How to Speak the Language of the Nervous System

Episode 3

Have you ever been in a situation where you logically knew you were ok but you didn't feel ok? And no matter how many times you told yourself you were fine or to calm down it didnt seem to help? This is because your nervous system speaks a somatic FELT language, not a verbal one. You will never be able to outthink your anxiety or depression. In this episode I take a deep dive into what that actually means and introduce you to some tangible tools that can communicate safety to your nervous system in a way it understands. Hit play to learn more!

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The Regulate & Rewire podcast and content posted by Amanda Armstrong is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information from this podcast, materials linked, or content found elsewhere is done so at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.

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Transcript

00:00

Welcome to regulate, and rewire and anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong. And I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life.

00:23

Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. Hello, everyone, today we are going to talk about the language of the nervous system. And what that even means. So there is this word that has become a really trendy in the healing space. And it's this word somatic. And so I want to help you understand what it means when we talk about somatic healing, or we talk about the language of the body being a somatic language. 

00:50

And for context, I want you to reflect for a minute, have you ever been in a situation where you logically knew that you were safe, you logically knew that you were fine, but you didn't feel fine? Maybe you were at dinner with friends. Or maybe you were just at the grocery store, and suddenly you felt really anxious or really triggered? And again, you thought to yourself, like, I'm fine, I'm fine, everything is fine. Like, please, please, please like I don't have a panic attack. I don't want to feel anxious right now. 

01:19

So again, you're in the situation where like, you logically understand that you're fine. And yet you don't feel fine. And then you have this experience where you think to yourself, like, calm down, you're okay. And my question is, how did that go for you did telling yourself that you were okay, or telling yourself to calm down, actually make you feel any better? 

01:41

So I used to do this all the time, when I would start to feel anxious, and it never made me feel better, no matter how many times I told myself, I was okay, to calm down. I didn't feel okay. And I didn't feel calm. 

01:54

And this is because anxiety is a nervous system response. So your nervous system read something in that environment as unsafe or as familiar to a time in your past when you didn't feel safe. And so being a nervous system response, it happens in your body, and your body does not speak this logical verbal language, it speaks a somatic one, and somatics are this felt language. So whenever you hear this word, somatic, it is emphasizing this like internal physical state. 

02:29

Somatics describe any, any practice, if somebody says like this is a somatic tool, we're talking about any practice that uses that mind body connection to help you survey your internal self, listen to those internal signals and shift them in some way. So when we say somatic, I want you to think felt based, senses based, body based. And so your body speaks this somatic language, this is the language of show me, don't tell me. 

02:59

So in these instances, what did I need to do to show my body that it was safe to change the feeling in my body to be more of a safe feeling, versus just trying to logically communicate to my body. And so, again, that's conversation for today is really to help you understand this language a little bit more, to understand your nervous system, what it prioritizes why it prioritize those things and how it prioritizes those things to help you to understand what it means when we say we're trying to cultivate a felt sense of safety in the body. 

03:38

When we are talking about regulating the nervous system, we are talking about increasing your body's felt sense of safety, that is what allows you to be more regulated. And there are three things that our nervous system prioritizes, three things that our nervous system needs in order to feel safe. So those three things are context, connection, and choice. 

04:04

And so context just means I understand what is happening, why it's happening, I have some similar experience with what's happening. So this is something that feels understandable to me. 

04:21

Connection can be connection to a sense of self connection to being able to be self resource self regulated. Connection also means connection to others, in a very real way. 

04:34

And so what we've learned through research, is that CO regulation so co regulation just means that you are able to if you're feeling really activated and anxious and I'm pretty regulated, you come into my space, we have a conversation. Our nervous systems communicate in a language again, that's not verbal. And if I'm firmly regulated, your nervous system may start to downshift. It will feel and kind of get to pull some sense of safety from mine. And what's really cool about this is we have been able to observe that the different people can be in the same situation or very similar situations. And the impact, whether it registers as trauma or not, for them, can be greatly mitigated by whether they feel connected or have access to safe connection to somebody else, in or after that situation. 

05:33

So for example, let's say you and I are both in the backseat during a car accident. And it's scary, it's hard, we, we've never been in a car accident before. So maybe we lack that context. Now, I immediately have to rush into work. And it's kind of a busy work environment, I don't feel like I have any close friends, they're like, I just have to go from this one, one stressful situation right into another, where you have the opportunity to like, go get lunch with a girlfriend, or you get to go home to a supportive partner, who you can kind of share how scary this was for you. And they're there to to help you to feel safe, and to be able to feel valid in the emotions that you experienced during this instance, etc. 

06:14

You and I are systems, we are going to hold this experience very differently. You and I were both put in the stress response. And I kind of compounded the stress response, I never really got to resolve that experience. And you might have a with this partner. And so the likelihood of me walking away with some driving anxiety or you know, different symptoms, versus you is mitigated by the access that we had to safe connection to co regulation. Now, in this specific instance, there could be a number of other factors like, what is your experience or my experience with cars? What is the baseline states of our nervous system, how much healing work have we done, what coping tools do we have, etc. But in general, understanding that connection in CO regulation is something that our nervous system needs. We are humans, we are hardwired for connection for feeling part of a community, which is also why rejection reads to our nervous system as something that is potentially life threatening, okay. 

07:12

And then the third thing that our nervous system needs and prioritizes is a sense of choice. Sometimes I also will, will make this synonymous with a sense of control in a situation. And so if there is any situation that we don't have context for, we don't feel like we have connection in or we don't feel like we have choice or control around, we feel unsafe. Those are the types of situations that end up getting stored in our system as trauma. 

07:41

And this is why so much of so much healing work has an emphasis on you know, childhood experiences. Because think about it, as a child, you have very little context for the world. As a child, if the primary people that you are connected to, maybe it's teachers, friends at school, parents or caretakers, if those aren't safe people, well, then nothing is going to really feel safe. If we don't have connection that feels safe and getting our needs met. There's also a lot of choice that we lack, we're told what to do. Our autonomy is easily pushed aside in situations. And so this is why so much of that early developmental trauma or early childhood experiences, program our nervous system in such a fundamental and impactful way. 

08:29

So inside our brain, and inside our body, we have kind of this like muscle memory for what kept us safe in situations where we lacked connection, context choice. And anytime that our nervous system feels like anything in our environment is unsafe or is familiar to a time in our past, when we were unsafe, we are going to activate that sympathetic that fight or flight that survival response. 

08:56

And so understanding this is so crucial when we're doing nervous system regulation work. And it's also so fundamental to understanding why nervous system regulation is so foundational before we can get to the place where we can cognitively repattern things in our mind, like we talked about in the last episode, when we just jump into thinking about our most vulnerable or hard or dysfunctional parts of our life or our our experience that is dysregulated. We don't know the difference between thinking about and retelling those stories versus re experiencing those stories. 

09:38

And so if we don't understand how to bring this felt sense of safety to our body, when we retell those really hard and vulnerable experiences we can actually reinforce to our nervous system this need to stay stuck in survival mode. We reinforce this messaging that we are not safe now. And so when we are again, working through in and through this body based system, it can be really helpful to learn our body's language. 

10:05

So we introduced a concept, last episode called neuroception. So this is just what your nervous system does this is that lighthouse example that I shared, right? neuroception describes how our neural circuits, right, our brain circuits, distinguish whether a situation is safe, dangerous, or life threatening. So it's constantly scanning our environment, then there is this other kind of sixth sense, if you will, called interoception. 

10:37

So interoception is what allows us to be in conversation with our body in this somatic language. So interoception is essentially the sense that allows us to answer the question of how do I feel in any given moment. So it is this collection of senses that help us to perceive the internal state of our body. And this can happen consciously or unconsciously. And so neuroception is just something our nervous system does. But interception is something that's automatically happening, but it's also a skill, and a sense that we can practice and we can cultivate. So for many of us who've been living in survival mode for a long time, we have lived, trapped in our brain a lot trying to predict worst case scenario, keep ourselves safe. 

11:23

We work with a lot of clients who feel really disconnected from their body. And so when you ask them like, Well, how do you feel? They're like, Well, I feel like and then they launch into some narrative or a story or a thought feelings are one word, calm, scared, frustrated, overwhelmed. And then we can also look at the physiological experience that goes along with those feelings. Well, how did you know that you were scared? How did you know that you were anxious? Will I know that? Because, and this is that collection of senses perceiving our internal state, because I felt butterflies in my stomach, or my heart was racing, or my chest got really tight, my palms got sweaty. And so in being able to identify in any given time, like, well, what state is my nervous system in? And it's important to get to, to get to a place where in any given moment, you can answer that question. 

12:14

Because different tools, different somatic practices are going to work better depending on what state you're in. So if you are in a sympathetic activated state, you are going to use one set of tools. Whereas if you're in that shutdown state, feeling really depressed, you're going to use a different set of tools, your body is going to need different signals to move you towards regulation. So interoception, is our ability to feel inward. And answer that question, how do I feel right, and somatic tools are designed to help us influence the way that we feel. 

12:49

So if you are in, again, those same situations that we talked about, at the beginning, let's say that you are out to dinner with friends, and you start to feel really, really anxious, and you don't know why you're like I'm sitting at a table, I'm with all of my best friends, like we're in a safe place. 

13:05

There are two reasons that our nervous system doesn't feel safe, either A, because you're not. And it perceives something in your environment that you don't, or B, which is, the more likely and the more frequent situation is because there's just something in that environment that feels familiar to that time when you weren't safe. And so in this instance, it could be the lighting in the room, it could be a particular smell, it could be the way that somebody walked in your peripheral vision. It could also just be that the load on your nervous system is a little bit too heavy right now, maybe you had a really stressful day. And now you're kind of experiencing some sensory overload. There's lights and music and people and things. And that is all lending towards your nervous system, feeling a little overwhelmed and not safe. But you're in this place where you logically know that you're safe, and you want to enjoy dinner with your friends. 

13:54

So what can you do, our body speaks of felt language, we have to communicate with our body in a felt way. And so in order to, to do this, you have to understand your physiology. So when you're feeling activated, your heart rate speeds up your breath, usually shallows and speeds up. Maybe you've got some clammy palms, we need to do something to soothe this system. And so some tools that I've given clients in situations like this, where they're in public or they're with friends, might be to bring them back into the body, right? Because this anxiety happens oftentimes when we get trapped in our brain, and we're overthinking and we're catastrophizing. 

14:33

So they may grab an ice cube and hold it in their hand under the table. And what that does is that immediately that the cold kind of shocks the senses, brings you back into your body gives you a moment to pause and kind of recalibrate. So you don't continue to spiral out when we breathe in certain ways that shifts our physiology. So if you breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth and you make that exhale longer than your inhale, you are communicating to your nervous system that you are safe, that you are fine, fast, shallow breathing, tells your nervous system, oh, we're in danger. long, slow, deep breaths, change your physiology, and turn on your relaxation response. And it changes it really measurable rate. 

15:19

So our heart rate and our breath rate always mirror each other. So if our heart beats faster our breath changes. Well, we can't do anything, consciously to change our heart rate. Breathing is this really cool body based thing that happens automatically and consciously, so we can change the way that we breathe, that is going to slow down our heart rate, our body is going to feel safer in that moment. 

15:44

And so there are different somatic tools that help us to come back into our body in a way that feels safe or shift our physiology in a way that turns on that parasympathetic nervous system, that relaxation, nervous system, to help us push against that stress response in real time. And again, being able to identify the state that you're in is really, really important for choosing an appropriate tool. 

16:09

For example, if you are kind of triggered and you get activated, remember that sympathetic state is a mobilized state. So it might not work for you to go right to a deep breath, your body may respond, like, Excuse me, you didn't get the memo, we need to run or fight right now. And so maybe actually, the best thing that you could do when you're out to dinner with your friends, is actually to lean into this fight or flight response a little bit, and it's calling you to move, and you just excuse yourself, and you go to the bathroom, you say okay, body, I'm going to put you in motion for a minute, I'm going to move. And then when you get there, you run your hands under cold water. And that sensation, right, you just noticed the temperature, this again, it brings you out of your head and into your body. And as you do that, you take some of those extended exhales, okay, we have validated, our need to mobilize. And what that does, that also helps us to discharge some of that stress energy, we want to allow our body to discharge that anxiety, that excess stress energy, so it doesn't get stored, we've tapped into our body in a felt way that allows us to create pause, and then we're going to take some extended exhales to shift our physiology. And that is what it means to have a somatic practice, to communicate to your body in a way that understands to help it shift gears and move towards regulation. 

17:26

And there is no one perfect somatic tool that is going to work for you in every situation or every time. The goal with nervous system regulating tools is not to take you from a 10 to a two, can you feel anxious level 10? And is there a tool that can just take you to an eight, then take you to a seven? Do you have another tool that might be able to take you to a five, and then maybe you're like, you know what, I'm good, I can manage how to five. And so the idea is to over time, discover the things that help you to feel safe. And really, the greater point of this conversation is also just to validate that you are never going to be able to talk your way out of anxiety, you need to feel your way out in through it in a way that your nervous system understands. And that is through this somatic felt language. 

18:13

And so pausing for a moment with me to do a little bit of this exploration, how does it feel for you to be happy? Let's start in a regulated state. If you were to tell me right now I feel happy. How do you know? How do you know that you feel happy? Where in your body? Do you feel that? How does it show up? If it had a temperature or texture? Same thing? How does anxiety feel? If you were to tell me I feel really anxious right now? Well, how do you know how do you know that you're anxious? or depression? How does depression feel? If you were to tell me I feel depressed right now? And I would ask you like, how do you know? What does that feel like for you. 

18:49

Allowing yourself to get familiar with these sensations is really, really valuable in your healing journey with anxiety and depression, and an overall nervous system regulation. Because if we can become familiar with what it feels like in our body, when we are going into these states of activation and anxiety or shutdown and depression, then we can catch those states earlier. In the spiral. We need to use less tools or less intense tools to move ourselves towards regulation. If you're at the beginning of your healing journey, it's likely that you don't catch your anxiety until it's at like an eight or nine. Okay, well, when it's at an eight or nine, we're going to need a tool that's at an eight or nine to to match that state and then slowly bring it back down. And so that is what it means to cultivate this sense of interoception of how do I know what I'm feeling. And as you begin to understand the ways, the felt sensations that your body communicates to you, you will also learn how to communicate in a felt sense way back to your body. 

19:48

And so, I want to offer you in this episode three somatic tools that can help to communicate safety to your body for you to explore. 

19:56

So the first one is called a legs up the wall. And it is exactly what it sounds like, you're going to find a wall, you're going to stick your butt up against that wall and put your legs straight up that wall. And why I love this practice so much. And this is where most of our clients who struggle with anxiety or depression, this is one of the first few tools they add to their toolbox is because you have to do very little to communicate and to regulate your nervous system, because gravity does the work for you. So when your legs are up the wall, all of the blood that's in your legs, now, with gravity moves towards your heart, your heart rate starts to slow down. Remember your heart rate and your breath rate they mirror each other. So as your heart rate starts to slow down, your breathing starts to slow down, and your nervous system shifts towards that parasympathetic state, it starts to feel more calm and safe. 

20:49

And so in instances where you're waking up anxious, or you're feeling anxiety, and you really need to go to bed, this can be a great tool, and you can be there for anywhere from two to 10 minutes, just allowing yourself to have physiology be changed for you via gravity, and see if that's helpful for you. 

21:08

Each and every one of the tools that I'm going to offer you in this episode. And all of the future episodes are an invitation to experiment. And then to discover the tools that feel the most supportive for you. And the ones that don't feel supportive. Let those go there are hundreds and hundreds of different tools. So add legs of the wall to your list of anxiety tools to experiment with.

21:31

The second tool I've already mentioned is this extended exhale, breath. So if you want to try this with me right now, go ahead and let out all your air, breathing in through your nose deep and slow, filling your belly with air, and then slowly exhale out your mouth, trying to make that exhale longer than your inhale. And do that for a few rounds. So I love this tool, again, because it is universal. If you are living and breathing, human being an extended exhale is going to turn on your relaxation response just a little bit. Now an extended exhale might not be the appropriate tool every time you feel anxious. An extended exhale may not be the thing that gets you from 10 to two. But at some point in that scale, an extended exhale can be beneficial to communicate to your nervous system, that you are safe, and it can move towards Regulation A little bit. 

22:24

And the third tool that I invite you to practice is called orienting. So this is a vision tool. So our visual system and our breath or respiration system are two of the fastest and most powerful body based levers, two of the most impactful systems on our body stress response. And this is because our stress response impacts those systems. And we also have some conscious control over both of those systems that can then you know, inversely impact our body's stress response. 

22:59

So when we feel stressed, our pupils dilate, and we get really tunnel visioned. So we know that that's something that happens when we're really activated. What you can do, if you notice that you are feeling really stressed, this is a great tool. 

23:11

If you're in that experience, we're out to dinner with friends and feeling anxious. Orienting just means that you open up your vision field. So you focus on your peripheral vision. And then you just slowly scan your environment. So you are looking at things that are near and far. This helps you to orient your environment gives you context right for your environment. This also helps your vision when we're stressed our eyes dark. So for intentionally slowly scanning our environment, it slows down and it literally changes our optics it changes the way that our eyes are working, hopefully communicating to our body that we are safe. 

23:51

Now there are countless other exercises there are a ton of somatic practices, self holding practices, and armpit hug. A lot of things that I teach inside our coaching programs and in my monthly attunement sessions. But these are three tools that are fairly simple, that I am going to talk to your way to experiment explore with and you can decide if they are supportive for you or when and where they might be the most supportive for you. 

24:15

So, in summary, our nervous system speaks a somatic language, it is a felt language, not a verbal, not a logical one. The thing that are things that our nervous system needs in order to feel safe is that sense of context connection and choice. And so the more often we can provide for ourselves in any given situation, context, a sense of connection or choice, we are automatically going to feel more in control, more grounded and more resourced. 

24:46

So not only did I give you those three tangible tools, but the three kind of summarizing and tangible takeaways from today's conversation that you can apply to your healing journey today is again, tool number one is just as a awareness and this new lens that you cannot talk your way out of anxiety or depression, you can logically understand that you're safe and still not feel safe, you can logically understand that you're okay and still not feel okay. And the fact that when you tell yourself to calm down or to just get over it or just be fine, the fact that that doesn't work, it doesn't mean that you've sucked, or that you lack willpower, or any of those things. It is because you are speaking Spanish, when all your body understands is English, you who are speaking Arabic, and all it understands is French, you were speaking a completely different language. And as you become more familiar with this felt sense of safety and specific practices, or things that you can do to feel more safe, the more you're gonna be able to get your brain and your body on the same page. 

25:47

So tangible takeaway, number two is an invitation to tune in and pay attention to what it feels like to be activated. And to move up that nervous system ladder towards regulation, and maybe keeping a log even of things that feel activating for you versus things that feel regulating for you. So just building some awareness around tools that you may already have are practices that you may already have like innately discovered for yourself, what are and build some awareness around the things that are activating for you. Because again, that gives you context that gives you choice, if you know the things that are going to be triggering for you are going to be activating for you, whether it's people, places, situations, etc. Now, that's going to give you a little bit more context, and choice around those things. 

26:33

So tuning in, and paying attention to what it feels like to be activated or what it feels like to be regulating and see if you can identify some of the things that activate you, or some of the practices and things that that regulate you. What what do you already do that feels helpful and supportive for you. 

26:48

And then tangible TAKEAWAY NUMBER THREE, is to choose one of those three practices that I mentioned, either the legs of the wall, that extended exhale, or this, you know, vision or eye orienting exercise. And to do that, a handful of times this week, to add to your toolbox of regulation practices, and to also kind of bank some of these, you know, reps of regulation. And the way that our nervous system heals is by collecting what I call regulation reps every single time that you take even one step up that nervous system water every single time that you downshift anxiety are able to kind of up shift your systems, your nervous system out of feeling depression, that resets your baseline just a little bit just like every single rep of a bicep curl, you know lends to strengthening your biceps over time, every single regulation rep that you do, lends to regulating your nervous system over time. 

27:42

So choose one of those three practices I mentioned and try to collect a couple reps of it, see how it makes you feel if it's supportive, add it to your toolbox. If it doesn't feel supportive, let it go try another one. So thank you for being here, again for just another incredible conversation about nervous system. Understanding how this system works and how we can work with it in a powerful way to heal anxiety and depression.

28:15

Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside rise my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space or apply for our one on one anxiety depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you next time.