Alienated / Estranged Parents: are you stuck in a cycle of chaos and emotional overwhelm? Discover how to break free, regulate your nervous system, and reclaim your peace—even in the face of ongoing alienation or estrangement.

In this powerful conclusion to a three-part series, Shelby Milford dives deep into the embodiment and integration of nervous system regulation for alienated parents. Learn practical tools to move from chronic stress and emotional reactivity to calm, resilience, and self-advocacy. Shelby shares personal stories, science-backed strategies, and actionable exercises to help you complete the stress cycle and create lasting change.

Main Areas of Focus: 

• The difference between regulation and suppression of emotions
• Understanding chronic stress and its impact on the nervous system
• Early signs of fight, flight, and freeze responses
• Immediate somatic tools for in-the-moment triggers
• Long-term strategies for nervous system regulation and emotional resilience
• The importance of routines, sleep, nutrition, and self-reflection
• Integration practices and probing self-assessment questions

Notable Quotes:

• “People have the power to mess up your life, but you are the only one who has the power to fix it.” ~quote by Mark Manson (slightly butchered)
• “Calming is a temporary fix. Completion is letting the body exit the fight, flight, freeze response through sensory movement and emotional release.”
• “You can regulate and provide whatever emotion you need. That’s what we’re always going after in the end—peace, safety, calm, certainty, belonging.”
• “Success is measured by how you show up, not by the result. You can’t always control the outcome, but you can control how you show up.”

Key Takeaways:

• Chronic stress from alienation can keep your nervous system in a state of constant activation, leading to exhaustion and health issues.
• Regulation means acknowledging and processing emotions, not avoiding or suppressing them.
• Early awareness of your body’s stress signals allows you to interrupt automatic trauma responses.
• Simple grounding and breathing exercises can quickly return you to a state of safety.
• Long-term healing requires routines, self-care, and intentional reflection.
• You have the power to create your own sense of safety and peace, regardless of external circumstances.
• Integration is a practice—lasting change comes from consistent, daily application of these tools.

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Goodbye Chaos: Restoring Peace for Alienated Parents

Introduction

Parental alienation is a deeply painful and isolating experience. If you’re an alienated parent, you know the emotional toll of ongoing rejection, legal battles, and the daily struggle to maintain hope. This guide is designed to help you understand the impact of chronic stress, recognize your body’s responses, and provide practical tools for healing and nervous system regulation.

Understanding the Stress of Parental Alienation

When alienated parents face repeated rejection or legal uncertainty, the body’s stress response can become chronically activated. The sympathetic nervous system—responsible for fight, flight, or freeze—remains on high alert, leading to symptoms like anxiety, muscle tension, and emotional exhaustion. Over time, this can result in physical health issues, sleep disturbances, and a sense of being “stuck” in survival mode.

Some key signs of chronic stress in alienated parents (many more mentioned in video):

• Heightened startle response or hypervigilance
• Emotional numbness or frequent overwhelm
• Difficulty sleeping or persistent fatigue
• Digestive issues and changes in appetite

Why Completing the Stress Cycle Matters

Many parents believe that simply facing stressful events is enough to process them. However, true healing requires completing the body’s stress response cycle—not just calming down or avoiding emotions. Suppressing anger, grief, or fear only stores these feelings in the body, leading to long-term health consequences.

To truly heal, it’s essential to:

• Acknowledge and feel your emotions safely
• Develop a personal protocol for stress management
• Practice regular emotional release and grounding

 

Tools for Nervous System Regulation

Restoring peace to your body and mind is possible with consistent practice. Here are evidence-based tools and strategies, directly inspired by trauma-informed coaching and nervous system science:

1. Grounding Techniques

• Five Senses Scan: Name five things you see, four you can touch, three you hear, two you smell, and one you taste. This brings you back to the present moment.
• Butterfly Hug: Cross your arms over your chest and tap your shoulders alternately to soothe anxiety.
• Grounding Through the Feet: Stand barefoot, spread your toes, and feel your connection to the earth.

2. Breathing Exercises

• Diaphragmatic Breathing: Inhale deeply into your belly, hold, and exhale slowly. Humming on the exhale can stimulate the vagus nerve and promote calm.
• 4-7-8 Breathing: Inhale for 4 counts, hold for 7, exhale for 8.

3. Movement and Release

• Shake It Out: Gently shake your arms, legs, and torso for 1-2 minutes to release tension.
• Body Scanning: Regularly check in with your body from head to toe, noticing areas of tension and consciously relaxing them.

4. Daily Structure and Self-Care

• Set Intentions Each Morning: Before getting out of bed, decide how you want to feel and show up for the day.
• Maintain Routines: Consistent sleep, meals, and movement help regulate your nervous system.
• Limit Screen Time: Especially before bed, to improve sleep quality and reduce overstimulation.

5. Emotional Awareness and Reflection

• Self-Assessment Questions: Reflect on your relationship with drama, your emotional triggers, and what needs your nervous system is trying to meet.
• Journaling and Visualization: Write about positive moments and visualize your desired future in detail.

Vagal Toning Exercise

Try this simple exercise, adapted from Dr. Stanley Rosenberg, to activate your parasympathetic nervous system:

1. Sit comfortably and interlock your fingers behind your head.
2. Without moving your head, look as far as you can to the right with just your eyes. Hold for 30 seconds.
3. Return to center, then look as far as you can to the left for 30 seconds.
4. Notice any changes in tension or relaxation.

This exercise can help promote calm and a sense of safety in your body.

Moving Forward: Healing Is Possible

Healing from parental alienation is a journey, not a destination. By understanding your body’s responses, practicing nervous system regulation, and building supportive routines, you can restore peace and resilience—even in the face of ongoing challenges.

Remember:

• You are not alone in your experience.
• Your feelings are valid, and healing is possible.
• Consistent self-care and nervous system support are key to long-term recovery.

Call to Action

If you’re struggling with the effects of parental alienation, start by implementing one or two of these tools today. For more support, consider scheduling a clarity call with Shelby and/or exploring additional resources on trauma and nervous system health.

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Keywords: parental alienation, alienated parents, nervous system regulation, healing from parental alienation, trauma recovery, stress management for parents

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Episode Transcript

 

Introduction

You are listening to The Beyond The High Road Podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 160. Stay tuned..   📍 📍 Welcome to Beyond the High Road, a podcast dedicated to healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation. I'm your host, Shelby Milford, a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth. If you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal, then this show is my love letter to you.

Stay tuned.

 Hey y'all. How we doing today? So today we're gonna be doing part three of a three part series. , On, , chaos and drama . . It was just a developing series. I thought it was gonna be one episode and it just so happened that I had, I came up with a , bunch of information. The more I dug, the more I wrote, that cycle sort of repeated itself.

Overview of Three-Part Series

Part one was basically unpacking how chaos becomes familiar. Part two explored cognitive awareness, right? And how to manage your own mind drama. Today this is embodiment and integration.

Learning how to move out of activation and into , a calm and peaceful state moving forward. And it's definitely, I just wanna say right now that this is a practice, it is executed and, perfected with repetition. It's a matter of really integrating all of these, or a select number of the tools that I offered to you in last week's episode, and then also in this week's episode into your daily life.

So that they become the new habits. So by the end of this episode,, my intention is for you guys to have. Concrete tools for you to complete your stress cycles, calming your body and maintaining emotional steadiness even around what seems to be the impossible triggers of alienation.

Okay, so, the tools are all here. It's just a matter of you, practicing them, utilizing them in your, in your dailies, and of course, not just my tools. If you find other tools that you like out there,

incorporating those, not just once or twice, but on a regular ongoing basis, it's what is going to promote the change. You know, it's, it is so normal. I think we all do this, that when we hear something that resonates. We get all gungho about it and we're like, yeah. And it feels good.

It makes sense in the moment when you hear it and then you go to practice it and you practice it maybe for a week, two weeks, maybe longer, you know, just depending on how great the pain is, but over time, if you don't make those things happen, they do of course. Like anything else, just sort of fall off and then the change doesn't become lasting change.

It's only temporary change because obviously you're not practicing them. , as with anything, , so it's just a matter of from peer forward, if you feel like you've had inconsistent results in the past, maybe really setting the intention for yourself from here on out. Like if you noticed that you are a nervous system activation and you do get, , sucked into drama, chaos and that Emotions of it all, like the, I wanna say, negativity of it all. Then it'd be really helpful for you to follow through with that intention,

Episode Structure and Topics

so here's how the episode's gonna go. Section one, we're gonna be talking about regulation versus suppression. , And then we're gonna talk about chronic stress in the nervous system. , Why that is important and why it is that we as alienated parents get stuck in chronic activation.

Um, I'm gonna briefly go over that as briefly as I can, which means , I'm gonna try to not. Deter from my notes. So I'm just gonna, actually, I've got some already written out, little tidbits that I'm gonna read, like important factual information that'll make the rest of what I'm saying make sense for you and hopefully motivate you to practice these things in your life on the daily, like continually practice them. 

Section three is gonna talk about the early signs of fight, flight, and freeze. I'm gonna do those individually, what that might look like for you so that you can better prepare yourself in the moment, have responses and practices ready for you to implement. The second that you notice the symptoms showing up for you.

 

The next section will be, immediate somatic tools for when you're triggered, right? Like in the moment. Practices to calm your nervous system. We're gonna talk about long-term nervous system regulation strategies. we'll go into body and lifestyle foundations for emotional resilience, integration practices, or practice actually for daily use.

And I've got some questions, some oopsie, some probing questions. Did I just delete my notes? No. Okay. And then, I'm going to provide for you, an exercise. I wanna do that towards the end. It's a vagal toning exercise that we're actually gonna do. It'll take like a minute to do.

And so I'm gonna put that at the end so that I'm not doing it like in the middle of the episode, but if you, if you want it, it'll be there for you., You can use this exercise to calm your nervous system when you are in the middle of something, but also even in a daily practice, like for your ongoing nervous system health, if you will, regulation.

 

 

Okay, so let's get started. All right, back when I started all this, , I did not have a system. Or , any sort of plan or structure for how I deal with stress.

Understanding Stress Response

Stress came on, and I'm sure you guys have heard me talk about this, stress, some stressful event came up and I just reacted in the moment and I honestly, truly believe that's, was dealing with the stress

Like for me to actually face whatever was going on was way healthier. And maybe it was than going and avoiding it and, you know, numbing, right? So I thought, okay, so I have a plan, that plan is just to, when a stressful event comes up, an email pops in my inbox if I open it, that's dealing with stress.

But I didn't realize that that is not actually dealing with stress. That may be opening it, but what am I doing internally with that? With my emotions. There was no plan, there was no awareness around what it meant to actually complete the, A stress cycle, stress response cycle. And so as it happens, because of that, I ended up holding onto a lot of unprocessed negative emotion inside my body.

And what that did over time, was create illness in my body, inflammation among a lot of other things. I had a lot of, symptoms that I've talked about before as far as like I was anemic. I'm still borderline, that's almost going away it's just a matter of me over time. Training my body, teaching my body how to process negative emotion, any sort of stress in the moment, rather than allowing my body to store it and, cause illness in me. I now do have a plan, protocol for what I do when something stressful comes up.

Now I have sort of a personal at this point, so there's not a 1, 2, 3, BA I'm done. But I started out with a 1, 2, 3 ban. I'm done. And now there's just I, depending on what's going on, I have a bunch of tools in my toolbox that I use depending on what comes up for me. But I think it's really important, and I'm gonna explain to you why in a second that you guys, if you are here and you're just dealing with stress, you're telling yourself that you're dealing with stress as it comes up, or you're not dealing with stress as it comes up, and instead you're going and trying to hide or numb, get yourself away from escape the stress.

I really wanna urge you to, and you'll hear why in a second. To develop a protocol. Okay. Because the long-term effects of that are just so great. And like I said, I've, I've really, uh, experienced the downfall of that even up recently for me.

Impact of Chronic Stress on Alienated Parents

So when alienated parents repeatedly face rejection or legal uncertainty, the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for your fight or flight response, , stays switched on.

This produces your elevated heart rate, muscle tension, shallow breathing, hyper vigilance, all designed for immediate safety rather than sustained living over time. This constant activation rewires the brain for danger, keeping the parent you alert, anxious, bracing for loss or conflict even when there's no current threat.

Okay. And you may not even know that that's what's happening with you. But if you notice, like some of the symptoms for me was that I had a really, I was just talking about this with a client a few days ago. a really sensitive startle response.

Or maybe I used to see like shadows in the corner of my eye, or if like clouds would come over the sun and I was like looking a different direction. I thought it was somebody right next to me. I would, , if people walked up to me or walked next to me, walked in front of me in a public place and I wasn't expecting them, I would like audibly shrink.

There were definite signs that I was still in, extreme nervous system activation. , And back then, when that stuff was going on, I didn't know that me, that I could have PTSD. Or complex PTSD. I didn't think that that was for regular people, civilians, you know, I thought that that was for only reserved for, uh, veterans I just remember thinking to myself vaguely, that something was wrong with me. 

So the biology of rejection and lost emotional rejection activates the same neural pathways as physical pain.

We've talked about this before. The brain's amygdala and the pain centers treat social loss like injury. Repeated experiences of, rejection from your child, or children court invalidation or alienating. Co-parent keep these pain circuits firing, preventing emotional closure and or safety restoration.

Because the trauma is relational and recurrent, the nervous system never receives the message that the danger is over. Okay. Because it's an ongoing, I hear parents saying, you know, I have no closure every day is Groundhog Day.

I wake up and they're the same thing. Well, this is never ending. Right? The reason that's so tiring and feels like just exhausting is because your nervous system is never receiving the message that we can calm now that things can be at peace. And that is something because of the ideas we have in our mind about where our kids should be and what is quote unquote, right?

Um, safe for us. We have to train, cognitively teach our brains to create safety, even though we may not. Always want safety because we know that our kids are not where we want 'em to be. I hope that makes sense. So we need to basically signal to our nervous system for our own health, our own safety, for our own, ability to advocate effectively for our kids and for ourselves.

We have to create that message to our nervous systems ourselves. Okay.

The role of ongoing triggers, each court date, legal notice, or memory of the child can serve as a trigger. Reigniting the body's physiological defense cascade, heart racing, digestive disruption, sometimes emotional flooding or dissociation.

These recurring activations reinforce chronic hyper arousal or conversely, lead to shut down or freeze responses, right? Or exhaustion. And numbness set in as protective mechanisms. , I can still remember to this day me driving down this one road in Texas, in Austin.

I mean, it happened every time I got in the car. I would, for whatever reason, I do know that it was like on the same road that would lead to where my daughter was living with her dad. Um, so maybe that's it. But I, my eyes would get so heavy and there were times where I just didn't even care.

Classic freeze response. If I ran off the road, fell asleep, it was like, I don't care. I just, I need to sleep right now. I need to close my eyes. It's on a 70 mile an hour road, farm road just outside of Austin, every single time. And there were times where I did, I, I kept my eyes shut and I didn't care, you know, and then I'd have to, something in me woke me up and I kept driving.

But this is so typical. Um. With ongoing triggers, right? In long-term stress. it took me a really long time to recalibrate my system as far as my energy was concerned. In fact, I'm still working with that today, and I'm gonna talk about that too a little bit more later because I truly believe that long-term activation of our nervous system and that long-term stress, like chronic stress, that that really affects like your gut brain axis.

 

And if you don't regulate you might notice that you have long-term exhaustion and don't know why. You're still in this sort of, it feels like you're still stuck in survival mode.

For me, I don't, I know that I'm not, I don't feel stuck in survival mode. Not in freeze, not in, uh, fight flight. Not for the most part. I believe for me, the long-term effects have now, and I'm working with that now. I've started a whole regimen, but I have now been really focusing on my gut health, like the, my microbiome and all that.

So I'm not gonna go too far into that . But I just wanna point that out, that if you have been on this road for a while now and you are still wondering why your energies levels are just still super low you might wanna look into that as , a self-care option for you.

Look at and just start advocating for yourself by, regulating that. Anyway, that was just a side point. 

So, as alienated parents, We get out of stressful situations. many of us get out of stressful situations by avoiding right by like, I don't want this stress, this stress sucks. I need to go around it.

Right? And whatever way that is, or to just push right through it and pretend like it's not actually affecting us as much as it's affecting us. So healthy. Regulation does not mean pushing away anger, fear, grief, uh, whatever emotions that you have going on does not mean I don't wanna feel this. Let's get around it. Let's get to the joy, let's get to the happy, let's get to the calm, confidence. All the things you, we cannot, we can try to circumvent, but those feelings will then stay stored in our body.

Instead, it means helping the body to realize that it's safe. Like, I feel angry, I feel scared. I feel whatever the emotion is, and I'm also safe. So it's allowing yourself to, it, acknowledge what's going on, the negative of, what's happening in front of you, the threat, and also , to then bring it through and, provide the safety for yourself.

. Instead of waiting for safety to come by way of alienating parents stopping what they're doing, because you know, you and I both know that that's never gonna happen. So if we just are telling ourselves that the way that everything will calm down is if child comes back and things return to normal, we'll, from now until then, whenever that is, then your body is still releasing all the, the hormones, right?

The, the, the hormones that we don't wanna be releasing cortisol and all the things, right? Adrenaline and what have you.

How Survival Mode Persists

So how survival mode persists is the next section. For many alienated parents, this cycle becomes self perpetuating. Chronic cortisol release, blunts or stunts.

Emotional regulation weakens the immune system and disrupts sleep and digestion. Psychologically, it fosters over alertness, catastrophizing, or emotional numbing, all features of C-P-T-S-D, right? Without opportunities to process or complete the stress response, the body stays locked in, defensive tension, unable to return to safety based functioning.

Okay, so. It's really, really important, vital that you teach your body now how to complete the stress response, like for immediate, um, acute stress, right? Whatever is happening in the moment. And then also how to release the long-term pent up stress, emotions, negative emotion that still are probably hanging on in your system.

Okay? So it's both, I think a dual, approach to this is where it's at. And dual. I honestly think it's just a multifaceted approach to caring for your body after this long-term stress. I, I, when I say this, I don't, I don't wanna present more of a problem here, but. Alienation does really attack any sort of long-term stress is going to attack your system at so many different levels.

And it's up to us just like that. As soon as I started to say this, I think of that one quote that I love by Mark Manson that I always butcher, people have the power to fuck up your life, but you are the only one that has the power to fix it. with this long-term ongoing situation of alienation, it attacks all these different levels that we can see inside of us.

And so it's so important as like your healing tool to own your health moving forward. And instead of taking the attitude, and I mean this with all the love in my heart, I used to take the attitude like, look what they've done to me. Look at how, how much they fucked my life up, which I ended up using as like, um.

A way to stay in victim hood and not do anything, because when I'm not, look at what they've done to me, I'm not advocating for myself. Instead, I'm focusing on what they've done. And so now I'm hoping that the message here that I deliver today is more about personal responsibility in the way of, yes, you may be picking up the pieces, but you want to do it.

Hopefully i, I

inspire you to want to do it now. And not necessarily focus on what they've done, but okay, now where are we working From here? Because knowing that, , just like I said a few minutes ago, if you wanna advocate for yourself and for your kiddo kiddos in the best way possible, you need you whole.

, Having a system, a protocol. You utilize, implement on the everyday, all the time basis as a practice, you're gonna provide the structure and the, stability certainty needed to re-regulate your nervous system. And as a result of having a regulated nervous system, that's gonna cause you to be able to attain the goals that you want and create the joy and the peace and all the yummy feelings that you really do want in your life.

But not taking care of it will continue, obviously, perpetuating the pain, the unnecessary suffering, self-created suffering. Now that you know where you're at and what you're working with, right? And also being . Unregulated in your nervous system is gonna cause so much more dis-ease, unease inside of you, which is going to like multiply.

It's sort of like gremlins that you're, um, allowing bunnies that you're allowing to multiply in front of you. Alright, that's stated my case. So I kind of just mentioned it a minute, a minute ago, but calming versus completing. I wanna talk about the science of like the stress response

when some stressful event comes on, you get an email, your kid doesn't show up to, your parenting time, you get an ugly text from somebody, Calming down their nervous system or numbing, pushing away, avoiding. the circumstance on the whole is not the same thing as completing the stress response.

. Calming is a temporary solution. I wouldn't even call it a solution. It's a temporary fix. Quick fix completion though is letting the body exit the fight, flight, freeze response through sensory movement and emotional release.

let's say for example, you can suppress your tears fight off the urge to cry if you're like angry or really feeling the overflow of emotion, right? You can just. Hold it in. Try to keep yourself together or go around it by numbing or avoiding the situation as a whole that may provide the temporary fix.

Or you can safely, let the emotion move. Let allow the cry, allow the tears. It doesn't mean that you necessarily have to look at the situation or come to a conclusion about what solved the situation right then and there. It's just allowing for the emotions to be present and letting them complete.

You know, because if not, you fighting the tears and holding them off so that you save face so that you don't, you know, a lot of times we don't wanna start to cry. 'cause if we do, we think the flood skis are gonna open and then we're never gonna be able to recover from it. And that really, uh. I mean, in the beginning there may be a lot of tears, but that doesn't need to be a problem.

It's only a problem if you make it a problem. You know what I'm saying? I mean, that deserves more context. And I know that there are, like, individually, you guys will have circumstances or situations where you may wanna disagree with that, but I think if you gave me some of those we could talk that through.

And I promise you that what I just said will still stand. There'd just be different ways that you deal with that, depending on this circumstance in front of you. You know, like you may not be crying right out in public, but reserve a time that you go do that, that you allow yourself to feel, set a timer give yourself 20 minutes to punch a pillow and let the tears run.

So long as you create those windows for yourself, those little compartments for yourself, your body will start to feel, heard, paid attention to,

And once it learns, to trust you, that you are carving out periods of time to hear it, talking about your body and nervous system, your emotions, that it's not going to go into overload and just start pouring out the second that one tear comes out. I hope that makes sense. Like if you're.

Routinely allowing for, um, like little emotion sessions at some point within day that that happens, you know that the stress comes on, then your body's gonna learn that, listen, we will be able to complete this may not be right now in the middle of a work meeting or something like that, but we know that we, we could deal with this later.

What happens is if you have all of this pent up emotion and one little thing happens and you haven't given yourself the time to actually feel it, then that's when all that overpour and comes and it feels like it's never gonna stop. You know what I'm saying? Okay. So you gotta, you now sort of create the regimen for yourself and create a sense of trust and knowing that you will give yourself the time.

Necessary to complete the emotion that's asking to be noticed, and you won't necessarily have the problem.

 

All right, I just talked about the overwhelming. stress response or overflow of emotions. Now we're gonna talk about pre reactivation, the early signs of fight, flight, freeze. Okay? If you learn to catch these early, you can stop the escalation and choose something different. I'm gonna start with fight response.

These are the sensations that reflect activation, power buildup, and aggression readiness. So for fight response, the sensations are a tight , and clenched jaw grinding teeth or, clenched fist. Heat rising in the face or chest flushed or burning skin. You notice when your face gets really hot, you're like, ooh, um, muscle tension on the arms, shoulder or core feeling ready to strike.

I hold my stress up in my neck and my shoulders. . Noticing when that happens for you and really you guys right now, I would love it if you would. drop into your body and notice where you might still be holding stress. Okay, still in flight response.

Quick, forceful breathing, expanded chest tunnel vision. This happens for some, but not everybody or locked focus on a perceived threat. That's doesn't always happen, especially when we're talking about an emotional threat. But it can happen. Sudden burst of energy or shaking from adrenaline.

You know what I'm talking about? When you get really mad and you're like, mm, your leg starts going, , stomach tightness or fire in the gut. Urge to argue, shout, control, or lash out.

So an example of this is like, you know how when you. Start rehearsing what you'll say to the opposing attorney or to like your ex or to somebody like you're just re having a conversation in your mind. And it's kind of an imagin, it is an imaginary conversation. And then you also imagine what they might say back, and then you say something back, do you know what I'm talking about?

You can do this. The early side of things, you can do this. I mean, I would go on for who knows how long with imaginary conversations that never actually ended up taking place and they hadn't taken place before. You know, where I just sat and replayed stuff in my mind and I should have said this, or things I, I could say in the future and it's pointless, you know, but that is your body preparing to fight. 

, Flight response. The sensations mirror anxiety, restlessness, and the body's attempt to move to safety. Rapid harpy and quick shallow breathing. Tingling or numbness in the arms. Legs are hands as blood moves towards the large muscles, right towards the center of your body and down to the legs so that you can flee.

Okay, so you might notice that you have tingly fingers. Fidgeting, pacing or inability to stay still. Lightheadedness or feeling sped up.

Dilated pupils, darting eyes, scanning surroundings. Feeling trapped or with a strong urge to flee or withdraw. I feel like that in confined spaces, sense of agitation or jittery, nervous energy that won't settle. Urge to check your phone, escaped social media. Those are all the flight response.

These are not , exhaustive lists. I just, some of the main, symptoms. Example, you start reorganizing your house leaving. Texts unread. This is huge for me. needing to do something instantly, like needing to fill your space, the time with doing your, your, I call this verbing out of your emotions.

, So that's all your flight response,  freeze response. The body becomes immobilized. These sensations reflect, overload, shut down, and or dissociation. Okay? Your body feels stiff, heavy and or numb. Unable to move or speak. That's on the, extreme side of it, but still, how often do you get stuck and be like, I just can't, I just can't get off.

I'm too tired, I'm exhausted. It's like extreme fatigue, right? Breath becomes very shallow or temporarily stops. May feel really heavy. heart rate drops hands or feet might feel cold. mind goes blank or foggy, feeling spaced out cloudy, like you can't formulate a sentence. you can't remember events.

Sensitive detachment from, from body or surroundings like that Unreal feeling. I've never, I don't believe I've ever had this symptom, but many people do. Muscle collapse or slouching posture, sometimes followed by trembling as the body thaws out, okay?

Feeling invisible, dissociated, or powerless Hello... breathing stays shallow. You zone out or lose track of time. Okay? So example, caught in a legal wait, right? You're waiting, you're putting your life on hold. You find yourself staring at a wall, unable to act, feeling confused, , or like overwhelmed.

You don't know what to do next because you're. You're telling yourself that you need to await until the next court hearing the next whatever, the next step in the whole process. And so you end up doing nothing at all. Right? And honestly, it feels impossible for you to do anything. so when was the last time that you  noticed  any of these happening Before the drama exploded?

Like I said, just in the start of this little section is recognizing these, early physical cues can help you to interrupt the automatic trauma responses that begin regulating before full activation occurs. It is really helpful for you to become like body aware of what's happening with you

Most of what goes on with you on the daily, your headaches, your tiredness, whatever isn't just a random symptom. There's a bigger reason for it. And I don't mean to say that so that you catastrophize like, oh God, this is really affecting me on levels. I didn't know, like I was saying earlier, but instead, so that you can step into action.

Don't use this information, any of this information against you. Use it for you to advocate for your health, not to keep you stuck in disease. Okay. All right, so now we're gonna get to the immediate smart tools for when you're triggered. Okay.   Five senses, grounding, scan. This is one that probably all of you have heard before, and I know that I've shared with you in other episodes in the.

Uh, prolonged freeze episode that I did maybe May of 24. June of 24, somewhere like that. There's a prolonged freeze episode and I gave you at the end. I gave you a bunch, and I also did one last fall. I'll have to link those. Uh, I said I would last week and I just forget which ones they are, but, , well, I know the one but not the other one.

Anyway, , so look around. Name five things that you see, four things that you can touch, three things that you can hear, two things that you can smell and one thing that you can taste. Okay. So that's one.  It returns your focus to immediate safety and present moment. That one works really well and it's quick. You don't have to think too much about it, but just have it put it in your little toolbox or arsenal for things that you can do, practices that you can implement in the middle of when the shit starts to go down, okay.

To calm yourself and bring you back to a place of safety. Okay?  And I, I know that when I first started doing stuff like this, I kind of, um, poo-pooed these really simple practices, but I am telling you, it will change your experience and cause you, cause your prefrontal cortex to come back online in the middle of acute stress, okay? 

Because you, as you know, we talk about all the time, the second that your body goes into survival mode, into trauma response. Your prefrontal cortex, all of your executive functions get pretty much dulled or almost , shut down you are not able to access your creativity or innovation, your, , reasoning, critical thinking, all of that gets dulled quite a bit until you're able to ask it questions or do something to bring you back into the present moment and calm your nervous system. The deep breathing that I talked about in episode one of this three part series.    Diaphragmatic breathing, breathing into your belly.

, You can do square breathing or you can do, 4, 7, 8 pattern where you inhale for four counts, hold for seven counts, and then exhale for eight counts. And then just keep repeating that. It doesn't matter the numbers, you don't have to remember the numbers, on your exhale, you wanna hum gently because

promotes vagal toning. But you don't have to remember the numbers. Just you want to inhale Hold it for a big count because you're hitting that, that vagus nerve. And then as you exhale, make it longer than your inhale or your hold.

Okay? That's all you have to remember. You can place a palm on your chest and a palm on your belly, right over your belly button. And notice your warmth, the warmth in your body, Maybe you notice your heart, maybe you notice your breathing, the rise and fall of your chest or your abdomen. 

Why this one works is it brings comfort containment. There's

Tools for Regulation and Recovery

something about placing your hand on your heart, on your belly, that is almost like a big hug. Okay? So wherever you are, just give yourself a two minutes, a minute even just to stop, tune out all of the noise and drop into your body.  

 

Butterfly hug. So you cross your arms, you over your chest, and if you're watching, you'll see and take your index in your middle finger, and you tap your shoulders alternately. Okay? The bilateral tapping, can, soothe anxiety and calm your physical symptoms of distress. 

That's all it is. ,  

Grounding through the feet is another one. Stand with bare feet on the ground. Notice the sensations in each foot if you can. I call it yoga toes. If you are watching, you can see, I'm not showing you my toes right now, but. Spread your toes out as wide as you can each one of your toes.

And then individually, start with your pinky or your big toe, either one. Start from one side of your feet, drop those down to the floor, and then your next toe, and your next toe and your next toe, and then your big toe so that you're gripping the floor with your toes. Grounding yourself. Feeling like the way that I used to describe it in yoga when we were doing tree is you're growing roots into the floor.

You can take that even further pelvic tilt forward and tense up.

Your calves, your quads, your hamstrings, your core, your groin area, did I say glutes? Your abs all the way up. Okay. Relaxing. Shoulders down, away from the ears and just be nice and firm tall, , like of two footed tree.  

 

Shake it out. Stand and gently shake your arms, hands, arms, legs, torso for one or two minutes.

I used to do this in my therapy sessions with my, my therapist back, but I would stand up and she would make me like, shake it all, you know. But it really, it seems ridiculous to do, but it feels amazing and it does. It calms your nervous system. Gradually build up the intensity, allowing your body to release tension and reset your stress response. 

The shaking out, the grounding through the feet. All of that helps you to process through. That the, the active, they're gentle, active movements, but you're allowing emotion to be present while telling yourself is signaling to your nervous system that you're safe. Okay? Because none of these actions would you take in the middle of actual calamity, all right?

So even though shit may be going down emotionally for you, it's really important for you to signal to your nervous system that you are safe and you are not in immediate danger from, you know, like death. You're not gonna die. Because your nervous system has no fucking clue what's going down, it just knows what you're imagining in your head.

And that feels like death to it, you know? So you instead you reverse that and signal to your body that you're okay. Here's another one that I was taught by somebody. It's to set a timer. This is more, you can do this. As more of a upkeep ongoing practice. And I really like that 'cause we're getting ready to go into long-term nervous system regulation strategies anyway, but is to    set a timer for three to five minutes and stand in front of a mirror and tell yourself everything that you're worried about.

Okay? Make sure you set a, time, use, your watch or Alexa or whatever. I was looking at my Alexa to make sure I didn't just activate her to notify you when you're done with some nice little chime, okay? Not some crazy alarm. Look yourself in the mirror and recite all the things that you're so worried about.

So whatever your fear of the unknown is, Shake your hands like I was talking about earlier while you're doing it, this, lets go of the pent up nervous energy. And you'll notice most of the time that whatever you're telling yourself that you're worried about, it'll just go on a loop and there's not, you'll, you're gonna end up repeating, this is what happens with me.

I shouldn't tell you what's, gonna happen with you. But most of the time I end up repeating the same 2, 3, 4 things over. And if you play those things out, it doesn't really go very far. It's just your mind like thought looping and staying in that activation because that's what it's used to most of the time. 

There may be times when in like acute stress, something is coming up like just now happened. It's just presented a new problem and you're freaking out still. I would go ahead and say do this because most of the time, the end result that we think is gonna happen, I think I've read the statistics on it and it's really, it's astonishing to see how many things don't actually happen.

The percentage rate is like 90% of the things that we worry about on the every day don't fucking happen. . Now, I know too that with alienation, we know the history of the alienating parent.  But when we're thinking about what might come because of what they've already done, we position ourselves in a place of fear, and then oftentimes we'll contribute to making that thing that we fear so much happen. 

All right. Long term system regulation strategies. When you want stress to go away, you end up causing more stress. That's what I was just talking about here.    Choose what you do want instead.  When you tell yourself, I don't wanna feel stress, like, I don't want this, I can't deal with this right now, you will end up creating all that undue stress on top of it, and then

never end up dealing with whatever the stressful situation is anyway, because you're too busy dealing with the, self-created stress, you know?  what you wanna focus on is not what you don't want, but what you do want and what you choose,  so instead of, I don't wanna feel stressed, you could say,    I will notice when I start to feel any of the symptoms from fight, flight, freeze, I'll notice when my shoulders start to tense or when I start to grind my teeth, or when I start to dissociate or feel exhausted and wanna go to bed, and instead I will do blank.  And so that you're focusing on what you can control, and now you have a protocol for , how you will behave.

And when you give your mind something to do, it's going to focus on that and not what you don't want. Okay? This is ever rethink because , all the parents I talk to, not to say that talk with, not to say that , there aren't issues. So I'm not saying ignore them, but here's the issue. how do I wanna behave in order to move through the situation coming out successful in the end.    And success is measured by how you show up,  Not about how the result, what result comes. 'cause you can't always control that, but you can control how you show up.  

Daily rhythm and predictable structure is what you want to create for yourself. You want to create certainty for yourself, structure for your nervous system.  which causes, uh, environment safety, And so    set your intention for the day before you even open your eyes. I've started doing this, I don't know, maybe the last couple years and I love it. 

And now if you guys know about HRV, like your heartbeat variability, which is the space between , your heartbeats, Under prolonged stress, heart rate variability lowers, and you, we don't want that. We want our heart rate lower, but

we want our heart rate variability to be high. And so Before you jump out of bed. Like, wanna attack the day or if you wake up stressed. How a lot of parents I know do, coming from what we have, we wake up like already in panic mode.

Like, oh my God, blah, blah, blah, and start running right? Most of the time because we're creating drama because we didn't get enough sleep the night before. 'cause we didn't get to bed on time because of whatever drama happened the day before. And so then we wanna sleep as long as we can and then we hit the snooze button however many times.

And then you're off to the races right in the beginning. This is fucking terrible way to start your day. A terrible way to start your day. Okay. So instead you wanna set your intention for the day before you even open your eyes. I do. The mindfulness app sometimes. Not always.

Sometimes I just keep my eyes shut and I take some deep breaths, like inhale, then exhale, you know, and I think about how I wanna be today, whatever's going on. Do I want to be clear minded, certain determined? Calm at peace, feeling neutral, whatever it is. I set that intention before I even open my eyes or maybe a soft open of my eyes before I get out of bed, before I move, really, that I spend a couple minutes, two minutes maybe there.

And I always, if I check my watch, my HRV, like this morning it was at, at 1 0 7 or something like that, which before it used to be in like the twenties. do that first thing in the morning, and you'll notice you save more time throughout your day. You're much more efficient by just creating that set point early in the morning.

It sets your mood for the rest of the day. Now, will things come up and maybe your mood shifts? Sure, but that's the opportunity for you to, again, interrupt whatever's going on and reset your intention for the day. Okay? This is everything I'm telling you. You will feel so much more in control of your environment, your surroundings, and your, your body, your own climate.

when you take control emotionally, mentally, mindfully,

 

 routines, keeping routines in your daily life,  your sleep routines, your meals. Are you eating regularly? Many times coming from stress, we, the last person we take care of is our own selves, especially in the middle of calamity.

We're like, I can wait. We completely do our own selves dirty and then go and try to solve the problems of the world, solve our, the problems of our alienation. And because we're running on fumes, we peter out way early, And also, we're exhausted, overwhelmed, and we add more drama and stress onto our bodies, which the dysregulated nervous system loves because it thinks that that's normal, but it's not, and it's going to cause you long-term pain, suffering.  

Discipline is knowing what you want, remembering what you want in the moment, and then choosing it.  That's all discipline is just what do I want here? What do I want, want long term, not short term?

What do I need to just get done right now, coming from a rushy place  that's dysregulated nervous system.  So instead the, regulated not reaction, but response would be to choose long-term health stability. before we choose the knee jerk reaction.

So routines help the body know what's coming and help us , to stay resilient. right now, more than ever, especially if you still feel dysregulated, which I'm banking on, that if you're listening to this episode that you, many of you do, creating almost overly creating, certainty and.

Routine in your world will speed up your recovery so much. ,  

 

Micro doses of stillness and or slowness. So dysregulation will cause you to speed up. In order to regulate, you must slow down.  Now there's a caveat to this, and that's if you are a default to freeze. Like if you've been in prolonged freeze, then you might already be.

In slow down mode. And in that case you're gonna do the opposite of that, but I'm gonna explain that in a minute.  Short, frequent pauses, even like 30 seconds at a time can help build tolerance for peace. So I'm gonna ask you some questions at towards the end of this episode. If you are one, which I was talking about in the last couple episodes, if you don't like the calm by yourself and to hear your own self think this exercise is great for that.

create just small little. Containers of time, 30 seconds, one minute no earphones, no scrolling, no nothing of hearing your breath, noticing that your surroundings. This is another, actually you could do this, um, in the middle of stress response too, is to notice, like right now I'm looking at, this granite,

, I could look at the pattern in the granite, noticing the differences and the similarities in the patterning in the granite. Or if you're looking at a piece of wood, the same thing. Noticing the wood grain. When does it stop? Where are the joints? Letting your eyes follow the flow of whatever.

It would be great if it was some natural structure, like a tree or a rock wood, whatever. anything will work. Just becoming micro-focused on the here and now, even for those short little periods of time, really help you to get grounded and return the system back to a state of normalcy.

Normalcy, not necessarily what it knows, but where you're aimed for. 

 

Cut down on your screen time, especially while eating. You know how people will like eat and scroll or like nervously do that to detach, dissociate from whatever's going on, or you'll do, maybe you do that at night or if you have insomnia and you wake up in the middle of the night. 

This is one thing that I have stopped myself from doing. It's been a long time now, but I have had especially the last like year more insomnia where I'll go to sleep and two hours later I'll wake up DING!, a wide awake. I don't allow myself to keep my eyes open. I shut them. Just stay still in, in a sleep mode, And I don't get up and I don't scroll. And this really does help to regulate me and doesn't, because if you scroll in the middle of the night, or really anytime it's opening up, all these little idea centers in your mind and all these different compartments, depending on what you're seeing in your scrolling, and if it's doom scrolling, that's a whole nother thing, you know?

But even just funny stuff and whatever, you're opening up these little areas in your mind, and those stay activated, lit up even after you put the phone down, whenever that is, to try to go back to sleep. It's gonna be that much harder for you to get to sleep, is what I'm saying. To get restful sleep. You may fall asleep because your eyes are heavy, but notice the quality of sleep that you get too.  

, So movement and body journaling. All right. Check in with your body three to four times a day. Just bringing emotional awareness, quick scan of your body. Notice how you're feeling.  Again, another one that you can do while you're in the middle of stress response is scan your body from top, like from your forehead all the way down, like through fingertips.

And then go down your whole body to your toes. there's two ways to do this, but just scan and see where you're noticing, what you're noticing, how you feel.  Allow your mind to shut down and not make stories up about whatever emotions or tightness you're feeling. Okay.  At least just for this exercise.

Because the second that we start to get activated is when we attach the story to whatever physical sensation we're feeling inside our body. This is what causes us the unnecessary suffering, is the stories we place on top of whatever's happening.   Whatever's you're feeling inside of you is a neutral, 

just become aware of it and allow it to speak to you through vibrations. that is it. Just noticing, where it is, breathing into and expanding the areas that feel constricted. can also do it too, is if you are in the middle of stress response or you just wanna relax before you go to sleep at night and your mind's been racing and doing what it does. Either you've been doom scrolling, or you're ruminating, or you're catastrophizing or whatever. In order to let that go, you can lay down or you can sit comfortably and tense up, or stand actually and tense up from top all the way down to bottom.

Each muscle group like your shoulders, lift 'em up and then let 'em drop. 10 to your jaw. Let it relax your throat. Same thing. Let it relax. Muscle by muscle all the way down to fingers, digits, and toes. Big muscle groups, small muscle groups. This will help you to create a sense of body awareness, and grounding.  📍 📍

Simple stretching, walking, yoga, and tracking your activation patterns . It brings your focus just more internal and physical as opposed to overthinking your way out of everything.  And that's another thing that I've really meant to talk about up in the beginning is that a lot of times the way that we shut down the emotional processing and finishing of the stress response is by it sounds and seems so passive, is by overthinking and making it all mean.

Something like overanalyzing our own reactions, our own emotions, and making them mean something that they don't necessarily have to mean. And we take whatever we're telling ourself that that means as fact. And most of the time, 99% of the time it's not. It's all story. And usually it's like doomy. And so it makes it even worse and creates stress on top of stress.

Okay, so overthinking overanalyzing is shutting down and basically causing you to, ball up all the energy and emotion and store it somewhere. I always think of it like is when we stop the trauma response or the emotional response and when we hold back tears or, or reason our way out of whatever our emotions that we have going on over explaining ourself inside, right?

To try to get away from the emotion. But it's like crumpling up your emotion storing it somewhere behind some rib and allowing it to harden up and it's that much harder in order for you to process And,

basically excrete the emotion is you have to now rehydrate it, open it back up, allow yourself to process it, feel it, and then it sort of breaks up and let's go. But it's so much more work to locate it, rehydrate it, open it up, sort of like a flower blooming and then let it go. Do you know what I'm saying?

I know that sounds a little wooey and weird, but it's the way I envision it anyway and it's helpful for me to stop making shit mean things that it doesn't have to mean, it could just be an emotion, you know?

 So if you need to, but if what I said I was gonna talk about in a second is if you tend to go, go, go when you're stressed, if you verb your way through your emotions, fight flight toned attuned, then you want to go towards the calming activities in order to balance out and expand your whole tolerance window.

And of course obviously then if you , tend to freeze, you know, and avoid and sort of dissociate, sometimes that means self-medicate. Then You want to intentionally act to reconnect. you're always wanting to go to bed or you feel exhausted, Parents I speak with a lot, they just wanna wake up after all this is over, then light exercise, walking, even breathing, shifting from like your weight from one side to the left, sort of swaying, right?

Shaking like your arms and legs and body out dance parties, anything to get your body moving and get the emotions un wedged walking out in nature if it's during the day, you know, getting your body reconnected and grounded with yourself dropping into your body and moving, so if you're tend to be nervous energy, fight flight, then you wanna calm yourself

if you're freeze, then act.   

also, on the same note, like in the evenings, if you tend to avoid self-medicate, uh, dissociate, turn on Netflix, whatever it is, then you wanna intentionally, like if you're trying to stop some sort of habit and you notice that you've been avoiding and trying to evade your emotions and you've shut off, and sometimes maybe you're missing appointments, meetings, court dates, whatever it is, because you can't deal,

it would help you to, like, especially at night when you know that the noise starts up in your brain and you go to do the act instead. Intentionally set time apart to reconnect with you.  It doesn't have to be in the evening, but it's just usually people's quiet time. When , things start to get nervous because it is quiet, that's when you can reconnect with you doing, finding rituals.

Maybe it's painting, maybe it's drawing, maybe it's writing. Maybe you don't feel particularly creative, finding good in the world, spending 10 minutes, five, 10 minutes to write down the things that happened in the day that were good focus only on that.

Focus on good about you.   Visualization is also great. Visualize where you want to be get detailed about what that looks like. You on the way, walking to where you wanna be. I have a client of mine right now he is visualizing his beach house that he wants to buy Once he's created the, cash flow to do that.

And he's got very detailed about what that looks like, how what he would look like in the house, doing things in the house.  He did that on his own. And I said, okay, now picture you walking toward that. What does that look like for you?

Make it real because your mind does not know the difference between what you are creating up there visualizing, especially when you're really detailed. If you're vague about it, then it's not gonna believe you. But if you are very specific about what your surroundings are make it in your mind as if it's happening now, don't I wanna be there?

I wanna be there instead. Make it real right here in the moment for you. Your mind is gonna start believing that that's where you belong.  

you belong wherever you say you wanna belong.  basically what manifestation is. Envisioning you in the space. Okay? So that's another way you can connect to you and future you, spending the time to do that, especially if you have been an escapist, And wanted to disconnect from yourself by over something, something else. Drinking, eating, smoking, drugging, shopping, gambling, whatever.

Get connected with who, where you are, where you want to be, what have you.  

 

. Restorative sleep. I know I already spoke about this, but sleep is so important to downregulate your stress hormones and mood stabilization. 

I cannot talk about this enough and state it more emphatically your sleep and the quality of sleep you have and the amount you're sleeping your sleep hygiene and your routine is so important., Instead of giving you the facts, I'm just gonna give you some personal,

Experience on it. I notice for me, having the insomnia, I think it's hormone related, but who knows? It doesn't matter what it is. I noticed that if I even go a half hour over what my bedtime is, I have a much harder time falling asleep and staying asleep at night.

So if I deciding on a time, stick to that time turn the lights off and lay in bed. eyes closed. Most of the time I can fall asleep much easier than if I stay up and wait for myself to get tired. I know you guys, this is like stuff that's so basic that I know that you're all adults and you know how to do, but I think I have what we've been through or during what we're going through, it's so important.

It's vital to your health and also your performance, the quality of your performance in your days, coming. Restorative sleep and you know, there's more and more data coming out now about how important like your deep sleep is the amounts of sleep, the quality of sleep that you're getting affects your health.  📍 📍

Hydration, I know this is again, all the basics, but your blood, sugar and hydration, balance, meals and steady energy support, emotional regulation, and decrease reactivity. We think in the moment, forget it, I don't need to eat. I'm not hungry, I've been stressed and I just, my stomach can't take it.

If you're not eating regularly and your blood sugar is not regulated and sort of up, down, depending on what you're eating and how far in between, you are not going to be able to perform and think at your highest at your potential.  Okay? Whether you feel like it or not small meals, follow a schedule whatever you need to do, think of it as fuel going into your body.

Okay. Now also too, if you're on the overeating side of things, then again, think of the food that you're putting in your body as fuel. I mean, this is all coming from a nutritionist form a nutritionist. Uh, practice these days, but what you put in your body and how often you do put it in determines the way that you show up and how you feel.

It determines your experience and your world. ., Restoring your gut microbiome, like I kind of touched on up there, chronic stress damages, the gut, diversity affecting serotonin levels, it affects anxiety, affects your energy levels.

Like I was, I think I said in the beginning is that I never knew why I my energy levels were shot. Like I would be okay in the morning and then come midday, you know, one o'clock all of a sudden was like a rapid decline and it's just now starting to get better. I'm, this is not any add or commercial or anything.

I started taking a supplement. But if you don't have to take a supplement, I started taking seed. You know, they have an AM and pm. You don't have to do that. Just pay attention to, and maybe do your own research about gut microbiome , what it affects How much it influences all of your other health, your brain health, your clarity, your ability to put words together to. Process your memory, your working memory, your long-term memory, all of that. There's a gut brain axis. And so your, your gut microbiome determines how well you're gonna feel throughout your day.

Okay? So enough said about that this is not a podcast about nutrition, but add probiotic, prebiotic, high fiber foods. Minimize your processed sugar and your excessive caffeine. Okay? if you've tried all the other things , this could be one of the reasons why you're low energy or why you wanna just crawl into your bed, like, at times when it's not appropriate.

So you don't wanna climb into bed, you know, aside from your stress, re overactive stress response system. Okay? So I've got now we're coming towards the end guys. Okay. Integration practice for, these are five questions I've , wrote them as five probing self-assessment questions designed to deepen reflection on your relationship with drama and emotional intensity.

Self-Assessment Questions

Okay. These questions draw from self-reflective frameworks that uncover motivation, root causes, and emotional patterns. Okay. I put them together through other corporate, um, questioning that were similar, but I did it all geared towards us and being prone to chaos and drama. Okay. When life feels calm and basically I took challenging areas that my clients have and posed them as questions here, um,  when life feels calm or quiet, what emotions or sensations arise in your body and what story do you tell yourself about that feeling?  like in the evenings or when you're alone, what emotions or sensations arise in your body? And then what's the story that you're attaching? Okay, that's question one.   

question two, what are you afraid might happen if you stop engaging with or reacting to drama altogether? Like we feel it's so in the moment. It's such a, urgency to react, right? It's like this, Ooh, I have to do something. I have to say something. I have to respond to the text. I have to tell them what I'm, I really meant, or whatever it is.

But what are you afraid of that would happen if you didn't do that? If you didn't react,  if you stopped engaging? What, what's the story you're telling yourself there? Okay. Three. In moments of chaos, what need or emotion, like control, validation, or belonging do you think your nervous system is trying to meet?

Okay, I'm gonna say that again. In moments of chaos, what need or emotion do you think your nervous system is trying to meet? 

Control, validation, belonging, feeling loved. What? Okay.    Number four, how do you know when you are contributing to tension rather than responding to it? And what belief about yourself drives that pattern? When are you adding drama, tension resistance and what belief about yourself is driving it? Why is it so urgent?    Number five. If peace and safety became your new normal, what parts of you might resist or feel uncomfortable with that change? 

 

So each of these questions sort of invite you to move beyond the surface level recognition into awareness of your subconscious motivations and body-based responses. Okay? Helping you to map out where change can begin, like helping you to map out Any sort of motivation or sense of urgency behind the reason why you

React in stressful situations. That sense of urgency, I always have my clients instead of acting, wanting to react in the moment that's when I have them to sit wait even when it feels dire like it's happening now. I need to act right now. I have, in the past I've had in like the group coaching and some of my like other, uh, seminar sort of things, I have parents who are feel so urgent and like, oh my gosh, they called, they called.

Or they're not gonna come. , They feel like everything is 9 1 1 and that they need to get it solved right away. And my question is always to them, why, why now?

And what needs to be solved? How would that make you feel? What is it that your nervous system is wanting? Like truly what is , the goal emotion for you? So just stopping and asking yourself those questions will help you to supply whatever it is you might be needing outside, like from the calamity.

You can supply that for yourself just by getting quiet and doing some reflection. , Oh, I'm wanna do that one exercise with you in just a second, but one thing I just wanna say in closing that healing your nervous system isn't about avoiding your reality at all. It's about giving your body a new experience of safety.

So peace and connection become your new normal. shit can go down, the world can blow up outside of you. But when you know, and when you're able to communicate to your body that you are safe and that you are advocating for yourself, acting on your own behalf, on the behalf of your children, then whatever anybody else thinks, whatever happens out there, it's okay because you are the creator of your own ecosystem, right?

You can regulate and provide whatever emotion. That's what we're always going after in the end, is some emotion, peace, safety, calm, certainty, as I always say, belonging those emotions. You can create yourself right now if you want. They're available to you, so it's just becoming. Adapt and practiced at supplying that for your body.

 

Vagal Toning Exercise

Alright, so now we're gonna do that one minute exercise. The vagal toning exercise that was originated by Dr. Stanley Rosenberg, this helps vile toning.

Activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes peace and calm and safety as opposed to nervous system activation. Okay? You'll be amazed if you do this whole thing with me at how much, if you hold your tension and your neck and your shoulders, how much different you'll feel afterwards.

At least I was when I first did this. Okay, so you're gonna probably sit in a chair and you're going to sit up nice and tall, shoulders over your hips, and you're gonna turn your head to the right. You wanna turn it just as far over to the right as you can without straining yourself and keeping your shoulders and chest pointing forward.

Okay? Just notice how you feel there and maybe where it might be tight, if there's any tension there and like what that feels like. Okay? And then they're gonna come back to center. Then you're gonna look over to your left, same way as far as you can without any major pain, right? Notice where you might be tense, just looking right over your shoulder towards the left, and then return to center.

Okay? You have an idea of how you felt there on either side.. Now you're going to, that was just the pre part. This is the Stanley Rosenberg part. You're gonna take your hands. I'm going back to my yoga teaching days, guys, and, and my description, because if you're not watching and you're listening, I have to be able to explain this well enough so that you can do it.

The exercise, but, so you're going to interlock your fingers, palms facing out in front of you, okay? And then you're gonna take your hands and place them behind your head, So your head is resting cradled, in your palms. Fingers interlock. You can lie on your back to do this. In fact, I think that's how this exercise was meant to do.

But I actually like to like sit in a little bit of a reclined position right now. I'm not reclined because I'm here, but you know, you get the idea. while hands are interlocked, you're gonna look over without moving your head. You're gonna look over to the right as far as your eyes can go.

And stay there for 30 seconds. And 30 seconds will feel like a long time, but just keep your head facing forward. Eyes are the only things that move, and I'll tell you when 30 seconds is up.

If you're here and you have a, you naturally wanna sigh or yawn or whatever, that's fine. Go ahead and listen to your body. You know, just keep your eyes facing over towards the right point it to the right elbows out, chest forward, head, still face forward.

And then you're gonna gently bring your back eyes back to center. And you're gonna now look only to the left. Eyeballs are moving. Head. Stay straight, look to the left,

and you wanna stay there. For 30 seconds or until your body naturally wants to yawn or sigh

or swallow, my eyes left. Everything else forward

Whenever you naturally yawn, sigh, swallow, you can return yourself back. And it's okay if you haven't gotten there yet. You can stay there for as long as you need until you do. Okay. When you're ready, bring your eyes back to center rest for a moment. Maintaining your upright posture. Let your the blood come back into your hands and fingers, right if you're sitting up.

And then now turn right and notice any difference in your. How you feel on the, on the left side when you turn right and again to the left.

Notice any difference. This promotes calm and safety in your body. The simple shifting of the eyes and not moving the rest of you, because this would never happen in a real, uh, circumstance or situation of danger.

This is not a natural posture when we're in danger. And also there's a, there's more you could read up on this. Dr. Stanley Rosenberg is the one that invented it. But it's, um. Promotes a feeling of calm and safety inside of you.

It also kind of , relaxes and relieves any tension that you might have in your body. So that is it. That's all I have for you guys today. You've got all the practices for acute in the moment or some of the practices you can look up more in the moment. , Stress response, activation, and also long-term, solutions to promote healing in your life.

Okay? And this coupled with or paired with episodes, one and two of this series, the last two episodes, and your mind management in the moment and then ongoing will give you a full protocol to help you to advocate for yourself and reregulate your nervous system now moving forward. So I hope that helps.

I hope you guys have a lovely, lovely week and I will see you I week for.

I think about that. Okay. All right. Take care.

 

Closing

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