46: How "Felt Safety" makes a difference when breastfeeding (and generally adulting!)

I'm back!

It's been a hot minute since I've posted a new episode, but I am here!

I'm also working on new content and resources - let me know what you want to hear about here.

As I have been navigating diagnosis, treatment, and recovery from a number of health issues while also serving breastfeeding toddler families, I have noticed a few parallels between my own path to health, and the path to breastfeeding & weaning ease.

In this episode I share about my own my sense of "felt safety" around wasps - yellow jackets to be exact, and how the timeline of the ebb and flow of the intensity of my fear coincided with the timeline of the intensity of my stress/overwhelm. 

I use that parallel to describe how our stress as humans shows up in our breastfeeding & parenting. 

From there, I provide 2 different ways to support a felt sense of safety so that you can in turn cultivate ease in your breastfeeding (and most other areas of life!):

#1 - Soaking in the positive moments (because our negativity bias feeds our fear/stress). 

#2 - Meeting our fears/stress with kindness and self-compassion (because ignoring, catastrophizing, and/or arguing with ourselves only serves to reinforce and grow our fears and stress.) 

Try these 2 things out this week and then use the "fan mail"/text me option to let me know how they have made a difference for you. 

Grab your free guide to say "No" to the feed while still saying "yes" to the need at  www.ownyourparentingstory.com/guide

Love this episode?!  Shoot me a DM over on Instagram @own.your.parenting.story and tell me all about it. <3

Transcript

[00:00:00] All right, I am back. It's been a little while since I posted a podcast episode or even posted on my Instagram, sent emails, and I kind of dropped off the face of the planet in some ways, but I was really open at the beginning of the year about some health challenges that I've been going through over the last couple years now.

And I was really hopeful that as soon as I got treatment, everything would be better. But it wasn't. It's taken time and I'm still not 100 percent there. In fact, I keep stopping and re recording this podcast episode because my brain fog [00:00:30] keeps popping up and I feel like my words are not coming out properly.

So because of that, please bear with me if I sound a little bit less, concise than usual. But I have learned a few things through this process.

And as I have been still serving the clients that I've had in my program, I haven't completely fallen away from everything. I'm still here working with parents and doing that stuff behind the scenes. I just haven't been in front of the scenes [00:01:00] as much. But I've seen parallels between what I'm.

been going through to what parents are going through with breastfeeding their toddlers and navigating weaning and night weaning and co parenting while breastfeeding and all of these things. So that's what I'm going to be sharing a little bit about today. I will say that when I became a parent coach, when I first wanted to do this work, it's because I had seen some profound changes in [00:01:30] my own parenting and in my own home life and breastfeeding journey.

And I wanted to share that with other people. So when I started doing this stuff, things were pretty even keel in my house and with my kids. I mean, there was normal craziness of life, but it felt doable. I felt like, yes, I got this, but adding in these new components of not just showing up for the clients that I have, but also doing podcasts and Instagram and emails and all that kind of stuff workshops, right?

 It [00:02:00] started to add new stressors that made having to balance all of the things harder. It wasn't just like I was showing up for work at a nine to five or even part time work where I kind of clock in and clock out. It's like all the time. It's a lot of brain power. Right. And so I noticed that, and then when I got sick and when the symptoms started to become really, really prevalent and get bigger and bigger.

Became even harder, right? And I think that a lot of you can understand these things [00:02:30] whether, you know, you have your own job and business and life and that kind of stuff or health issues or, or not, or you have other stressors in your life. Maybe other people in your life have gotten sick or there's divorce or moving or, I mean, gosh, we've gone through a pandemic.

We have a lot of things globally, just turning on the news or opening up your phone to look at social media can be overwhelming and stressful. And add a lot of stressors that maybe weren't there previously, right? Even previously, meaning like in that moment, you know, you're doing okay and you open up [00:03:00] your phone and it's a lot.

I think that a lot of you can relate and understand that. And I've been there too with these things. So the thing that I have learned over and over and over and over and over again is that. No matter the stressors that are going on, no matter the external things, the internal things, the dynamics that are happening, breastfeeding, weaning, whatever, coming back to and [00:03:30] cultivating a felt sense of safety inside of me makes all the difference.

And now there's brain science reasons for that, right? If you're not feeling safe, if you're feeling as if, the threats, the possibilities of the bad things, right are too much, then you're going to move into a protective mode and a protective state where your brain doesn't have access to [00:04:00] creative problem solving and your brain doesn't have access to its connection and attachment circuitry the same way, right?

So you're not going to feel connected and you're not going to feel close to your friends and your family and all those kinds of things that help you to feel safe, your children, right? So cultivating that is the number one thing for me. Even as I've gone through things that were very objectively difficult, and [00:04:30] when I had zero energy and couldn't get up off the couch, couldn't make food for my kids I had no bandwidth for anything.

And that meant that sometimes I would lose my patience incredibly fast with my children, or maybe I just was like practically gone and it felt like I was being emotionally neglectful because I just couldn't show up for them in the way that I wanted to. Hard moments, right? But even through that, cultivating that felt sense of safety inside of myself is what [00:05:00] supported me through.

So, when you can cultivate that felt sense of safety, all areas of your life start to improve. And that includes breastfeeding. That includes parenting. I want to share with you. A little bit about me. I was terrified of yellow jackets, type of wasp. Now at different times in my life, I've been more afraid of them, but there was this time, [00:05:30] firstly, when my daughter, when I was breastfeeding my oldest and she was like a young toddler and I was going through nursing aversion through the first time, 

 I was terrified of them and we would go to the park and get ice cream, especially around this time of year, September, October, they get really bad where I live, right? I'm sure there are many of you that can relate to that. And I've learned since that they're really hungry and it's this time of year where their food supply is dwindling and they need food, so they're looking for it.

But I would get swarmed when I'd be at the park with my daughter eating [00:06:00] ice cream. And I remember having like a meltdown, like just panicking one day with my husband. And I was like, I have to leave. I have to leave. I just threw my ice cream in the garbage and I like ran to the car just cause they were all around me.

I didn't get stung. I was just so overwhelmed and just like completely panicked by these wasps everywhere. And then I was working. I mean, you know. Just in general, therapy, working on things. I got, things got better in my [00:06:30] breastfeeding relationship. And it's funny because I remember the next year going at the park at the same time eating ice cream.

And I was like, Oh, these wasps aren't bothering me so much. That's so interesting. Like they must not be as bad this year. And my husband's like, no, they're just as bad as they have been every year. But it was a different experience for me. I didn't experience that as dangerous, right? My brain wasn't stuck in that everything is dangerous mode.

Funnily enough, last year, I began to experience panic [00:07:00] around yellow jackets again. Total panic, freaking out. I would, yeah, I just remember feeling terrified of them. I, I had learned, I don't know if I knew this before, but I had learned that if you kill them, then it releases pheromones or whatever that attract more and that they can remember your face and they can like track you.

And I was so scared of these things. I didn't want to go outside. I was so stressed about it. And then this year I have. been completely different this past season. Now, do I love them [00:07:30] crawling all over me? No, but I had one in my house while I was doing dishes and it was like a little buddy. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I felt this felt sense of safety inside of me where that yellow jacket didn't feel like a threat anymore.

It didn't feel scary anymore. And I didn't love when I couldn't see it knowing that it was there. Cause you know, I don't want to get stung. But it was just hanging out on the counter while I was washing some dishes that had come in the house [00:08:00] and when it was done, like when I was done doing dishes, I You know, put a little cup, paper underneath, brought it outside, let it go.

And I did that with a bunch that came in my house the other day and it's just a totally different experience. Do I love them? Eh, you know, but I just see them as these little creatures. Sure. Could they hurt me with a sting? Yeah, they could. Do I want that? No, but I'm not panicking and terrified about them.

I have never brought that up in a therapy [00:08:30] session done any, you know, specific work around yellow jackets or wasp fears or phobias, but as my life, as I can look at the timeline in the last, you know, few years, this more adult timeline, when I have been more stressed. When I have had more things that I've been afraid of in other areas of my life and just feel that overwhelming kind of, you know, stress and panic, I am more afraid of those wasps.

And when I'm not, when I [00:09:00] feel more relaxed, feel more calm, feel more safe, feel more Connected. All of those things. I am not as afraid of those wasps. I feel like I can handle them. I, in fact, I see them as part of nature, you know, pollinators, all that kind of stuff. And I have a certain level of respect for them.

And it's just a completely different experience. This happens in our life all the time. Sometimes that panic and that stress can happen. It's [00:09:30] not yellow jackets. It's breastfeeding, you know? There's other things going on in our life and we sit down and it's like, and it feels like a lot. It feels scary.

The thing that is different about parenting than wasps is that our kids are going to pick up on our sense of safety, our felt sense of safety or not. So when we [00:10:00] are dysregulated, and I want to define what dysregulated means too, actually I'm going to put a little pin right here and just define that because a lot of times people think that dysregulated means feeling something.

If you're feeling something, you're dysregulated. If you're feeling something intense, you're dysregulated. And that regulated, and of course we're talking about emotional regulation or energy regulation when we're talking about this in this capacity that being regulated means being calm, and it doesn't, it doesn't mean that at all.

Being [00:10:30] regulated or regulating in that process just means that you are aware of your energy or emotion state and that you. can modulate it. That you have the capacity to do something about it. So sometimes that's like cognitively, like you're thinking, you can do thought changes that can support you to shift your energy state, and sometimes that means that you [00:11:00] can do external things, you can change external things to shift your energy state.

And also, being regulated also means that your energy or your emotion match the situation that you're in. So, feeling something that's intense isn't dysregulated, particularly if the moment calls for something that's intense. Similarly you can also be dysregulated by feeling too low. energy, right? Or too numb in an emotion for what the [00:11:30] situation calls for.

So those are both examples where like of things that we might not associate with being regulated or dysregulated. So when I'm talking about being dysregulated, I'm not talking about having a feeling of anger or having a feeling of joy or having a feeling of whatever. I'm talking about Feeling as though your energy isn't, it's not something that you can modulate and shift, and feeling as though it's not appropriate for the situation.

So this happens especially as I've been [00:12:00] recovering where I don't have the energy for things. That I need to like I said before, right? Like when I was talking about not being able to cook dinner, like that's a dysregulated state. I need to cook dinner for my family. Not being able to do that. Not having the energy capacity to do that.

And to modulate, to get a place where I have the. Appropriate amount of energy to do that or motivation, energy you know, emotion, whatever, that's dysregulation. So, going back to our, [00:12:30] comparing the wasps to our children. When you are in a dysregulated state with your kids, young kids, especially, do not have the capacity to regulate themselves. They need that co regulation. And when they're feeling dysregulated, when they're feeling an intense feeling inside of them, and you are also feeling it, right, it's a recipe for disaster. If you can't regulate yourself, it's going to [00:13:00] get more intense. And sometimes this looks like yelling and getting angry and getting mean or frustrated, but sometimes this also looks like being numb, overly calm.

Right? Like dissociating or I know that that can feel like a really big word sometimes, but just, you know, looking at your phone and not paying attention to your child and just doom scrolling, right? You're not doing something intentionally to shift your energy. It's not, I need a moment to, you know, I'm going to find my Headspace app or do [00:13:30] some deep breathing and you're using your phone to do that.

It's not that, that's, that would be regulating, right? It's, I can't right now, so I'm numbing out. That's dysregulated, right? And that might Especially if you think that dysregulation is only ever, like, big, loud things, you might think that that is calm, right? That that's regulated, that you're not yelling, so that means that you're regulated, but it doesn't.

So, cultivating that felt sense of [00:14:00] safety inside. Will impact all of these other things, right? So it impacted wasps for me as I was working on other areas of my life, relationships, different things, learning more tools, learning about myself, setting boundaries, saying no to things understanding like that my desires and my needs matter and how to meet them.

Whoa. I was able to tolerate wasps more, right? I didn't panic and freak out. This also happens with breastfeeding, right? Where as you're doing these other things in your life, [00:14:30] supporting those other things that aversion that you're feeling, the agitation that you're feeling at the breast can really and truly be.

Calm down and ease. I hope that that made some sense. That's been also, like I said, my experience as I've been working through my health issues because I, like I said, have been very dysregulated because of health issues that have been going on. And as I cultivate, even as I, before I was able to get the treatments and even still I'm waiting on things and [00:15:00] it's not perfect cultivating that felt sense of safety gives me.

More capacity to regulate than I have without it. So what does some of that felt safety look like? What are some things that you can do to to cultivate that? And one that I'm going to give you today is tracking your successes and tracking your regulation instead of tracking your symptoms and tracking your dysregulation.

So. [00:15:30] As I've been working to figure out what's going on with my body and to figure out, you know, how can I optimize things? How can I get what I need and how can I make this better? And what do I need to write down lists for doctors of symptoms? And are there patterns here? I did a lot of tracking my anxiety levels, tracking my energy levels, tracking, you know, how food is impacting my body, tracking my sleep, tracking, you know, exercise and how that impacts things.

But it was a lot of looking at symptoms. Tracking those symptoms, right? And that's [00:16:00] not a bad thing. And it is appropriate and necessary to do that. But we also have something called a negativity bias as human beings, where we are much more likely to remember or put emphasis on negative events or experiences over ones that are equal in intensity, but positive or neutral.

So you could have two experiences, two negative Back to back that are objectively equal in intensity, one negative, one positive, [00:16:30] but you're more likely to remember that negative one. Now what does this mean? Well, part of that felt sense of safety is feeling safe. And over 80 percent of your day to day perceptions is based on past experiences.

So like in a moment, when you're perceiving your environment and perceiving whether something is safe or not, 80 percent of the information that your brain is using to determine whether that thing. You are safe. You feel safe in that moment. It's [00:17:00] based on past experiences. So when I was tracking all my symptoms, tracking all of the bad, hard things in my life, and yes, it was necessary, and yes, it is necessary still, and I don't say that You should never do that.

When I was doing that, gosh, I was focusing on a lot of things that were scary and felt dangerous to me. And that meant that my felt sense of safety was like gone. [00:17:30] My body was just doing everything it needed to do to keep itself safe. Safe. And that meant like staying in a protector space, staying in a space of like, there is danger.

We need to stay vigilant. We need to focus on these things. What can we do to make this better? And that takes its toll on you as a person. It took its toll on me. It took its toll on my relationships, my parenting relationships, right? And even as the treatment helped those [00:18:00] symptoms, gosh, jolly gee, I don't know what I'm just saying, but oh my goodness, I was still experiencing a lack of sense of safety inside.

And that's when I started to realize, okay, I've been tracking a lot of negative things. I need to switch gears here and start tracking some positive things. So sometimes this actually means taking out my pen and paper and tracking you know, Or my phone and tracking positive things. But what it's meant even more for me [00:18:30] is to soak the positive moments, to notice when I am feeling at ease, when I'm feeling peaceful, when I'm, when I have energy that appropriately matches the moment.

This means, you know, I'm playing with my kids and I have the right energy that feels good in my body and I'm connected with them and I'm laughing and playing. Soak that up, right? This also means to soak up those moments where I am relaxing and I feel [00:19:00] peace and calm and like I could just drift off to sleep because that's an appropriate moment to do that.

So soaking up those moments and literally putting a pin in it, in my brain, maybe saying the date to myself, ah, today, you know, at this time I felt this way. And just, you know, Noticing that sensation in my body for a moment, noticing what that's like is so supportive. It's helped me unconsciously, I'm sure, on a certain level to just slip less into that [00:19:30] I'm scared felt sense of danger, right?

And more, to stay more in that felt sense of safety, but it's also helped me when I am feeling the intensity and the thoughts start coming, like, it's always like this. You know, the always and nevers, right? That black and white thinking that we can slip into. You never have the right energy for the moment.

You're always either too tired or too anxious, right? I can say, actually, you know what? I am kind of feeling that way right now, but I wasn't just [00:20:00] yesterday. I can remember this moment or last week, you know, and That makes a big difference. I think that that is a big part of why the wasps aren't so scary this season.

And then the last thing, so just to kind of like reiterate, your felt sense of safety inside impacts everything. It makes a big difference everywhere and it's something that you can begin to cultivate inside and you don't need other people necessarily to do it. Sure, they can be a [00:20:30] great support but it's, Things that you can start to shift without having to change external things, without having to change the breastfeeding relationship, without having to do that, you can start to cultivate that felt sense of safety.

And it impacts other things. It impacts all the things. And then one of the ways you can do that is by checking in on your negativity bias and flipping it a little bit. Maybe, you know, Hack in that bias a little bit by instead of going right to the negative or tracking the negatives and I don't know what situation you might be in.

You might be very [00:21:00] realistically in a situation where you need to track negative things. You need to track symptoms. You need to keep tracks of things for lawyers, whatever, like that kind of stuff can be really hard. But I also encourage you to track some positive things and soak in those positive moments.

And again, sometimes that negativity can be coming in through your phone. And I'm not suggesting that we ignore the problems in the world at all. I'm not suggesting that in the slightest. I'm just suggesting that you also allow yourself to soak up those positive [00:21:30] moments. And then the last kind of little tip I'll share is that our fears can reinforce our fears, unless we meet them with compassion.

So, when I'm starting to feel afraid, and I know I use that word, but you might not use that word. You might just use the word stressed. You might just use the word overwhelmed. You might use the word angry or frustrated. For me, I see the fear that's underneath those things, [00:22:00] and so I identify with that, and I identify with that panic that comes with those things, and then the opposite of it being safe.

Feeling safe, feeling relaxed, feeling loved, feeling connected. That, that's how I see it. So if you don't see it that way, that's okay. You might see it as stress or overwhelm or frustrations or anger, that kind of stuff, right? Mom rage. You might also just see it as like, my kids act up a lot, right?

But again We need to start with us because our kids are going to be picking up off of our energy and our [00:22:30] emotion, our emotional state in that moment, right? So we might want them to calm down, want them to stop the meltdown, want them to do the things so that we can feel better, but they don't have that capacity to do that on their own.

Especially if they're in a melt down state. Even if you're parenting a four or five or six or seven year old, even a teenager, right? You can only control yourself. So it's coming back into that internal state. Okay, but what can happen is our fear, when it comes up, we can reinforce that fear [00:23:00] by how we handle that fear.

So when that fear comes up, when that feeling comes up, what we do with that feeling can either meet it and kind of neutralize it or support it in a, in a way that shifts the energy that's regulating, or we can meet it in a way that reinforces it and therefore can be dysregulating too, right? And can continue that cycle and make that fear bigger and stronger.

So some ways that we make that fear or that frustration or that anger or that stress [00:23:30] bigger and stronger is by pushing it down. Pushing it down is a big one. We'll all be like, it's okay. Just ignore it. Just ignore it. Don't feel it. Think about something else. But that is a tactic that we do when that, like, when we're doing that, sorry, we're actually telling our brain that that thing is so big, we can't handle it, so big, we can't handle it, we're gonna push it away.

So that's not great. The other thing that we can do is like catastrophize. Just like, [00:24:00] oh my gosh. It's always like this. It never gets better. It's going to get worse. Before we know it, we're like 30 years down the road in our brains. And you know, our child is in prison and we are bedridden from all of our stress.

I don't know. Whatever kind of catastrophes that we can, you know create in our minds. And again, that is also reinforcing that fear or that anger or that frustration or all of the things that can come with it. Right? So those are two big things that we can that we often do. Sometimes we also like, we'll argue with that fear.

I shouldn't feel this way. I shouldn't [00:24:30] feel this way because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that again, can reinforce that, that fear or that frustration or anger or whatever feeling that you relate to in that moment. And the reason for this is that we are beating ourselves up in that process.

We shouldn't feel this way. And that you might as well be saying in that moment, like you are bad or wrong for feeling this way. And if we're bad or wrong for our feelings and our experiences, [00:25:00] we're just creating another threat. I can't trust myself. It's dangerous for me to feel this way or think this way.

It makes it worse, right? When I feel this way or think this way, then I act like a bad parent and then I do the bad, wrong things. Oh, I'm such a failure. But instead of that threat now being outside, we've internalized it. You are the problem. You're literally labeling yourself as the problem. Now you can't get away from that threat.

You can't get away from that fear. It's part of who you are. [00:25:30] Right? So that's kind of three ways that we can often reinforce our fears or our, you know, dysregulation or our anger or whatever. One is by pushing it down, ignoring it, numbing out, that kind of thing. Number two is by catastrophizing. And number three is by beating ourselves up.

So better way, perhaps a more productive way to work with that fear or that anger or that frustration is to offer ourselves some compassion. Makes sense. [00:26:00] Of course, you're feeling that way. Of course, you're feeling scared. Of course, you're feeling angry. Of course, you're feeling frustrated. It makes sense.

This is hard. Validate that fear in a loving and supportive way. A way that you might talk to a friend who's experiencing that same fear, right? That's something that Dr. Kristen Neff, who studies self compassion, she talks about that. Talk to yourself as if you're talking to a friend. Of course, that makes sense.

And what that does is [00:26:30] that that actually starts to provide you with that felt sense of safety because our sense of safety as human beings is intimately tied to our sense of connection. So you're feeling connected to a friend, the way that you're talking, and even just that way that you're talking, you feel more connected to yourself.

It's okay to feel that feeling. That's what you're telling yourself, and that eases off that fear, because if it's okay to feel that feeling, then you don't need to be afraid of [00:27:00] that feeling. And if it's okay for the wasps to exist, then I don't need to be afraid of the wasps. Right? And to use that analogy, I didn't need to kill all the wasps, chase all the wasps, whatever, right?

And what I might have felt before is, well, if I befriend the wasps, if I befriend the wasps, then I'm just going to let them sting me all the time. No, I didn't, right? Even when I was feeling friendly towards the wasps, I didn't. I [00:27:30] wasn't stung. I didn't let them sting me. I still got them out of my house.

I had that boundary, right? So, we can have that same experience with our fears and our anxieties and our stresses and our anger and all of that stuff that might be coming up around breastfeeding, around parenting. Hey, it's okay. It makes sense that you're feeling this way. What are the steps that you need to take, right?

Because from that place, you're actually calming down those parts of your brain and your nervous system that are You know, going into the fight or flight that are sensing that fear and [00:28:00] danger and you're using that, right, and bringing back online the creative problem solving, the sense of connection, all of that wonderful stuff.

So this was a little bit more metaphorical a little less practical about the breastfeeding piece, but I hope that you were able to, get something from this episode. And I also really want to know what you want to talk about.

So I have a link that is in the show notes. You can also [00:28:30] go to ownyourparentingstory. com slash survey and just get started. I want to hear a little bit about what is going on in your life, what's going on with your breastfeeding challenges, so that I can continue to create content that's really tailored to where you are at.

And I absolutely intend to do that in the coming weeks and months. So take a moment, zip on over to ownyourparentingstory. com slash survey and Let me know how things are going. If you've already gotten that link in your email and you filled it out, thank you [00:29:00] so much for doing that. I have seen a lot of responses come in and I am really excited for the content that will be coming at you in the near future.

All right, I'll see you next week.