Before you can heal, you have to do this …

I’m sitting down to write this post. 

I wrote the headline a few days ago. The idea came to me when I was in a state of regulation, after doing my embodied awareness practices.

Now I’m trying to write the rest of this post and I feel like I’m not sure what to say. It seemed like a great idea a few days ago. I had a lot to say, then. 

You know why I’m feeling blocked? Because my nervous system is not as regulated as it was when I first had the idea. 

Just so you know, in order for me to write this last bit I had to pause and ground myself first. 

Before I did that, I noticed I was feeling pressure to come up with something meaningful. I also noticed that my partner is chatting on the phone in the other room about something that annoys me. 

Both things are activating my sympathetic nervous system and I’m not feeling connected to the present moment or my body.

So I decided to put my earphones on to tune out the annoying conversation and I’m playing some music from a playlist that is specifically meant to down regulate activated minds.

I’m noticing my breath, my feet on the ground and … Voila! 

My body and mind are talking to each other again and I’m in a state of flow which allows me to have the not so shabby idea of writing about what’s going on with my nervous system.

This ended up being a great illustration of it’s not worthwhile doing anything from a state of dysregulation, let alone work on trauma. 

Well, I might be exaggerating just a little bit. Sometimes we can’t help it and we have to operate from a state of dysregulation. 

But if we’re aware of our state and we can afford to slow down, things tend to turn out much better if we can address our nervous systems first. 

When we try to address trauma we’re moving towards higher levels of activation.

If we want to be able to address it effectively, which means being able to tolerate some discomfort and pain for a short time, it only makes sense that we need to get the brain to calm down first.

Actually, this is exactly how we train ourselves to increase our window of tolerance. 

This is why whenever a client comes to me with an upset, part of the work involves helping them notice they’re safe first.