Loving Your Central Nervous System

Even though I’m a therapist, I bristle at the term “self-regulation.”

It sounds an awful lot like, control yourself. It probably has to do with the fact that I’m a recovering overfunctioning good girl, like most of my clients. 

When you’re a woman who learned to be nice, swallow your anger, take care of everyone, and wait until you’re alone… you rarely (if ever) become noticeably dysregulated, especially not in public. What happens instead is ever-tensing shoulders, neck, and jaw; burning in the stomach and irritable bowel; painful joints and migraines… the consequences of all of that emotional tension getting shoved down into the body.

Overfunctioning women feel intense emotions but they’ve got them well under control. To all observers, they are supremely well self-regulated. 

But they are bursting on the inside.

You could say yes, they too need self regulation. But the more I think about it, the more I flippin’ hate the term. Self-regulation. It has an air of telling someone to calm down.

Instead I tell my clients to tend to themselves. 

Tend to yourself.

How does your body respond when you read those words?

Doesn’t something in you immediately soften a little?

Doesn’t it feel kinder, gentler?

I invite clients to turn towards themselves with the two magic ingredients: curiosity and compassion. (By the way, those are the same ingredients with which to approach your children when they’re “misbehaving”.)

Curiosity and compassion.

Curiosity:

• What’s happening here?
• What am I feeling?
• What are the thoughts I’m having about this?
• Is this something that’s happened to me before? 
• What’s the backstory to this?
• Is there a different way to see this?
• What do I need?
• What would help right now?

Compassion:

All of the questions above are inherently compassionate if you ask them without any snark or prejudgment. It gets even more powerful if you then follow this inquiry with compassionate validation for the feelings you’re having. However, please note (and this is a BIG important note): validation of feeling is not the same as validation of a story. 

Let me illustrate. 

A client recently told me about feeling incredibly angry and resentful of her husband because he’s currently not working (collecting unemployment) while she’s maintaining her two part-time jobs and still taking care of the majority of the chores of the house and their two children. She talked at length about how she comes home and he’s “done nothing.” The dishes are still piled in the sink, the house is a mess, and she asks him angrily, “what have you been doing all day?!” Their fights were getting worse and worse.

In session, we got her to pause and tend to herself. She reflected on how much she carries and what she feels when she walks home: fear (that her husband still doesn’t have a job) and frustration (that she sees so many things still needing to be done.) She was able to notice that she wants help and she wants them to be better partners.

When she looked at her thoughts, she noticed she’s been labeling him “lazy” in her mind. She looked at the backstory and told me about how he’s long been wanting to make some changes in his career and their home life but he hasn’t pursued them because of her fears and hesitation. She spoke about how he feels terrible about not having a job and noticed that in truth he’s really depressed. As she looked at the backstory, she began to move towards compassion for both herself and for him. 

She was able to validate herself for her feelings of anxiety (about the uncertainty of their current situation) and her frustration (that she’s carrying a lot and wanting to share responsibilities more evenly), while also recognizing that her initial story about her husband was inaccurate. You validate your feelings, not necessarily the story you’re telling about them.

Instead of self-regulation, we tend to ourselves with compassion. 

This client had asked for help "controlling" her emotions and helping her figure out a way to talk to her husband. Yes, we can do that. But instead of focusing on regulating those emotions, we turn towards them with compassion. In a compassionate space, she was able to see the situation through a much more loving lens and approach her husband in a way that was powerfully transformative for both of them. In just two weeks, they are back to working as a team and feeling really connected.

We can go a whole lot further with compassion. 

Compassion in action also recognizes that at times our nervous systems need to receive some sweetness, some gentle attentiveness. This is where the quintessential mindfulness and somatic practices come in. Some might call them “self-regulation.” Sigh… 😉

Below are some of my favorite tools to compassionately tend to your nervous system.

These are three core somatic practices I use with clients all the time:

• One: Grounding
• Two: Orienting
• Three: Pendulation

Three core yoga/mindfulness practices that I have shared in meditation group:

• Four: Diaphragmatic breathing or 3-part breath       
• Five: Box breathing
• Six: Simple breath awareness

And two of my most favorite exercises:

• Seven: My favorite ventral-vagal toning breath exercise: 5-5-10 breath. This exercise puts the brakes on your nervous system when you're feeling agitated, anxious, stressed... or really worked up. It's also great for falling asleep and slowing things down.
• Eight: My favorite loving-care, central nervous system/emotional soothing practice: ABCs

Would you like to practice these with me?

For the next 8 days, I’ll be posting each one of these exercises on my channels. Choose your favorite platform to check these out. 

Today, we're starting with a short little grounding exercise.