lungs, when you feel air come into your lungs, it is doing that for you on your behalf without you asking. If you can move your hands, noticing I'm doing that, I'm making that happen. So the more we can orient towards what's working, the more it creates more of that. So that's a really important thing to do. Then orienting towards pleasure in your body, because if we've been in chronic pain, our our bodies are not a place of pleasure, which literally could be feeling the sun on my face and somatically really taking that in, or eating something delicious and somatically taking that in. And I might say, oh, I also noticed this pain or this sore throat or whatever, but I'm noticing pleasure too. That's really, really important. Or noticing a song you like and letting your body sway, or a smell or a scent, or taking a bath. Anything you have toleration for, we want to lean into. So noticing what's working, leaning into experiencing and noticing pleasure, and then connection. Connection of any kind. Like right now, we're connecting over this podcast. This is connection. And what connection is tolerable for me? Because human beings need connection in order to have regulation. So that might be, I sit on the front porch, I don't have any more energy than that, and I just smile at people that walk by. Or I watch a video or a podcast of someone that registers as safe me, or I lay with my pet, or I call a friend. Anything that feels tolerable. So those 3 things, along with regulation, are going to profoundly change what is happening in our bodies. I know, because science confirms it, that our nervous systems have the ability to heal and want to. And I also fully believe that our bodies have the ability to heal if they're given the conditions necessary to make that happen. Mm-hmm.