Mapping Your Anxiety (Part 2)

Episode 5: Part 2 of a 3 episode mini series about anxiety.

Today's conversations is all about awareness, stepping into a place of curiosity and exploration around your anxiety. The more familiar you become with why and how you uniquely experience anxiety, the clearer the path becomes to regulation and healing. In this conversation I'll help you reflect on what past lived experience and current life circumstances might be contributing to your anxiety symptoms. We'll also discuss how to "map" your nervous system. Hit play to learn more!

CLICK HERE for the full show notes, resources, and 3 tangible takeaways!

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Disclaimer:
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 an 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. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. 

00:27

Welcome back, everybody. This is part two of our three part anxiety mini series. So if you haven't yet listened to the previous episode, I highly recommend starting there because that'll give you some context and some framework that I'll be building off of today. 

00:44

But in quick summary, we talked about how to understand anxiety through a nervous system lens, how anxiety is rooted in the body in the nervous system, not in your brain. It is a body based alarm system, not a thinking problem. And anxiety is the result of us being in this sympathetic activated state, either because of past lived experience, current life circumstances, in the moment, our nervous system feels unsafe or triggered. And it creates a physiological and psychological shift that we have labeled as anxiety. So it's one thing to logically understand this, it's another thing entirely to reflect this back on your own personal experiences, increasing that awareness, and then stepping into the work to actually turn towards that activation using regulation tools. 

01:39

And so today, I am going to help you to reflect back on to your own experiences, with some reflective questions to really help you gain even more personal context for what I mean by past lived experiences and current life circumstances. 

01:59

And then I am going to give you a guide to understand how anxiety uniquely shows up for you. So in the polyvagal theory, we call this mapping your nervous system. And you're essentially going to create a unique profile, a unique blueprint of your anxiety. And again, the goal is to familiarize yourself enough with your personal experience that you can step into this place of self compassion around your symptoms, and awareness of your symptoms so that you can catch them earlier. 

02:32

Because so many of us, myself included, spent years even decades intellectualizing our anxiety living in our heads being so disconnected from our body. And as a result of that, we often don't catch anxiety until it's like overwhelming and all consuming till we're at level eight, nine or 10. And so, with this nervous system mapping by creating more awareness around how you uniquely experienced anxiety, the hope is that you can catch it and intervene with regulation tools earlier. 

03:01

And every time that you do this, this actually helps you to create a more regulated nervous system, just like every single bicep curl that you do in a gym helps you to have stronger biceps, every single time you take a rep if you will, towards being or feeling more regulated, you are moving towards a more regulated nervous system overall. 

03:23

And so helping our clients map out their nervous system states is some of the most foundational work that we do. In our coaching practice, before we ever get into the behavior change, or the fixing, or the shifting or the, you know, the deeper parts work, etc. Just starting with awareness is so foundational. And again, because one of the number one reasons that anxiety escalates so quickly, is because we have this felt sense of alarm in our body, and we don't understand it. And we don't know what to do with it, right that overestimation of threat, paired with an underestimation of your ability to manage that threat. 

04:01

And so that is what I want to support you with, I want to help you understand even more so that anxiety is this body based alarm. Usually based on your past lived experience. It's a younger version of you, or a younger version of you that wrote some programming into your nervous system, trying to get your attention. It's trying to warn you or keep you safe. And again, it's not just this abstract inner child construct. But because of that earlier programming, your alarm goes off your physiology changes in very real, measurable tangible ways in the present moment. And we can calm this stress physiology using tangible tools, and nervous system regulation work when we understand it better. 

04:49

So, to start, kind of this work today, and this episode really is some personal work, to the extent that you choose to step into this with me to the extent that you have the capacity to step into this. This could also be work that you bring into a session with a trauma informed practitioner to explore, etc. But I want to help you create context around your anxiety first, by briefly inviting you to reflect back on some of your own experiences, past and present. 

05:21

And then I'm going to guide you through how to start creating a nervous system profile map. So to lay out some of the pieces contributing to your current nervous system state, we are going to take a deeper dive into these three categories, three things that impact and inform and add stress load on the nervous system, your past load experiences, currently circumstances. And that third category is what can offset those and lead to long term healing, which are the present day kind of coping skills and strategies that you have. 

05:57

And so in again, in part one, in our last conversation, we explored what I meant by past experiences and current life circumstances. But today, what I really want to do is invite you into this personal reflection or exploration of what parts of those things might help you make sense of the anxiety that you're experiencing today. 

06:17

So let's assume for a moment that your anxiety does make perfect sense, based on your past lived experience. Now, some of you are listening, and you're already nodding your head, you're like, yep, that checks. My childhood was chaotic. My parents were unpredictable, like you've already been in enough therapy to put those pieces together, you know why you're struggling. 

06:36

But there might be others of you who are listening, who might think like, My childhood was like, fine, it was good, it was whatever. So like, what's my what's my good reason for being anxious. So again, for a second, let's assume that you do have a good reason. And I believe that every single person's anxiety, make sense not based on some genetic predisposition, although that may play a role. But on their past experience, and current life stressors, what you have learned is safe or not safe, the ways that you've needed to abandon your true self to find connection or get your needs met, what you've learned to attach your self worth to, and so on. 

07:12

And I have supported countless individuals and clients to getting to this really powerful like aha moment, where they can shift from thinking that they're broken to non judgmentally, curiously exploring some of these things, until they get to this moment of like, oh my gosh, like, of course, I struggle with anxiety. Like, of course, this makes sense, I make so much more sense, when I can lay all of these pieces out in this way. And so that's what I want to support you in, is laying some of these pieces out in a way that gives you this calm moment of oh, oh, interesting. 

08:00

So matter, no matter how chaotic, or how supportive and wonderful your childhood is, there are still pieces from our past, that felt overwhelming for our little nervous system, there are still ways that our imperfect parents no matter how well meaning didn't have the tools in the moment to, to meet a specific need that we had and programming got written. And now as adults, it's our job to go back. And to find that faulty programming, and to meet it with compassion, and these tangible tools, so that we can heal, really. 

08:41

So when I talk about, you know, past lived experiences or you know, inner child work, like there's a lot of different reactions, some people are thrilled some people's eyes glaze over. Some people are really intimidated with these things. 

08:53

So let's just start with basic child needs. So when it comes to your past lived experiences, you as a child, every single child had some basic needs. And those included your physical needs, food, water, shelter, safety, emotional needs, you know, a need to feel validated comfort, safe, even with big feelings, emotional needs, you needed to have emotional stability from your caretakers, children need rest, they also need free and spontaneous play. 

09:24

One of the things that children need is to know that they are safe, loved and connected, securely attached to their parents, without having to prove something to get that and anytime they do feel like they have to change something about themselves, or prove something that is where some of this programming gets written. Some of the wounding happens and we'll talk more about that in a minute.

09:46

But like I said, Today is all about being reflective in in our conversation. And so taking a moment to look back on your childhood or past lived experience, whether that's, you know, the last decade or 50 years ago what Ever. Where are your physical needs? Met? Did you have food, water shelter? Did you feel safe in the neighborhood that you grew up in? Right? This could also include things like if you were part of a marginalized group, did you feel safe in the body that you were in and the places that you were. And if you didn't, okay, your nervous system started to learn to adapt, you started to be on more high alert, you started to resource guard or whatever to get those physical needs met, to create a sense of physical safety for yourself. Right. And in some, some more serious cases, like was there physical abuse. 

10:42

And then we talked about emotional needs, children experience, big feelings, there is no emotion that is inappropriate for a child or inappropriate for a human at any stage to feel. And children need adults that can stay self regulated, even when they can't, children do not have the ability to regulate themselves, yet they are completely dependent upon caretakers to model regulation and to hold that space for them. 

11:11

And so where your emotional needs met, and even the most well meaning parents can fall short here, right? Either because they don't know better, or they themselves don't know how to stay regulated. So did you have maybe emotionally absent parents? Did you have emotionally unpredictable parents? Or sometimes they reacted one way or sometimes they didn't? Maybe based on their own mental health struggles? When you were feeling a big sad or a big mad, were you told that you were being dramatic? Were you sent to your room? To kind of deal with these big feelings all alone? Were you put in timeout for doing age appropriate things versus having a parent who sat down and calmly give you context for why that behavior? You know, wasn't good? Were you expected to just comply blindly? Right? Or did you have parents who who were able to stay calm even when you weren't, and not checked out and distracted, but present and calm with you in your big feelings? 

12:14

Remember, we talked about in our last conversation where this overwhelming experience that can cause wounding that can cause store trauma, and stored survival energy in our body is anytime that as a child, a teenager, even as an adult, when you you can't reset from that natural stress cycle. And especially children, they cannot reset from that natural stress cycle on their own. They're dependent upon caretakers to hold space for their big feelings. And to stay regulated enough themselves to help you have something to calibrate in to match to. So was it Okay, was it safe for you to be mad, sad or frustrated, and if it wasn't okay? Just taking note of that. 

12:55

When it comes to things like rest, or free, spontaneous play, part of my my childhood was I was in a million structured activities. I think at one point I was taking like five dance classes, I was in taekwondo, voice lessons and piano lessons, really active in church active in school like all at the same time. And my parents, well, meaning, I'm sure thought they were giving me all of these opportunities. And maybe they put me in all of these activities, because they did not know what to do with all my Hyper Energy at home. And it did give me both it gave me these opportunities, but it also limited my opportunity for just free time for free, spontaneous play. And so play without purpose is something that I think I completely abandoned by the time I was maybe 10, or 11. And it's something that I am trying to like re engage in as an adult. 

13:43

So these are just some basic child needs. And Gabor Ma Tei, a renowned physician author in the worlds of trauma, addiction, stress and child development. He talks about how children have two fundamental biological, like evolutionary needs. And it is attachment and authenticity. So by nature, as humans and all mammals, really, we're creatures of attachment, it is genetically programmed into our DNA, this need to connect this need that we have to belong. And it starts with attachment to our parents or early caretakers, because we literally depend on them to get our needs met. 

14:22

And then when I say this word authenticity, the meaning behind this is we have kind of this evolutionary need to be authentically connected to our body, to our emotions, to our gut feelings, and to be able to heed their guidance. And why because we're still animals at our core and a nature a creature who doesn't follow their instincts usually doesn't survive. Right? 

14:45

But what happens in the human world that's unique is that oftentimes, early in our life, these two things collide. This attachment and authenticity, there's usually a trade off. So what happens when a young child is Say 2,3,4,5, is angry and is sent away until they can just cool off, or they're told to knock it off because they're being too dramatic, right? This kid gets the message that if I experience my genuine self, which in this moment is this big feeling. If I authentically show up, if you will, anger, you know, in this case, then I sacrifice attachment, I'm less liked, or I'm sent away, you know, maybe again, you have an unpredictable parent, this is confusing for a child will sometimes do this, but sometimes they're not. And that reads to our nervous system is unpredictable and not safe. 

15:35

So again, that puts your nervous system into this high alert, or a bigger example, right? A child gets abused, the natural instinct of the authentic self is gonna say, run away or fight back. But can a child really afford to do that? Probably not. So instead, they deny this instinct, and they adapt the separate from parts of themselves in order to survive and stay in connection with the people who provide their needs. 

15:59

And so as a kid, when things like this happen big or in small ways, over time you adapt, and you learn that in order to stay attached, and connected with parent a, or parent B, or in the school environment, or here, you know that you need to do X, Y, or Z. And then to compound that we live in a culture that praises kids for being good and nice and pleasant and compliant, pretty or smart. Right, and it's instinctual, you know, to praise kids for pleasing us, right? For adapting themselves to the rules that we subscribe to as adults, because this is how we've learned to survive and stay safe in the world. 

16:44

And so as children, maybe you experienced this, over time, we give up the small or big parts of ourselves to be accepted, and to stay safe. And we all have done this to some degree. And in that process, our nervous system is learning what safe or isn't safe. And if in your childhood and environment feels less safe than safe, for whatever reason to our tiny human brains. It switches default modes. So now instead of having a baseline in that green zone of regulation, feeling calm and safe and present, our default mode becomes this yellow zone of hyper vigilance of activation, that feels our anxiety. And so, again, we've all done this to varying degrees. Most of the anxiety that you experienced today, as an adult, as an adult, has roots in the experiences that you had in your childhood, when you didn't feel connected to seen safe, hurt, loved, visible, had unmet needs, if there were instances of abuse, your nervous system remembers every single situation in which you weren't accepted. 

17:54

And it's written the programming that runs your life today. And anytime today, something feels familiar to a time in your past, bam, that internal arm gets triggered. And this is your way of your nervous system saying, Hey, pay attention, remember last time, right? And my ability and your ability to rewrite and break the patterns of alarm that no longer serve us is entirely based on your ability to regulate your nervous system, to turn towards those states of alarm in a regulating, compassionate way, to hear the messages of those younger parts of ourselves. And to show them that this is now and not then that we're here and we're not there, that we are actually safe. And we do have what it takes to keep ourselves safe and to meet our needs in the present moment. 

18:45

And you can only do that by understanding that anxiety is a body based alarm, rooted in past lived experience, past lived experience and younger parts of you that have really good intentions to keep you alive. And sometimes those really good intentions are misplaced in your present day life. And so hopefully that gives you just at least a tiny bit of oh, this is what that means. My past lived experience or my inner child, or this is how my childhood could still be playing out in my anxiety today. 

19:25

And it's possible, right? That even after some of those exploratory questions, you're not having any of these aha moments. And so this can indicate that either A, there's some really early experiences that overwhelmed your nervous system that you don't have actual memory of or that you're the primary cause of your anxieties that your current life circumstances are overloading your nervous system. 

19:49

So taking a moment now to be reflective about that your current life stressors, your current life circumstances. And with our clients, we do an exercise called the stress bucket. Exercise, right? 

20:00

Remember the nervous system ladder, you're standing at the top with that bucket. We call this your stress bucket. And we have 10 categories or so that we help our clients assess and explore to determine how manageable the current day present load everyday life stressors are for their nervous system. How is their lifestyle either contributing to dysregulation or facilitating regulation. So we look at things like sleep quality, work, stress, home stress, relationships, thoughts, internal environment. So this could be gut things, autoimmune things, etc. external environment, again, the safety of the environment, the sense of chaos or calm, the clutter in an environment, respiration habits, your breathing plays a big role in messages that get sent to your nervous system. We look at restorative time, both quality and quantity. How many decisions do they have to make a day, the inputs, again, quality and quantity, that could be things like the news books, you're reading shows, you're watching social media, etc. 

21:04

And so you know, maybe taking a minute to come back and write down some of those categories, and explore how much weight you're carrying for each one of those categories. And it is amazing when we put all of this on paper with clients, when we explore each of these categories, you know, deeply and curiously and non judgmentally with them, they look down and they're like, oh, my gosh, like, I've just been trying to keep my head above water for so long, I've never paused to take a look at everything that was weighing me down. And again, there's this aha moment of self compassion, of like, of course, of course, my nervous system is in overdrive. Of course, I'm anxious. Or even sometimes, like, of course, I'm so overwhelmed to the point of shutdown, like, look at what I've been carrying, and look how long I've been carrying it. 

21:55

And just a reminder that my goal with this episode is not actually to provide you with any solutions for these things yet. But instead, to really hold compassionate space to invite you into this exploration and awareness around what might be driving some of that activation in your body that you call anxiety. And this awareness is so key before we try to fix anything. 

22:20

And at least in the way that we guide clients through this process and coaching, it creates an incredible amount of self compassion as well, where they finally shift that story from something is wrong with me to Oh, actually, this all makes sense based on what I've been through and what I'm holding. And it's there in that self compassion, and hope that the healing really begins to happen in realizing that this isn't just how you are, but it's a result of what you've been through, and that you can heal and learn differently over time. 

22:54

And that's what brings us to that third category, which is what I call the offset category. So this is those coping skills that you do or don't have. So we've reflected on that past lived experience those current life circumstances. And the healing comes from, from well, what can we do today, to manage the result of those combination of things. 

23:16

And maybe you've been through a lot, but you also have done a lot of this work already. A lot of coaching, or therapy. Maybe you have a really supportive social network that provides you with resourcing and coping strategies. And again, going back to that anxiety reframe from last episode, that anxiety is this overestimation of threat paired with an underestimation of your ability to manage the threat. All of these things, the resources that you get, and the support that you get make you feel more able to handle whatever comes feeling safe or supported or connected. 

23:51

And so the goal of our coaching, the work that we do with clients is to help our clients identify the tools and practices that allow them to internally resource as well as to create a clearer sense of the external resources, the external support systems that they have, as well be at the coach, membership community, identifying friends or family that are regulating versus escalating. 

24:14

And, again, not taking too much time in this conversation to deep dive into specific coping skills or strategies. But just taking a moment to acknowledge who in your life if anyone modeled emotional regulation for you, especially as a child, who in your life modeled self compassion, self care, patience, resilience, communication, boundary setting healthy habits. And if you're like, No one, well then of course, you suck at those things. 

24:42

Right? No one's ever taught you how, how to play those games. Just like no one's ever taught me how to play tennis and I consider myself a very athletic person. And I once went to, to play tennis with my husband. It was when we were dating actually And I'm thinking like, how hard can it be? It was hard. And it was embarrassing. And I was really, really bad. Because nobody's ever taught me how to play tennis before. So of course, I was bad at it. Right? 

25:12

If no one ever taught you how to regulate your emotions, or your nervous system, if no one ever taught you how to set boundaries, to have healthy communication, and so on have, of course you suck at it. And of course, that creates more anxiety in your life, not because you suck not because you're not good enough or smart enough or have enough motivation or willpower, but simply because you don't know what you don't know yet. Right life has handed you a 300 pound bucket and nobody trained you are prepared you to carry it. 

25:44

And would it have been awesome. If those things were modeled for you, for us, for me and taught to us as children? Yeah, but for most of us, here, they weren't. And so now it is our job as an adult to seek out those skills. It is your job now to teach yourself how to self regulate, to be able to turn towards those younger pieces, and younger parts of you. And say, I know you didn't feel safe, then. But I've got you now. And this is how, and this is what that looks like. This is what it feels like I know you didn't feel safe or valid then. But I will help you feel safe and valid now. So that we can unlearn and get out of these toxic repeating patterns, and move towards healing. 

26:31

Okay. So that was the exploration part of this. And now the second thing that I wanted to give you really kind of, maybe the homework from from today's conversation, is a framework for you to start to map out your own nervous system for you to create a blueprint of how you experience activation and anxiety. 

26:50

And just like an actual map helps you to determine where you are so that you can set course to where you want to go appropriately. mapping your nervous system helps you do the same, it gets you familiar with what it feels like for you to be in that yellow zone of activation. And this is for two main reasons. One, because the more familiar you are with the earlier signs and symptoms of anxiety, the sooner you can catch it and reverse that spiral. And the second reason this is so valuable is because as you'll learn in part three of this series, different tools will work better depending on what level of anxiety you're experiencing. And that there are no universal ways to regulate the nervous system. Different things work for different people. And so you need to learn how to be in conversation with your system, you need to learn and to cultivate this interoception this body awareness to know if a particular tool is supportive for you or not. 

27:48

So, how to map your nervous system, I'm going to lay it out in a really simple way. And I'm actually I'll attach in the show notes, again, a worksheet to lay this out for you if you're more of a visual learner, and it's just helpful for you to actually see it. But essentially, what you're going to do is get really curious and identify four different categories of how you experience feeling activated. Body sensations, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. 

28:16

So on a piece of paper, you're right at the top anxiety or activation, any word that resonates with you. And then you'll have four columns. And these columns will be titled, sensations, emotions, thoughts and behaviors. And what you're going to do in each one of these categories is explore. Okay, it answers that. 

28:37

These questions of what state Am I in? You're identifying, I'm activated, I'm in the yellow zone. And this answers the question of well, how do I know? How do I know that? I'm in that yellow zone? How do I know that I'm anxious? How do I know that I'm activated? The sensations? Or what does it feel like in my body? For you? Are there butterflies in your stomach? Do your palms get sweaty? Does your heartbeat does your chest get tight? Does your throat close? How do you experience physical sensations? 

29:04

What other emotions are in this yellow zone for you? irritated? Anxious, angry? Can you identify some emotions that come just before the anxiety? Right? Or just after basic angers that rage? 

29:19

Thoughts? What kind of thoughts do you think about yourself about others about the world? What sense of urgency? 

29:27

And then what kind of behaviors? What are the things that you do or don't do when you're feeling anxious or activated? 

29:33

And so like I said, this is this is an exploration activity. This isn't an invitation for you to curiously Turn towards your nervous system. And it's not a one and done I invite you to spend the next week or so paying attention to and adding to things you notice. 

29:48

This is also something that can be incredibly powerful to do and explore with a trauma informed practitioner, whether that's one of our coaches in the membership or in our one on one coaching or with somebody else that you're working with. But creating this nervous system map is the start of befriending your nervous system befriending and bringing yourself into conversation with your body. So can you familiarize yourself Self enough with your anxiety, signs symptoms, that you can come into conversation with these alarm systems in your body. 

30:23

And this is the first step to eventually learning how to turn towards to regulate and to calm them. So like I said, it was all about awareness, about stepping into this place of curiosity, and exploration. This is the foundation to healing, you have to do this first, you have to know you have to be educated, you have to know how your system works. And then you have to be able to apply that to personally to have this awareness about how this shows up for you, before you can step into any of the actual tangible regulation practices. 

31:01

And so the three key takeaways from today's conversation is all your symptoms all of you make sense. Your anxiety makes sense based on your past lived experience, and your current life circumstances. And then we can offset that with our coping skills. Maybe the ones you got as a kid and the ones you're going to teach yourself as an adult. But this first takeaway is that you're not broken. In fact, a nervous system that has been able to live on high alert for this long, is a pretty resilient nervous system. And a nervous system that has had the capacity to work this hard for you to feel safe is absolutely a nervous system that has the capacity to heal and regulate 

31:46

TAKEAWAY NUMBER TWO, I'm sounding like a broken record at this point. But your current life circumstances set the stage for continued and compounding dysregulation. You have the responsibility to control the controllables. Like I said, nervous system regulation, it's a lifestyle. As you move towards regulation, your life is going to change as well. 

32:13

And so looking at your current life circumstances are these compounding dysregulation are creating an environment and space for me to regulate and feel safe. And a lot like I said a lot of what's happening in your life might be out of your control. But a lot of it is absolutely within your control. 

32:28

And this is where coaching or therapy or support can be really helpful because we only see things with our narrow blinders on. And what a practitioners job is to help hold a safe space for you to to get curious about okay, well, I didn't think I had control over that. But what might that look like? Or how could I still, you know, accomplish this thing that I want to accomplish, but maybe in a different way. 

32:50

And key takeaway number three is that your activation, your anxiety has a unique blueprint in the way that it shows up. And getting familiar with that is the first step towards regulation. 

33:01

And so I guess my invitation for takeaway number three is to take some time to map out your nervous system, at least mapping out this yellow zone, the anxiety experience that you have. And like I said, I will drop in the show notes, a simple PDF that can support you in that work. 

33:21

All right, friends. Thank you so so much for being here, and I look forward to continuing this conversation in part three of our anxiety mini series. 

33:35

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 and 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.