6 Ways To Create Safety in Your Nervous System

[00:00:00] The phrase, it's okay to not be okay. Literally, that phrase can help create safety.
[00:00:05] One of the most dysregulating things a nervous system can experience is being told internally or
[00:00:11] externally that what it's feeling is not acceptable, that you should be further along,
[00:00:16] that you should be handling this better, that your emotions are too much or not appropriate
[00:00:21] or inconvenient. Every time you fight your emotional state, every time you push down
[00:00:26] what you're feeling or white knuckling through it, you tell yourself to get over it,
[00:00:31] your nervous system reads that as a threat because your nervous system is the one generating those
[00:00:35] feelings and when you reject them, it experiences that rejection as unsafe. Hey there and welcome to
[00:00:41] the heal with grace podcast. I'm your host Grace Secker and I'm a holistic licensed therapist and
[00:00:47] nervous system coach who believes that the chronic and often unseen symptoms you're living with
[00:00:54] are a sign of something deeper going on. A sign that your nervous system needs attention. In each
[00:00:59] episode, I'll share the science behind the most common chronic health disorders plus holistic
[00:01:05] tips using mental, physical and spiritual practices. You'll hear what I've learned in
[00:01:09] my journey and the true stories from our trusted guests so you can feel less alone
[00:01:13] in your experience and give yourself grace no matter what you're going through. So without
[00:01:18] further ado, settle in and get cozy. It's time to heal with grace. Hello, hello and welcome back
[00:01:25] to the heal with grace podcast. All right, y'all. So today we're going to get into something that
[00:01:31] really is huge in our nervous systems, right? Like understanding what safety is. We hear that
[00:01:37] concept or that term all the time. You have to feel safe in your nervous system and send
[00:01:41] safe signals, right? You need to feel safe. How many times can I say it? You want to
[00:01:46] count throughout the episode? How many times I say safe? Maybe it'll really retrain
[00:01:50] more and more and more of your brain that you are safe. Okay, I'll joke aside. It really is
[00:01:55] genuinely true and genuinely vague, right? Like what is it? One of actually my most popular
[00:02:00] podcast episodes was with my friend Vanessa Blackstone, who's one of the co-creators,
[00:02:05] co-authors of the pain reprocessing therapy workbook. And our episode was all around
[00:02:10] how to create authentic messages of safety. And that was in the very, very early days of
[00:02:15] this podcast, like year one. And so I thought I would do an updated, not necessarily update,
[00:02:20] because the lessons, the truth is still the same. But I want to go a little bit deeper and give you
[00:02:27] specifics, give you examples of how to do this, because that's one of the biggest things I hear
[00:02:32] from people, right? Like how do you actually create this level of safety or just any level
[00:02:36] of safety, especially if you've been so disconnected from your body or you've been
[00:02:42] so focused on your body? It's hard to be like, well, my body is always breaking down.
[00:02:47] Or maybe you dealt with body image or disorder reading and like you definitely hated your body
[00:02:53] or just connected from it all the time, right? So it's hard to feel like, what does
[00:02:57] safe mean? What does that even and like, yeah, what does that mean? So today is all about that.
[00:03:02] I'm going to walk you through six different concrete ways to build safety in your nervous
[00:03:07] systems. You can really try them out and feel into which one helps you. So I'd highly recommend
[00:03:13] saving this episode so that you can keep coming back to it and listening to it because I mean,
[00:03:18] we definitely know that we need to hear things over and over and over again, right? Because I
[00:03:25] mean, that is the only way that we're really going to solidify this work. And not just
[00:03:30] hearing it, but really being in it, really being in the practice of the somatic shift of
[00:03:36] your body feeling safe. And just remember that you don't need to be feeling safe 24 seven. That's
[00:03:42] not realistic. That's not normal. We're supposed to go out of stress response and back into
[00:03:48] regulated response all the time. But if you're in chronic symptoms, if you are depressed or
[00:03:54] anxious or are not really sure how you're feeling, you've never really connected with your body,
[00:04:01] then you're probably more in the dysregulated stress place in your body and nervous system
[00:04:06] than you are in the safe and regulated. So that is why you're here. And that's what we're going
[00:04:11] to talk about. So before I dive into the six, I do want to acknowledge that your nervous system has
[00:04:18] one primary job. It's to keep you alive. It's constantly automatically scanning for threat.
[00:04:25] And when it detects something dangerous, it responds fight, flight or freeze, right? Or
[00:04:30] collapse. These are not choices. It's not something you're consciously doing. They are
[00:04:34] biological responses that happen faster than conscious thought. So the problem with chronic
[00:04:39] pain and illness is not that your nervous system is doing this wrong. The problem is that it's
[00:04:44] doing it in response to the things that aren't actually dangerous, the food, the environment,
[00:04:51] relationships, your emotions, your authentic self, your fear of being your authentic self.
[00:04:56] That is what your nervous system is being dangerous, which is what we need to rewire
[00:05:01] and remind your nervous system, hey, actually, these things are safe. So your nervous system is
[00:05:05] constantly doing its own threat assessment below the level of your conscious awareness.
[00:05:09] And in chronic illness, that threat detector has been calibrated in a way that keeps you in
[00:05:13] survival mode, even when you're technically safe. So creating safety isn't about telling yourself
[00:05:20] to just calm down, I'm safe, I'm fine on a conscious level. It is about, it's about
[00:05:25] embodying the feeling of, the feeling of I'm okay right now, the feeling of I'm present right now,
[00:05:37] I am not in any threat or danger. It's about giving your nervous system that real repeated
[00:05:41] evidence that it's okay to come out of protection mode. And so if this is something
[00:05:46] that I'm already talking and you're like, yeah, I need to understand that. Yes, I need to know
[00:05:49] that. Keep listening, obviously. But I also just want to add in something here that
[00:05:54] just listening is super important, right? Really important. But the practices of these
[00:06:01] six things I'm going to tell you are more important than just listening to this,
[00:06:05] really feeling in your body that safety or acknowledging that your symptoms are not
[00:06:11] coming from real structural damage and they are coming from a stress nervous system,
[00:06:16] understanding that helps actually already create the safety. And so this takes more than
[00:06:21] just listening to this short episode, right? It really takes the practice of doing it over and
[00:06:26] over and over again, and really learning all the skills and tools that go deeper than just this
[00:06:31] podcast episode. And so if that is appealing to you, and you really want to get out of pain and
[00:06:38] illness and you want to actually feel freedom in your life, which comes from feeling safety
[00:06:42] first, like being able to just move throughout your day without thinking about, oh, how's
[00:06:46] my body going to react, right? Or wake up in the morning and not have to think twice about
[00:06:51] what you eat because your body loves it and you get to enjoy food, right? Or not being afraid
[00:06:57] of traveling because you have a felt sense of safety in your body and you've rewired that
[00:07:01] so that you can go about living your life in the world and enjoy whatever you want to enjoy.
[00:07:05] That's why we create safety, all of those reasons. And so that's exactly what I teach
[00:07:10] in my course, the Mind Body Healing Method. It's a right now self-paced course where
[00:07:15] you can work at it in your own time and you get it for life. And if you want extra
[00:07:19] support, you can add on private calls or you can join one of my small groups of people that
[00:07:25] I work with in the Mind Body Healing Method. Those are ones for you. But first and foremost,
[00:07:32] just to get this information solidified in your mind and your body, it's really important
[00:07:36] to have some kind of tool or framework to do that so that you can take it with you anywhere,
[00:07:41] anytime, traveling, being in your day. If you're stressed with kids, you can throw on
[00:07:45] a skill and calm your nervous system. That's exactly why I created it. So if you want to
[00:07:50] grab that, if you want to grab the course, you can find the link below for the Mind Body Healing
[00:07:54] Method. And if you're interested in more small group component where I really guide and lead
[00:08:00] you and mentor you through the process, you can DM me, you can email me and let me know
[00:08:06] that you're interested and I'll add you to the waitlist to the next cohort. Okay. Now
[00:08:10] let's dive in. So first and foremost, number one, which this came from Vanessa,
[00:08:17] and I love it so much. This is what our previous episode was about. The phrase,
[00:08:22] it's okay to not be okay. Literally, that phrase can help create safety. And it sounds
[00:08:27] too simple, okay? So just stay with me. But one of the most dysregulating things a nervous
[00:08:31] system can experience is being told internally or externally that what it's feeling is not
[00:08:37] acceptable, that you should be further along, that you should be handling this better, that
[00:08:42] your emotions are too much or not appropriate or inconvenient. Every time you fight your emotional
[00:08:48] state, every time you push down what you're feeling or white knuckling through it, you tell
[00:08:53] yourself to get over it, your nervous system reads that as a threat because your nervous
[00:08:57] system is the one generating those feelings. And when you reject them, it experiences
[00:09:02] that rejection as unsafe. Even just having a sticky note of it's okay to not be okay on your
[00:09:08] mirror, on your phone, on your computer, whatever helps an exhale happen, right? It helps the like,
[00:09:15] yeah, it's okay to not be okay. Because so much of us are just holding and controlling,
[00:09:19] trying to get better. Like, why am I like this? Why can't I get better? Why am I so stressed?
[00:09:24] Stop thinking this. Stop doing that. But guess what? You're not supposed to be okay
[00:09:29] all the time. You're human. You're supposed to be sad and angry and frustrated and sick sometimes
[00:09:36] and not okay. And that's normal. Now, I understand if you're here, you might be not okay more of
[00:09:41] the time, which, you know, we want to get that balanced out a little bit. But the whole point
[00:09:46] here is just to accept where you are and recognize, hey, it's okay right now to be in
[00:09:51] this moment and not be okay, especially around emotions, right? Like what creates safety
[00:09:56] is the opposite of fighting yourself, but being with what's true without needing to fix it or move
[00:10:02] past it quickly. And this doesn't mean staying in the pain of the illness or the thought process or
[00:10:09] the anxiety longer than you need to. It just means letting the pain be acknowledged first
[00:10:14] and that feeling that you feel like you need to move through your system, that is put to
[00:10:19] the side for a second and you just let yourself cry or be in pain, whatever it is. To be honest,
[00:10:26] in my own life, this was one of the hardest shifts for me. I had an extremely functional
[00:10:31] relationship with my emotions. Very good at processing them intellectually. I can analyze
[00:10:37] everything and anything, which is why I was a pretty good therapist in the beginning, analyzing
[00:10:42] all the thoughts and behaviors and actions, right? But to be honest, in the beginning
[00:10:46] days of being a therapist, I wasn't great at holding emotions for other people because I couldn't
[00:10:50] do it for myself. I could understand them. I could tell them it's okay to feel it all, right?
[00:10:56] But what I was not good at was letting myself actually land the emotions in my body,
[00:11:02] knowing that it's okay to feel these what I thought were quote-unquote negative emotions.
[00:11:07] The, okay, you're sad I see you. Now, what do we do about it? Have it was really deep,
[00:11:12] right? And it's not about, okay, now what do we do about it? It's just being with. Being with
[00:11:17] the emotions without immediately going into problem-solving mode. Same with your pain and
[00:11:22] sensations. Being with the pain without going into problem-solving. And that's where some
[00:11:27] of my biggest shifts happened. Recognizing how to be with instead of fight. Okay. The second one
[00:11:33] is the way to understand how to feel safety, how to have safety in your nervous system
[00:11:40] is the felt sense of it. So the conscious thought of like, it's okay not to be okay
[00:11:45] is a thought process, right? It might have a physiological response when you start to
[00:11:50] say that to yourself. And that's the second part. The physiological response to safety
[00:11:56] is so, so important. So I'm going to explain this because a lot of people, like if you're here
[00:12:00] and you've had chronic symptoms, you're not actually in your body, which you might be like,
[00:12:04] I am all the time. All I'm doing is being aware of my body, but you're probably fighting
[00:12:09] it. You don't like it. You don't want it. You're criticizing yourself, shaming yourself,
[00:12:13] feeling hopeless, all the things. And I really say this with full, full empathy because
[00:12:17] leaving your body and not liking it, forcing it to be different, wanting it to be different
[00:12:22] is a completely reasonable response to having a body that hurts all the time or scares you.
[00:12:27] But you can't regulate a nervous system. You're not connected to safety has to be
[00:12:32] felt, not just understood. Polyvagal theory actually points to the
[00:12:36] ventral vagal state as the place where we experience safety, connection and calm.
[00:12:41] And you can't get there by thinking your way there. You get there through body-based experiences.
[00:12:46] So I want you to bring about a time in your life where you felt engaged. You felt present.
[00:12:53] You weren't thinking about anything else other than what was going on in that moment.
[00:12:58] Maybe it was a vacation when you were younger or it was one of those times where you belly
[00:13:02] laughed with a friend and you're both on the floor rolling around because you're laughing so hard.
[00:13:07] In those moments, you're probably having a felt sense of safety. You've all felt it.
[00:13:13] It's just something you may not recognize how to navigate or activate.
[00:13:19] And this is where somatic work comes in. So practices that help you build a felt sense,
[00:13:24] a direct physical sense of what okay feels like in your body is not a thought about being okay.
[00:13:30] The thinking about being okay can help you feel that, but it's not just saying it. It's not just
[00:13:35] okay, cool. I'll say that I'm okay. I feel okay. I'm okay. I'm safe. If you're not really embodying
[00:13:41] that, actually sensing it, it doesn't fully connect. It's not bad or wrong and it still helps you,
[00:13:48] but we need you to embody it. And this can be small. It can be feeling the weight of your
[00:13:53] body in the chair and recognizing I'm supported right now. My body is being held. It can
[00:13:58] be putting your hand on your chest and feeling the warmth of your hand on your chest. It can be
[00:14:04] noticing that right now in this specific moment, nothing is wrong. For me, warmth within my body
[00:14:11] is safety. I have a very strong meditation practice based on many, many years of meditation,
[00:14:16] spanning back to my really strong yoga days. So for me, when I can meditate and ground,
[00:14:23] that's where I feel it the most. And that's where I can activate it. But you don't have
[00:14:27] to have a strong meditation practice to do that. You can feel it in all these ways I just described
[00:14:33] or just noticing your breathing, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.
[00:14:38] Noticing if you do that 10 times deeply, how you drop just a little bit in regulation,
[00:14:46] that's a, there's safety there. Maybe you feel the ground beneath your feet when you step outside.
[00:14:51] Yeah? These are all little examples and you have to start finding your own examples of safety
[00:14:55] in your body and what that feels like. Maybe it's a hug, right? You feel a hug from your loved one
[00:15:01] or a pet, that warmth that you get when you feel love, that's safety. Okay. Number three,
[00:15:07] releasing the idea that you have to be somewhere you're not. I love this one because it's also
[00:15:11] a hard one, especially when you're in the beginning of this work. So this one is about
[00:15:16] the particular kind of dysregulation that comes from constantly living in the future or
[00:15:20] the past. You're planning around symptoms that might happen. You're grieving the person that you
[00:15:25] were before you got sick and you're just angry and resentful for having to deal with all this
[00:15:30] shit. 100% valid. I want to say that. But if you are constantly stuck here, if you're always
[00:15:36] looking at what's wrong, why am I here? I can't believe this is happening. I'm so hopeless.
[00:15:41] This is never going to get better. If that is your mindset, if that is the place where
[00:15:46] you are always so effing pissed that you're here and you wish you were somewhere that you're not,
[00:15:54] I love you, but you're not going to regulate in that state. If your mindset's always there,
[00:16:00] it's going to be really hard to make any progress, any healing. So I got to call that out
[00:16:05] because I've seen it time and time again. People are so frustrated. Every time they talk about
[00:16:11] this, they're just, everything sucks essentially. And again, I was there. I get it. It seems like
[00:16:19] everything does suck, but we've got to change that. We have to change that in order to help your body
[00:16:24] feel okay, regulated. So in pain reprocessing therapy, one of the core practices is something
[00:16:31] called present moment awareness with safety, bringing in the felt sensations of positive
[00:16:36] feelings, which is exactly what it sounds like. You're consciously orienting to right now and
[00:16:41] asking, am I actually in danger in the specific moment? Not, did I be in danger? Was I in danger
[00:16:47] before? Is something wrong now? Most of the time, the answer is actually no. Even if you're having
[00:16:52] pain, we need to update your system to remind it, you're not in danger. So in reality, you're
[00:16:58] not. So the nervous system can register that, but only if you bring it there. It won't find
[00:17:03] the present on its own. It defaults on the last threat it remembers or the threat it's
[00:17:07] anticipating. And this is also where self compassion comes in in a very specific way,
[00:17:12] releasing the idea that you're behind, that you should have healed by now, that your life has
[00:17:17] taken a crazy turn and you can't believe that you're here. So many people are doing better
[00:17:22] than you right now. Look at them. They have this cute family and I'm not even close to that.
[00:17:26] This is taking too long. Those narratives are literally retraining your brain and your
[00:17:33] nervous system to stay in that, to stay in the stuck. It tells your nervous system that you
[00:17:38] are failing at survival, which is a threat. So I am not doing this to shame you and tell you like
[00:17:44] you're making everything worse by doing this. I'm gently, maybe not so gently, I'm being
[00:17:48] pretty direct because I think some of you need the directness to see these times where you're
[00:17:58] stuck in this place of I wish I was somewhere that I'm not and to come back to even if I
[00:18:03] don't like where I am. It's where I am right now and I'm okay in this moment and I am helping myself
[00:18:10] move forward because the paradoxical statement of you can't change until you accept where you are
[00:18:16] is 100% true in this place. I remember how much energy I used to spend living in a version of my
[00:18:22] life that wasn't happening. Morning the version that I was before I got sick or dreading the
[00:18:27] version where I never got better and I was always behind in certain areas of my life
[00:18:32] because of my body. So I was actually never in my life, right? I was either in front or behind
[00:18:38] constantly in my mind and that absence from the present is completely exhausting and it keeps
[00:18:43] your nervous system in a state of low grade emergency. So that is really what I want to
[00:18:49] drive in here is what we're actually talking about is radical acceptance and remember,
[00:18:55] please remember that acceptance doesn't mean you have to like it or love it.
[00:18:58] Acceptance just means this is what it is. This is the present. You don't have to say,
[00:19:04] I love where I am. Everything's wonderful and great. No, it's neutrality. It's I'm here.
[00:19:11] I'm here and I'm working on helping myself. Number four is emotional expression. I talked a
[00:19:17] little bit about this in the beginning and some of you might say expression
[00:19:21] dysregulates me, which maybe in the beginning it can a little bit, but in order to feel safe
[00:19:28] with expressing emotion, which your body doesn't feel like it can, your nervous system deems emotion
[00:19:33] like anger, sadness, resentment, fear, all of those your nervous system says are dangerous
[00:19:39] and are threats. So we have to change that in order to change it. You have to feel those
[00:19:43] things and create safety while you feel them. So it's not just the emotions that need to
[00:19:48] be felt. They need to be expressed and move through the body and outward because suppressed
[00:19:53] emotions are not just physiologically uncomfortable. They are physiologically
[00:19:59] activating your body prepares to express an emotion. It generates the energy for it.
[00:20:04] And when that expression is blocked, the energy doesn't dissipate. It stays in the system
[00:20:10] contributing to chronic activation. It's stuffed down and creates this reservoir of repressed
[00:20:16] emotion. And so then your brain and your nervous system are like, yeah, we're keeping that cap
[00:20:21] on the reservoir. Those things aren't coming out. And over time it overflows and your body is like,
[00:20:28] well, we can't feel those. So we're going to feel the physical pain. So it's not just
[00:20:31] about talking about it. It's not just about consciously saying emotions talking about them.
[00:20:37] It's different than just venting to a friend. It's different from just talking about it in
[00:20:42] therapy. It's about going toward the feeling, letting your body experience it, like literally
[00:20:47] allow your body to feel it and know that it's okay and safe to feel these things, these emotions
[00:20:52] in whatever natural expression that it wants to, whether that's anger, grief, fear, or the deep
[00:20:59] sob that's been waiting for years. This was one of the most pivotal turning points for me
[00:21:04] and why it has contributed to me feeling probably the best in my body I've ever
[00:21:09] felt in the past couple of years. Really specifically in the past year is when I have,
[00:21:14] when I really dug deep and did a daily practice of expressing my emotions while I held myself in that
[00:21:22] held the fear. I allowed my body and my mind to go there. It's when I got serious about like
[00:21:27] emotional expression, emotional expression and somatically working with it that I really
[00:21:34] started to transform my body understood that, oh, these things are safe to feel. So I don't
[00:21:38] need to collapse you and send you fatigue and brain fog and nervous system dysregulation and
[00:21:44] food sensitivities and migraines and pain whenever these emotions are activated in life.
[00:21:50] Okay. Number five is spiritual connection or something bigger than symptoms. So there's
[00:21:58] a sprinkle of spiritual content that I have here that I talk about. But to be honest,
[00:22:03] I don't think I talk about it enough in relation to actually how large it is in my life and how huge
[00:22:11] it's been a part of my healing journey. And that's because I understand everyone's different.
[00:22:16] You don't need to be spiritual. You don't need to be religious to recover at all. And also,
[00:22:21] I do see it as something that it's very, very helpful for people. And that's why I kind of
[00:22:26] tread carefully around this because I know that everyone comes from a different place. So
[00:22:30] this is in a very non-denominational way, but basically your nervous system calms when it
[00:22:34] doesn't feel alone. That's where we're starting here with spirituality. The fact that when we are
[00:22:39] alone, we're as humans, we're not meant to live alone, to be alone, like co-regulation is huge.
[00:22:45] That's why mentorship, coaching, small groups, connecting with people who get it is actually
[00:22:51] incredibly healing and a big part of this process. If you're just doing it alone,
[00:22:56] you feel more isolated and your nervous system is a little bit more on edge.
[00:23:00] So first and foremost, your nervous system calms when it doesn't feel alone. And that's actually
[00:23:05] polyvagal nervous system theory, co-regulation. So the sense of being connected to another nervous
[00:23:11] system, another presence is one of the most powerful regulators that we have. And for a lot
[00:23:16] of people, a sense of spiritual connection or something larger than themselves provides a version
[00:23:21] of that co-regulation. It really provides a sense of surrender and exhale and safety when we can lean
[00:23:29] on something higher than ourselves in some of our worst times. When I would be in some of the worst
[00:23:34] flares on the couch questioning everything, at one point I was just convinced that I was a fraud
[00:23:39] because I started to teach this work and then I had a huge flair for months. And I was
[00:23:45] questioning it all. I was like, well, it's not working. I can't believe I'm teaching this.
[00:23:49] Like, I'm a fraud. What is the point of all this? I mean, I was going through a true,
[00:23:53] like, dark night of the soul. But what started to pull me out were two things. One,
[00:23:57] when I got serious about emotional expression, which I just talked about. And then two, it was
[00:24:02] the surrender. It was the trusting that this moment was teaching me something, trusting that
[00:24:07] I was held even when I couldn't feel. And I'm not saying you need to believe in anything
[00:24:12] specific. But for me, and for many people trusting in a higher power in the universe,
[00:24:18] knowing that this is temporary, this won't last forever, and this is just part of your life path
[00:24:24] right now, can actually be comforting. So the experience of being part of something larger
[00:24:29] than your own suffering gives your nervous system a kind of rest that nothing else quite provides.
[00:24:34] For some people, that's prayer or meditation. For some, it's being in nature.
[00:24:39] For some, it's community. For some, it's connecting with some sort of higher power of the universe
[00:24:45] and the experience of truly being seen in that way and by other humans. For some, it's creativity
[00:24:51] or music or the sense that your life is part of a larger story. Whatever form that it takes,
[00:24:57] it's completely great. That's fine. A nervous system that only has itself to regulate is
[00:25:02] working a lot harder than it needs to. So I encourage you, if you have some sort of
[00:25:05] spiritual practice, really lean on that. And if you don't, explore. What would it be like to
[00:25:12] trust in the universe, whatever that might mean to you? Just start to learn a little bit more
[00:25:15] about that. Grab onto it because we can get really lost in the reality of this life. And it's
[00:25:21] can be very, very nourishing and helpful to explore a higher sense of self,
[00:25:26] which actually leads me into the last one. Number six, authentic self expression.
[00:25:32] Okay. So I saved this one for last because it's the layer most approaches don't always get to when
[00:25:37] we talk about safety in the nervous system. And it's truly the one that we end up getting to,
[00:25:42] like really understanding our authentic self and being that and expressing that is actually,
[00:25:47] honestly, what all of this is about. Because well, first and foremost, okay,
[00:25:51] there's some research in psychology and the clinical experience of practitioners working
[00:25:54] in this space, both point towards the fact that chronic nervous system dysregulation is
[00:26:00] often connected to a chronic suppression of self, the authentic self, the one who has needs,
[00:26:07] preferences, opinions, emotions, a way of being in this world that is genuinely theirs,
[00:26:13] but that we often consistently suppress. So when we perform versions of ourselves to be
[00:26:20] acceptable, to be loved, to be safe, our nervous system registers that performance as
[00:26:26] a threat. That's what we've probably learned over time, because you've been told to be a certain way,
[00:26:31] to look a certain way, to act a certain way, to be accepted and to be loved. Because on some level,
[00:26:36] your nervous system says, yeah, well, we've learned that you've got to be this certain way
[00:26:40] fit into this box. And if you go outside of that, it's not safe. You go against the norm,
[00:26:44] you're rejected. So living a life that isn't really yours is actually really exhausting
[00:26:49] to a degree that goes bone, bone deep. And for a lot of people with chronic illness,
[00:26:54] there's really a version, a strong version of this story. Maybe you're the overachiever,
[00:26:58] the people pleaser, the relentless okayness, the self who learned that who they actually were
[00:27:05] wasn't quite enough. Or maybe you were the one who was told you were too much. Stop expressing,
[00:27:10] stop feeling it's too much. So you suppressed, you pulled back, you were pressed. And so,
[00:27:15] the opposite of that, creating that safe place in your nervous system ultimately means
[00:27:20] creating safety for your actual self to exist, to have needs, to say no, to be seen without
[00:27:27] performing, to stop proving that you deserve the space that you're in, to be who you truly are.
[00:27:33] And this is really happens on a physiological level. A nervous system that has to maintain
[00:27:38] a performance does not feel safe. It is in a low grade state of activation all the time,
[00:27:43] because the threat is protecting against is the exposure of who you really are.
[00:27:48] So coming home to yourself, that slow, sometimes frightening, always worth it process of dropping
[00:27:55] the performance and letting yourself be real is one of the most powerful safety signals you can send.
[00:28:02] It's also the most uncomfortable. It's the most vulnerable. It's what comes up time and time
[00:28:07] again with all of my clients and myself. Oh my gosh, I have layer upon layer upon layer around
[00:28:12] releasing the mask that I've held for so long and really getting to the place of my authentic self.
[00:28:20] And what does that even mean? Okay, it truly looks different from year to year, to be honest.
[00:28:26] I'm still learning. But the more I allow myself to be mean, know that it's okay.
[00:28:32] Regardless of the outcome, it creates a layer upon layer of foundational safety.
[00:28:36] Okay, remember that none of these are one and done. They're practices,
[00:28:40] they build, and they work differently for different people. So I want you to take what lands and leak
[00:28:45] what doesn't. And again, if you found yourself lighting up during any of these, especially the
[00:28:51] last one, that's not just necessarily an accident, like something is very deeply resonating with
[00:28:57] you. So it's often something that's ready to move. And if you really want to take this
[00:29:01] deeper and learn on a day to day basis, how to show up and help yourself, that is exactly
[00:29:06] what the mind body healing method is here for. And it's where I teach all the depth, the tools,
[00:29:10] the practices, the kind of community where you don't have to explain why you're afraid of a plate
[00:29:15] of food. You just are and you get it and you rewire it and we move on. So I want you to have the
[00:29:21] life, the authentic life that you truly want. And in order to do that, we got to work with
[00:29:25] your nervous system. If you want to go deeper, the link is in the show notes. DM me if you
[00:29:29] have any questions. And as always, keep healing with grace. I'll talk to you all next week.
[00:29:36] If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to me if you could do these
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[00:29:50] you're there, if you could give a five star review so that this podcast can reach more people,
[00:29:55] it would mean so much to me. So I can continue sharing episodes that help you as well as
[00:30:00] others. Thanks for listening and I hope this brings you hope on your journey.