When we are stuck in stress, this is what we need
Hey beautiful,
How are you today? When we are stuck in a state of stress we are yearning for radical change. For the stress to all of a sudden disperse and for our lives to enter a state of peace and calm. I 100% get that.
The challenge though is to understand how the nervous system works and has been trained over our lifetime to respond to things it’s learnt to label as stressful.
Our nervous system is meant to be able to enter a temporary state of stress and then come out of it. So we are walking along, we notice some form of danger, our survival response turns on, we work on escaping the danger, and then we come out of the stress/survival response and back into a state of calm.
Exactly as an antelope would after being chased by a lion and managing to get away. Calm before, calm after – but an incredibly effective stress/survival response to get away from that lion.
We are meant to utilise our survival response when things are threatening, dangerous.
But.
And this is a big but.
Most of us are using our survival /stress response not just when things are dangerous or threatening – but most or all of the time.
And it’s when stress / overwhelm / survival becomes a habituated response that we need to take an approach that rewires & retrains our nervous system so that we don’t start panicking when we are late, don’t experience icy chills of terror when we have to speak to our accountant,or don’t feel intense overwhelm when talking about a tricky subject with our partner, or deep feelings of doom and dread as we head to a family party.
When seemingly small things feel overwhelming…
Or we feel frequently trapped and stuck in our lives, even if on paper we have a decent life…
When we wake up in the morning feeling unrested, overwhelmed by the day ahead..
Or like we are frequently disconnected, and not present in our daily lives…
These are signs that our nervous system has got stuck in the stress / survival response.
So how do we come out of this stress response? How do we feel calm like the antelope after it’s been chased by a lion, but now seems to be just as relaxed as before (which it is.)
The nervous system needs to feel safe to come out of this stress response.
So it needs to be trained to not view everything as a potential emergency/threat. And it needs to be done with a lot of gentleness, slowness and time.
A nervous system that is stuck in the stress response needs to embrace the concept of baby steps.
A nervous system stuck in long-term stress doesn’t want to leap out of its stress response and into calm, to shed all of the protective responses it’s built up over years or decades all at once, because that feels terrifyingly unsafe.
It needs to be very very very gently guided into safety. Softly, gently, with a lot of understanding and support.
And this is made harder because we are so often locked into loops of judgement around how overwhelmed / stressed / panicky we are – so we aren’t in tune with what we actually need to feel safe enough to move gently and slowly (but permanently) out of habituated stress / survival.
We aren’t paying attention to the fact that our nervous system is like a frazzled, frightened small child or animal that isn’t going to ‘snap out of it’ – it needs to be gently tended to, given regular consistent support, attuned to and guided with safety and understanding.
Even though we might have spent 10, 20 or 50 years in states of frequent, chronic stress, we often have an expectation that we should be able to shake these off quickly.
But spending decades in these habits of stress means it requires a little time to step out of them (though not 10 years thankfully!)
We couldn’t expect to go to the gym having not exercised in 10 years and be fit overnight.
Or land in a new country with a new language and be fluent in a few days.
Or break our leg and have it heal in a week.
It’s the same for our habituated stress response.
It requires time, it requires a gentle approach, it requires learning to be attuned to what our nervous system needs rather than what we want or think we should be.
What is super cool, though, about retraining and rewiring our nervous system is that we can all do it, we can all learn how to feel totally at home and safe in our bodies, work through and release emotional wounds and pain, we can all release habituated stress if we are willing to give ourselves some consistent support over some months.
Just like if we started a few minutes a day of lifting weights, over a few months we would get stronger and stronger.
Just like if we had a broken leg, after a few months of medical assistance, rehabilitation and care it would feel dramatically better.
So can we approach our emotional healing with generosity – of time, of care and of support?
Instead of rushing to feel better, could we use the fact that a powerful source of safety is actually going slowly? Of taking baby steps. Of using resources (like I shared in my free class and what I support folks with in my programs) to gently and consistently bring safety into our bodies and rebuild our frazzled nervous systems?
Could we approach the place we want to get to with a little less judgement and rushing, and a little more gentleness, kindness, attunement and time?
I would love to know what you think and if this lands for you?
If you’d like to share – please hit reply and let me know. It’s always lovely to hear from you.
Sending you love,
Diana
