Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast

How COMMUNITY Helps You Heal [Essential 8 Series]

• Amanda Armstrong • Season 1 • Episode 66

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Episode 66 - Essential 8 Series (Part 7)

Today we’re taking a deep dive into how community helps you heal & I would go as far as to say how and why community is a non-negotiable for healing, how it’s the cornerstone to it. Humans are hardwired for connection. You were never meant to carry or navigate as much as you have on your own. Hit play to learn more!
 
Resources:

Here's the 3 takeaways:

  1. Human are hardwired for connection, it is a biological imperative. Take a moment to reflect on the spaces, places, and people you feel an authentic connection with. Consider doing the, “Who’s at your table?” exercise.
  2. The modern world is moving in away from real-time, in-person connection, be intentional about keeping it in your life. Consider putting your phone away more often and look for ways big and small to create human connection in your daily life.
  3. Social support enhances our resilience to trauma. Community-based spaces to heal, connect, play, and have shared experiences are essential.

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Welcome to Regulate and Rewire, an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone had taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll share 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.

Hey, friend. Welcome back. Today, we are taking a deep dive into how community helps you heal. And I would go as far as to say how and why community is a nonnegotiable for healing.

How it's the cornerstone to healing, and how and why a lack of community is, at least in my opinion, a big part as to why so many of us are struggling so deeply with trauma, anxiety, depression. And if you're joining for the first time today, this is part seven of an eight part series called the essential eight series, where I'm diving into habits that heal. These are eight essential habits, topics to consider on your healing journey from anxiety and depression. Habits that help to facilitate more capacity in your system, to do that deeper work, and to regulate your nervous system. And so today's conversation is all about community, and humans are hardwired for connection. You were never meant to carry or navigate as much as you have or as much as you likely are in your life right now on your own. And I think that life has become more and more isolating with each of the last few generations. While there's technology that has been wildly helpful in staying connected, I think that there is a lot of pieces of modern day society that are increasingly isolating.

For most of human history, we've been extremely, extremely dependent on each other for survival. Resources were shared. Children of all ages ran around and played together. Fires were sat around together. Ways of doing things were passed down from generation to generation, from one family to another family. And I want to give one example to illustrate this from the perspective of a modern day new mom. For many, many new moms today, they come home from a hospital. Their partners returned to work a few days, maybe a week or two later, and now they're home.

Left alone with this new baby, they are unsure how to answer the 452 questions a day that you have as a new parent. They're unsure how to navigate the changing needs of a young baby, let alone the changing needs of themselves and their body and their hormone shifts as a sleep deprivation accrues. Can you imagine for a second, thousands of years ago, waking up as vulnerable as a postpartum mom with a new baby to find yourself alone in a cave. Of course you'd feel scared and overwhelmed. You have no real way of protecting yourself in that vulnerable state, let alone you and this vulnerable other. That was a very real life threat. And in most ways, you still have the same nervous system running the show now as our ancestors did then. And there is nothing normal or natural about the way that we live in these single family homes, often unaware of who our neighbors are, instead of feeling deeply supported or connected by them.

Now, to contrast this, I want you to imagine if instead, a new mom came home to find an aunt, a sister, a mother already in that home, a father, an elder already in that home, prepping things for her and the new baby she's received into this space. What if every new mom or new parent immediately entered into this community of other parents with kids of various ages? What if at night, you shared duties and you sat around a fire to find validation for the parts of this that feel really hard? Advice for the seasons or situations where you don't know what to do, where it's not just your job or the job of you and your partner to ensure that your children thrive, but that everybody is there to participate and ensure in this. You are not alone in any of it. I think that if this was more of the shared experience, there would be a lot less postpartum anxiety and depression. And maybe think about this from a different perspective. Think about teens today. Or better yet, think about the teenage years of your parents, what that might have been like. Think about your own teenage years, and then think about the teenage years of teens today.

Friends, it is not the same. I'm in my thirties. So for some context, I'm in my thirties. I didn't have any kind of smartphone until like a few years into college when I started driving. I had to print out directions for MapQuest before I left my house. I had to actually use a map if I wanted to go anywhere other than the place that I printed out directions for. And even in this small thing, there was more community. I had to pull over and ask people for directions.

I had to call my parents for their support in doing this. My friend and I, I remember I grew up in southern California. We were very lost in Long beach, and I had my map, and my friend and I, we pulled over, we opened the map, we problem solved together. Community is derived from these shared experiences. And in a less fortunate aspect of this, I was bullied my freshman year of high school. And when I left school, I also left that experience minus a few prank calls that I got once I got home, I was untouchable. And that's not the reality of kids today. They are so connected to each other every minute of every day with smartphones, and we're seeing the negative mental health implications of that.

And I could go down a rabbit hole right now on the impact of tech and teens and mental health, and we will absolutely go there in future conversations. But I really want to keep today focused on the conversation of community. That there were a lot of times as a teenager, I think for me, maybe not a teenager, but as a kid, my parents didn't know like which neighborhood neighbor's house I was at. And it didn't bother them that much because they knew every single one of the neighbors. They knew all of the neighbors kids, they knew what we were doing. I remember one day, I think it was probably eleven or twelve, a friend and I, we found two computer chairs at my parents house and we decided we were going to ride these computer chairs over to our friend's house, like a whole neighborhood over. My parents were not happy because it definitely ruined the wheels of those computer chairs. But can you imagine today, a set of twelve year olds just like riding on their bellies, these computer chairs through your neighborhood.

And I'm sure these shenanigans happen in neighborhoods today, but I would likely guess at a decreased frequency that they used to happen. And my parents often share stories about how I would just talk to people everywhere. We'd be in line at a grocery store, we would be in an elevator. And I move through the world as a mom to young children now. And I feel like it's a good day, it's a good outing when somebody looks up from their phone long enough to acknowledge my kids or smile or talk to me. We are so overly connected through cyberspace and under connected in the real world. If you take nothing away from this episode other than to experiment with eye contact and acknowledging and trying to find human connection in your everyday life as you move about running errands, what would it look like if the next time you're standing in line to buy groceries or a new outfit, don't pull out your phone? And I want you to notice a couple things. I want you to, number one, see if there is a way that you can connect with a human around you.

Whether that's offering a smile, just a simple eye contact, a nod. I also want you to pay attention to how uncomfortable it is for you to not have the distraction of your phone. How many times do you think, oh, I'll just check. I'll just check. I'll just check. I've been doing this experiment actively now for about two or three months, and it's hard even for me, and I know all the science behind it. I still get really pulled to my phone. I'm like, I'm just standing in line.

There's nothing better to do. And I want to reiterate to you that there is everything better to do. Simply being available for micro moments of human connection in your everyday life. And what could that look like? I also want to share an experience I had recently. I went to Maine to visit my friend David. He's the founder of physiology first, and he runs a gym up there where kids and students workout free. And it is amazing to come into and to see even their classes on his social media account, to see a fitness class where there's an eight year old, a 16 year old, a 40 year old, a 65 year old in the same class. I feel so strongly that we need more multigenerational spaces, and we're losing those as a community.

Kids hang out with kids, teens hang out with teens, adults hang out with adults. And what a beautiful thing it is to witness this collective community in, again, having the shared experience of doing something that's beneficial for our health from eight years old to 65 years old, and something that we've all recently lived through. Think about COVID Like this was such an impactful phenomenon. There are certain people who thrived and other people who are still struggling in the wake of all that that was. It made space for a slowdown that I think so many people desperately needed. It was also debilitatingly isolating for so many others. We were faced with this stressful circumstance, and many people were left to navigate that in isolation, which is a perfect recipe for trauma. And I want to share with you a few, probably three or four of my favorite quotes around trauma and community and the importance of human connection.

And these first two are by Peter Levine. And the first one reads, trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness. And another quote of his is, it is not the event itself that is traumatic, but the lack of supportive connections afterward that determines whether or not it will become a lasting trauma. I want to give just an example of this trigger warning. I'm gonna use a car related example. If that's something that's sensitive, maybe just turn the volume down for the next 60 seconds. So let's say you and I are both sitting in the backseat of a car that gets in a car crash and you walk away from this and are driving next week, no problem. And I walk away from this situation with debilitating driving anxiety for the next decade.

What's the difference? There could be a number of things that contributed to that. What is my past experience with these things versus yours? What's the different capacities of our system? What are the different emotional regulation and coping tools that we have individually? But I would say one of the greatest differences might be that I rush into a work setting where I'm just forced to kind of shove down that experience and then I go home. Maybe I live alone and the situation is never really processed. It's just this thing that happened to me that gets stored in my body. And maybe you're able to walk away from this to a family structure where somebody hears the story and is able to validate and witness like, man, that sounds really, really hard. I'm here for you. What can I do? What happened differently for both of us potentially in that situation is that my system was never able to completely reset from that stress cycle. My system is never sure that that event is not now.

It's then where your system was able to be held. You were able to experience some co regulation, there was validation, there was empathetic witnessing, and your system reset from that. It was like, okay, this is this really hard thing that happened yesterday, that, look, I'm safe, I'm good, I'm supported, versus here's this really, really hard thing that happened, and my system never fully gets that reset. That's what he means when he says, but the lack of supported connection afterward is what determines whether or not it will become a lasting trauma. Another quote is by Gabor mate, and it reads, when people are overwhelmed by something beyond their control and are unable to integrate the experience, they can become traumatized. It's the isolation and the inability to process the event with support that often leads to the trauma. Doctor Steven Porges says social engagement and connection are key to mitigating the impact of trauma. When we experience overwhelming events in isolation, our nervous system cannot regulate effectively, end quote.

Friends, community is the intervening variable that determines if an experience is just really, really tough or traumatic. Is this experience something that your system will reset from, or one that will have lasting negative impacts for decades to follow? And research echoes this. Research consistently has demonstrated the critical role of social support in mitigating the effects of trauma, not only because it provides emotional comfort, but also practical assistance when we experience overwhelming circumstances. And it shows that community acts as a buffer against things like PTSD and other trauma related symptoms. And what I'll do is I'll actually link in the show notes three studies I came across when preparing for this podcast that you can take a look at if you're interested. The titles of those studies are the role of social support in coping with psychological trauma. The second is developing trauma resilient communities through community capacity building. And the third study is how social support enhances resilience in trauma exposed individuals.

And my personal experience with this is when I was getting my master's degree. My thesis examined a peer mentored physical activity program for students with depression. And so in my research I looked not only at the impact of physical activity on decreased symptoms of depression for these students, but also the role of their peer mentor. That peer support and my findings were that both played a really pivotal role in the positive outcomes of that program. And because of my experience studying and looking at and researching and interviewing participants and mentors and the countless hours I spent on that project, community has always been at the heart of my mental health coaching practice, even in its name. For those of you who aren't familiar, the name of my coaching practice is rise as we and our motto is, as you rise, we rise, really echoing out to be as you heal, we heal. As you increase your capacity, you increase the collective capacity for all of us. As you become a better self regulator, you also become a more firm resource for co regulation.

Community based healing is often a missing piece in traditional modalities for healing things like anxiety, depression and trauma. And it's at the heart of the membership option within our practice. And my hope with that space is that that virtual community becomes a safe space that opens doors to create more tangible, in person safe spaces and relationships for each of our members. And we often hear from our members how impactful it is to be on our virtual community coaching calls and to just feel and see and experience that you aren't alone in the things that you're struggling with. Now, in this conversation today, I want to pause for a minute and just make space for a little bit of self reflection. And so slowing down the pace and asking yourself, how would I rate my current sense of belonging? How would I rate my current sense of belonging within my family, within your community? Maybe taking a moment to pause and see if you can identify people in your life who feel safe to you, who are the people who are there for you with the hard stuff in a helpful and grounding way? And are there people that you can identify who aren't that who either put your nervous system into a state of more alert or shutdown, or who escalate when you're having hard feelings about an experience, or you're having just a hard experience itself. And I'll share with you an exercise at the end that can provide a little bit more depth to what I call intentional community cultivation. And as you take some time to be self reflective on experiences that you've gone through where you felt supported versus experiences where you didn't, places in your life where you have found community and a sense of belonging and places where you haven't.

We go where we feel we belong, and in an ideal, perfect world, we would feel that felt sense of belonging the most in our family structures. But when that's not available, we seek it out elsewhere. And I don't love that people find community in dangerous or toxic places, but I very compassionately understand how and why they do, especially when it's not available. Other places. Humans need other humans. Now I want to gently pivot for a minute and share something I recently came across on an Instagram account titled our embodied healing and I loved this so, so much. And this post read no human has ever learned to self soothe by being left alone with their pain. No human has ever learned to self soothe by being left alone with their pain.

And the caption read, which I think was equally as impactful for me. It says, being alone with our pain teaches our body to physiologically shut down, not to feel safe and okay on our own. The way our body truly learns to quote self soothe is by being soothed by somebody else first, who holds us and understands us and stays with us to settle and help make sense of the chaos and upset inside. Receiving enough of that kind of relational attunement and care is what gives our biology the blueprint for how to find safety and comfort in ourselves. And even then, there will always be something we won't be able to carry all on our own. Being forced to be alone with our pain when we haven't developed that internal map as a result of healthy co regulation is too much stress on the body's physiology. So the nervous system makes us collapse and conserve. That can look a lot like being calm or settled, but it's far from what we think of as self soothing.

It's more like self disconnecting, dissociating from sensations and feeling the present moment reality to make the moment bearable and continue on. That's the way our nervous system is wired. There's no human for whom that's an exception there's just a lot of humans who've learned to manage and cope, embrace and compensate for the lack of safety, connection, and support from others that they're still waiting to receive. While this holds so much heartbreak, I also think it holds a lot of hope when we can understand this, I think it holds a lot of compassion. I'm going to come back to this paragraph of the way our body truly learns to self soothe is by being soothed by somebody else first, who holds us and understands us and stays with us to settle and help make sense of the chaos and upset inside. And because I'm in a season of mothering young children, this is my number one job. When their feelings are big, they do not have the ability to self soothe. For them, big feelings, anger, frustration, disappointment, it is chaos and upset inside them.

And my number one job as their mom, beyond their physical safety and well being, in my opinion, is to be that someone else, to hold them, to understand them, to stay with them, to settle and help them make sense of that chaos and upset inside. And when we ourselves did not receive that when we were young children, it makes sense that that is a really hard thing to hold space for, for our own children now. And I think the hope here lies in that next paragraph of receiving enough of that kind of relational attunement. And care is what gives our biology the blueprint for how to find safety and comfort in ourselves. It's not too late. It's never too late to seek out or land yourself in places where you can receive that relational attunement. That is one of the number one factors that determines the success of a coaching or therapy. Any kind of therapeutic relationship is, do you feel this safe relational attunement? Is this person able to be an anchor while you storm and help you find your way back, to build tools, to build capacity for you to eventually self anchor.

And there's no measure of self regulation, there's no measure of nervous system regulation that ever makes us exempt from needing other humans. And that's that other line. It says. And even then, there will always, in capital letters, be some things we won't be able to carry all on our own. And there is no human for whom that's an exception. And what this whole conversation summarizes down to is that humans are hardwired for connection. It plays a crucial role in our well being, particularly in terms of mental health and nervous system regulation. A felt sense of belonging and safety with others is a biological imperative.

Being part of a supportive community reduces feelings of loneliness and isolation. Social interactions within a community stimulates the release of neurotransmitters like oxytocin, serotonin, all of these things calming the nervous system, promoting joy, happiness. Play. A network of supportive people act as a buffer against stress, anxiety, trauma, and depression. It enhances resilience, it improves mood, it fosters a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment in our life. And so the question that some of you may be left with right now is, okay, like, where do I find that? Making new connections as an adult, new friendships, finding new safe spaces. I wish it was easier than it tends to be. And that's where I can put a shameless plug in for the online community that we're building.

And an online community does not substitute the need for in person community, but it absolutely can be a place to start. And that's what I love so much about our membership, is that you automatically are opting into a community of people who identify as struggling with their mental health. Specifically, anxiety. And depression is what my practice focuses most on. And so there's already an element of safety built into that, of like, okay, they're struggling too. There's a sameness there. They get this. And in this community membership, we don't just focus on mitigating the hard, we also focus on cultivating the good.

Each month there are live events for coaching. There are also live events for connecting, for play, for practicing these essentially habits and establishing more regulated living together. And another one of the things you'll find in the show notes of this episode is a free, downloadable community workbook. And in that, you're going to find two supportive resources to help you take action with what you've learned in this conversation. So you'll find a list of ways to improve community. And the second is you'll find a worksheet that has one of my favorite community exploration exercises, which is called who's at your table? And so, under a list of ways to improve community, you'll see boundary work making a priority out of family and friends time. Determining who's at your table. Consider hobbies or pastimes that might involve others doing your own inner work.

And while some of these suggestions may seem generic, I want to invite you to take a personal lens to it, to sit with one of those and say, okay, if I really did do this, what might that look like in my life? Who might that be? Where might that be? What might that be for me? And then with that, who's at your table? Exercise. It's an invitation to reflect on your circle of influence. It invites you to take a look at some of the key people you have at your table and the roles they might be playing. And then to decide where might there be role that you want at your table that's missing. How can you seek that out? Maybe there's somebody who has a seat at your table who isn't supporting your growth or your healing or where you want to go. And this is something that we support our clients with in a personalized way inside our programs all the time. So if you want even more personalized support in exploring who's at your table, I would love for you to join us inside the membership. Now, let's bring this conversation together with three takeaways.

Number one, humans are hardwired for connection. It's a non negotiable biological imperative. And with this takeaway, I want to offer the invitation to take a moment to reflect on the spaces, places and people you feel an authentic connection with. Consider doing that. Who's at your table? Exercise you'll find in that workbook takeaway. Number two, our world is moving in a direction away from authentic and real connection. So with this, I want to offer you the invitation to be intentional. Put your phone away more often.

Look around your world for big and small ways to create more human connection in your daily life. And number three is that social support enhances our resilience to trauma and our capacity to heal. Community based spaces to connect, to have shared experiences cannot be overlooked. The importance of them cannot be overlooked in your healing journey. And so this is an invitation for you to seek out community that supports your healing. And that doesn't necessarily need to be something like what I'm offering, where it's a mental health membership. This could also simply be a community dance class, an intramural sports thing, a crafting night, having a felt sense of belonging, finding sameness amongst people around you, or similar interests. Maybe it's even a support group for something that you are going through that's really hard.

We all need to be in spaces where we feel safe, we feel seen and we feel supported. Where our nervous system can settle and our mind can think. Things like, oh, I'm not alone in this. Oh, they're like me. Oh, this is fun. And what this all comes down to is friend, friend, friend. You cannot heal in isolation. And for all of the hard things that you have had to go through, feeling alone and feeling unsupported, my heart just goes out and wants to hold you.

That was really hard, and I wish it didn't have to have been that way for you. We need each other. Seek out others and if seeking out others feels scary or big or hard, it's okay that the other you seek out for now is a coach is a therapist that can be safe other that helps you bridge the gap to finding other places and spaces and people to build your healing community with. And I want to thank each and every one of you who are here listening for being a part of that for me in some way, and hopefully me for you in some way as well. So thanks for being here. And until next week, I'm sending so much hope and healing your way. 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.