I Made a Different Choice
The foundation of our healing and thriving as humans is rooted in our experience of belonging, which directly informs the resilience of our nervous system. But unless we have at least a basic understanding of the system that informs all of our (re)actions, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to tend to our belonging from our wholeness. This knowledge is essential to our wellness and yet, embodied, digestible information about it can be hard to find. So we created a self-paced audio course, available now, ‘Wandering into Wellness, an Embodied Tour of your Autonomic Nervous System’. Head over here to learn more, sign up, and get immediate access to the course.
When we approach our nervous system and our unconscious reactions with curiosity, we grow our compassion for ourselves and others. We learn how to track and tend our needs, adding choice to situations that otherwise get the better of us. You know, the ones that leave us disconnected and wondering, “Where did that come from?!”
I had one of those embarrassing moments just yesterday, in fact. I needed my husband’s attention to finalize some family plans. But my excitement instantly turned to activation when he politely responded to my request with, “Not now, honey, I’m busy. I need 10 minutes”. With a furrowed brow and gritted teeth, I snarled, “Fine, never mind, I’ll plan the whole thing myself!”
Before I tell you what happened next, it’s critical to point out that, in hindsight, I realized I was already activated before I approached him. But this activation was beneath my conscious awareness. Had I taken the time to tune in with my system before I approached him, I would have found anxiety that quickly turned into expectation which commingled with doubt. If I had slowed down, I would have recognized that my request actually lived in me as a need, which was a set up for disappointment. From there, I might have been able to calibrate myself, remember his sovereignty, and potentially avoid the conflict that I’d just invited.
Luckily, he didn’t meet my fire with more. Instead, he stopped what he was doing and turned towards me. He met my eyes with kindness and asked me to start over. Part of me didn’t want to back down but standing face to face, another part softened and I remembered that our connection outweighed my self-righteousness – by a lot. My system signaled that I was safe and I apologized, told him I felt stressed and needed his help, and asked him to find me when he was ready. As quickly as it surged, my reaction was gone and I was back to planning with enthusiasm.
This isn’t always easy for me. Through my upbringing I formed a tendency to stay angry, double down, and fight when confronted with dysregulation. Your version of this may look more like distancing or disappearing, and depending on the context, I might do that too. However it shows up, the more we understand our reactions as sometimes out-of-date survival strategies, the easier it is to match our experience with the present moment and find our way back to equilibrium.
Understanding our nervous system’s perceptions (neuroception) and meeting them with care benefits all our relations because we’re more likely to treat reactivity with kindness once we see it as a cry for safety or to be seen. Certainly, my husband’s steady response illustrates this beautifully.
Our self-paced audio course, Wandering into Wellness, is a place to learn, grow, and apply a functional understanding of the three branches of the Autonomic Nervous System and its strategies in both stress and resource. It provides practical examples and tools so that you can begin to make sense of your personal survival patterns and embed new pathways towards thriving. Head over here for more info.