Emotional Triage: 4 Steps to Regulate Your Nervous System When You’re Overwhelmed (EP34)

This is your "pocket companion" for how to handle tough moments. I recommend you listen to this while things are easy so that you already know what to do in the next moment when you feel challenged.

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This podcast show is for people dedicated to spiritual awakening, spiritual practice, psychology, healing work, collective healing and awakening, and global positive social change. 

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1:36 - Showing up: Outer World and Inner World

3:02 - Feelings and Needs

4:57 - From the Head to the Body

7:50 - Handling Increased Sensation

8:59 - Hard Feelings and Soft Feelings

9:47 - How to Handle Emotional Numbness

11:04 - How to Handle Anger

14:16 - Soft Feelings and What They Need

15:35 - How to Handle Sadness

16:33 - How to Handle Fear and the Need to Control

18:37 - Qualities of a Good Support Person

19:28 - How to Calm Your Nervous System

20:22 - Reaching for Spiritual Support

23:45 - Grounding When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

25:48 - The Best Ways Others Can Help Us

26:38 - Showing Up In the World From a New Place

27:59 - Summary and Conclusion

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This podcast show explores meditation, mindfulness, consciousness, spiritual awakening, and spiritual growth, with a strong focus on personal healing, trauma healing, emotional healing, and somatic healing. We dive into nonduality, embodied spirituality, the true self, life purpose, and spiritual practice, while also addressing shadow and integration themes like spiritual bypass, ego-death, root causes, and holistic healing. Episodes draw from psychology and attachment theory, as well as ancient wisdom traditions, esoteric wisdom, energy healing, and indigenous wisdom, offering grounded insights for seekers on a path of inner healing, wholeness, and deeper realization.

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A deep bow to: Amma (Mata Amritanandamayi), Yogi Ramsuratkumar and Ma Devaki, Neem Karoli Baba, Ramana Maharshi, Papa Ram Dass, Sri Aurobindo, Shirdi Sai Baba, Satya Sai Baba, Anandamayi Ma, Hilda Charlton, Daskalos (Stylianos Atteshlis), Saint Francis, Saint Clare, Saint Teresa, Padre Pio, and more.

Keywords for the show: meditation, mindfulness, consciousness, spiritual awakening, spiritual growth, personal healing, trauma healing, emotional healing, somatic healing, inner healing, nonduality, embodied spirituality, wholeness, grounded spirituality, life purpose, spiritual practice, enlightenment, realization, the true self, ego-death, spiritual bypass, attachment theory, psychology, root causes, holistic healing, energy healing, ancient wisdom traditions, esoteric wisdom, esotericism, indigenous wisdom, bhakti, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, sangha, Divine Will, spiritual ascension, collective awakening, collective healing, global ascension, connecting with angels, and connecting with spiritual guides.

Keywords for this episode: False guru, fake guru, enlightened guru, real guru, enlightened avatar

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Transcript

0:00

So we always have the opportunity to start small, to practice often, to allow any difficulty that we're experiencing to be an opportunity to grow this muscle. We know what we can do to learn and feel better and to become stronger. And as we do this, we can then also be able to help other people with the same. Welcome to the Ground of Love. I'm your host, Olivia Frazao. This is a podcast for people who are deeply dedicated to the spiritual journey. You are here for self-growth care, for others, and being of service to the world. This podcast is in service to you to help you remember who you are and why you are here, you will receive inspiration, clarity, and no BS Love. We are walking each other home. Let's begin. This episode is emotional triage for you. Okay, so there are two situations where you would listen to this episode. The first one is everything is going fine, but you're wanting to learn and gain new tools for when you might feel emotionally overwhelmed sometime in the future. The second situation is maybe you're literally upset right now, so, we're gonna go through a checklist of four points. in each point, we're gonna look at where do we need to redirect your attention so that healing can actually happen. Okay? Here we go. Number one. Where is your attention focused right now? Is your attention focused in the outer world or is it focused on your inner world? Let's make sure that we check both. So let's start with the outer world. Is there a problem that you need to tend to where you can take action that is going to be helpful and healing to take things forward in the best way possible? For example, do you need to speak up about something? Do you need to tell the truth about something? Do you need to ask for help? do you need to say no or state a boundary about something? So now We already did everything regarding the outer world. We already did that layer. Now are we still stuck with our mind focused on that layer? Are we still thinking about something that somebody said to us and why it's bothering us? Or are we still thinking about the job interview that we already prepared for as best we could, or maybe there's gonna be a surgery in the hospital or whatever it is. We're still focused on that thing. Even though we've already taken all the actions that we can. When that's the case, it's time to focus inwards. We're gonna go to the next step for that To focus inwards we're gonna ask ourselves two questions. Number one, what am I feeling? Number two, what am I needing? Now for what am I feeling? We could feel all kinds of feelings. They could come in and out in succession. They could be happening simultaneously. They can be opposite to each other. They can be feelings that we're afraid of feeling. They can be feelings that we're ashamed of feeling. So this is a reminder that none of this is personal. You're a human being. Feelings happen and this is what they are. So if you've been conditioned to judge yourself or fear your feelings, this is a reminder that feelings are just feelings. And the more that we acknowledge them and befriend them, the more that they can actually just live themselves out and move through. And then we'll be feeling better. Same with needs. We might not know what our needs are. We might be ashamed of our needs. We might assume that we can't get them met, so we don't even try. So in this case, we're gonna empower ourselves to accept being potentially needy or vulnerable to accept needing something that maybe we can usually handle on our own but this time we need help with it. Whatever it is, we're gonna get curious about those two things, feelings and needs. If you're in a situation where you're feeling so numb or confused and you don't know, you can type into Google Nonviolent Communication Feelings Sheet or nonviolent Communication Needs sheet. I'll also include links to those in this episode. Description. Nonviolent communication is a practice that helps people find out their feelings and needs in order to express them in healthy ways. They literally have a list of feelings and needs. Number two. Now you're focusing on yourself. You're trying to figure out your own feelings. Here's the next question. Is your focus up in your head, or is your attention focused down in your body? Most people, when they're trying to figure out their feelings, that's exactly what they're trying to do they're trying to figure them out they're trying to analyze them, so that's actually not gonna work. Because we need to meet feelings where they actually live. Feelings live in the feeling body. They don't live in the mental body, the thinking body. So if we're thinking about our feelings, it's like wanting to take care of someone, but going into a different room than the one that they're in and looking for them there. And trying to give them a hug, but you're not gonna be able to because they're sitting in the other room. So here is a sign that can show you, oh, this isn't working. I'm not contacting my feelings. Here's an example. Let's say you can't stop thinking about something. You're obsessively thinking about something. You keep going through a scenario in your head. Let's say you had a conversation or you're irritated with someone, and now you're either thinking about the conversation the way that it went, or you're having this fictitious conversation in your head with that person. The reason you keep looping through this repeatedly is because a feeling is trying to be met. But instead, you keep cycling in the mental body, in the thought level. Your mind can keep going and going and going and going and going and going and going. The feelings are there waiting for you to touch them, and you haven't yet. And we're gonna go to different types of feelings and layers of feelings in a moment, but right now all we're focused on is, are you thinking about your feelings or are you actually feeling them in your body? Your feelings are waiting for your attention to go to your body. Find where the feelings live in the body. We're looking for places of tightness, places of shortness of breath, places where we're clenching our jaw, places where maybe our spine is feeling rigid, places where maybe we're feeling nauseous in our belly, places where maybe we're feeling a sinking feeling in our chest. All of those are examples of stress, fear, sorrow, and so forth. We wanna make contact so that those sensations energetically in the body, that somatic interoception can be happening. Interoception is our capacity to feel what's on the inside of us in the body. So in this case, when we are contacting our feelings simply with our focused awareness, not judging, not trying to control, but simply aware, preferably compassionate, but at least just aware. They can be touched with our awareness and they can start to move. Now, I'm gonna be honest, as they are touched with our awareness, as we finally become aware of what was there kind of waiting for us while we weren't paying attention, the first thing that's gonna happen is it's gonna feel worse before it feels better. So you don't need to be surprised by that. you don't need to Feel like something's wrong. It actually means that you're in a healing process. Because it was there to begin with, but we were numbed out from it. It's like we were looking in the other direction and now we're looking right at it. So we're actually noticing it and we're noticing it stronger in the body. So the tightness is gonna get tighter. The sinking feeling is gonna be even bigger, sinking feeling. The anxiety, shaky feeling is gonna get bigger. All of this stuff is gonna get bigger, but it's a good thing because it means, it's like you finally opened the can of worms and all this stuff can actually come out now. It can actually move through you and it's gonna move out of you. It's gonna clear out. So to conclude this section. The question here is, am I in my head or am I in my body? Go to the body. Number three. Now we're feeling our feelings. I'm gonna keep this really, really simple, okay? As I said before, we have all kinds of feelings. Right now we're just gonna categorize them into two types. There's gonna be the hard feelings, which are a defense layer, and there's gonna be the soft feelings, which are the deeper vulnerability underneath. We need to make space for both. Likely, we're gonna feel the hard feelings first. And by the way, when I say hard, I don't mean difficult. I mean, there's like a hardness to it. It's not soft and gushy. There's a structure to it. That's what's on top. So we're not gonna plow through what's on top or ignore what's on top. We're gonna be with it. First and foremost, the top most layer is gonna be numbness. There's gonna be a turning away. You're gonna be like, oh, I'm not feeling anything. Nothing is there. A sign of the fact that actually there is a lot there is that you're in judgment rather than compassion. Judgment means that you're still locked into the mind layer. Okay? And judgment is a defense mechanism. When you're feeling in your heart you have the capacity for compassion, both for yourself and others. If that's not where you're at or if that's not something you can access, and instead you can admit the fact that you're feeling judgmental either towards other people or towards yourself. That's a sign that you're locked into the mental body. So we can just start guessing what we might be feeling to give ourselves a way in to start opening the door. Maybe we can go to the feelings and needs sheets that I talked about earlier. And again, we're gonna go back to the body and start getting curious, deep inside to sense like you're traveling deep inside. What sensations might be there? For some people this might be really easy and maybe overwhelming because, oh my God, there's so much there. For other people it might be like, uh, I don't really feel much. So now you're starting to feel some stuff. You're not numb anymore. What's the layer under that? It's gonna start as irritation or frustration. It might feel like annoyance. What's underneath all of that? Anger. Anger is the most obvious hard emotion. Okay. Irritation, annoyance, frustration. Those are like little surface level versions of anger. Okay. Obviously the most extreme would be hate. That's when anger gets really extreme or rage. Resentment would be on this list as well. Resentment is the surface layer of a deeper hurt. There is a healthy way to deal with hard feelings and there's an unhealthy way to deal with hard feelings. The unhealthy way, hopefully is obvious to everyone, but I need to name it anyway because apparently we're all doing it all the time still. So let's become aware of the fact that we have other options in order to not keep doing this'cause this is where we get stuck. The unhealthy way is blame, aggression and taking out our anger onto other people. The solution is not to say, oh yeah, that's wrong I can't do that, so I'm gonna repress and bottle everything down instead. That's also not a solution because it's just gonna explode at some point later. We need to allow anger to come out. Anger is when there is an overwhelm of energy in the container of the body that's overflowing. It's needing to exit the personal energy field through the physical body. So the best way to deal with anger is to push on a wall as hard as you can while exhaling with an open mouth and making some kind of a sound. You can also punch a pillow. If you're in the car. You can park the car and then push on the steering wheel and let your back push into the chair behind you and your feet push onto the ground. Please make sure that you're being safe with the car. There is something about pushing that's very important with anger because it's all about energy coming out. Another thing that you can do is you can grab a towel or an item of clothing, and you can ring it as if you're trying to ring, you know, a wet towel where water would drip off. But in this case, you're ringing it as hard as you possibly can to make it tighter and tighter and tighter, and tighter, and tighter, and you're gonna allow the emotion that was stuck in your solar plexus to reveal itself through the towel being like a mirror for how you were feeling deep inside. And at some point you're gonna go deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, and that will end up in a release. It's a different type of release, so you can try these different exercises and see what you need for your particular situation if you're feeling anger, those are ways for the body to express so that you're doing it in a safe way. What does safe way mean? You're neither repressing, which is unhealthy for you. And we'll end up coming out sideways anyway towards yourself or others at another point. And you're also not just exploding at other people. You are letting aggression and energy and pure power and pure emotion come out physically in a safe way. So learn these exercises so you don't end up punching a wall or doing anything stupid. Okay. Now let's go to the soft feelings. Once the anger has come out enough, it's just like having a, let's say a pitcher of water that's at the total brim and it's like right at overflow. And now we've poured out a good amount. Now you're gonna see the next layer underneath. I'm gonna be very basic about this because we need to keep everything simple. Again, simplicity is the key when we're not feeling good. What are the two main soft feelings? I'm sad and I'm scared. These soft feelings are very vulnerable. They need to be very deeply respected and tended to with gentleness. If we come at a soft feeling, with a hard feeling, or with the mental body, which is hard in comparison to soft feelings, also we are gonna feel not only unmet, but we're gonna feel unsafe. So if we are judging ourselves, that's the mental layer of anger. Or if we are literally emotionally angry about the fact that we're sad or scared that's a violence to ourselves. And if we're allowing other people to shame us or judge us, or yell at us when we're sad or scared, that is unhealthy and we need literally the opposite. So what do we need to do when we're sad? We let ourselves cry. Maybe we can't cry. Maybe we're so sad that no crying comes out. We simply allow ourselves to sit in the feeling in the body, and maybe we want something that can help our inner child. Maybe we literally want a blanket or a hug or a stuffed animal, or maybe we want reflection where we can feel the sadness on the outside of us, and it helps us feel the sadness on the inside of us for it to be contacted. Like listening to sad music, just like with the anger we felt a reflection of the towel when we're winding the towel. That's a reflection on the outside of how we're feeling on the inside. Listening to sad music helps us contact the places inside ourselves as if it's a mirror to our emotional body. What do we need when we're scared? Now we're assuming that we already did step one, which is make sure that you have done everything that you can do for safety. Assuming that you've done everything that you can do in the outer world, we are going to notice that what scared needs is it needs something reliable to hold onto for a sense of grounding and control. When we're scared it's because there is too much unknown or there's too much chaos, or there's too much change. So what we need is stability. Safety groundedness. All of that comes from wanting to feel in control. Now, just like we talked about with anger, there is a healthy way to do this and an unhealthy way to do this. The unhealthy way is gonna come out through compulsions. Where are we becoming obsessively controlling either of our outer environment or of our own body, or of our own actions or of our inner experience. That is a rigidity, a compulsiveness, and a type of control that can be unhealthy for ourselves and other people. It is a warning sign to us that's an alarm bell going off. It's saying, beep, beep, beep. I am feeling so out of control that I am now trying to control things in a way that's unhealthy because I don't know how to find control in a way that is healthy. So we take those symptoms, we take that alarm bell. We learn, okay, I need safety in a healthy way. As best as possible, and as immediately as possible. Where can we find safety? Who are the people that we can reach out to who can give us a sense of stability and ground? Who we can trust and who are capable of giving us these things. This might be different from people that we're close with. This might be a professional, this might be a friend who maybe isn't your best friend, but is actually your most stable friend, for example. Most importantly, what we always have access to, no matter what are some basic practices that help us find nervous system regulation and some basic practices that help us find spiritual support. I'm saying those things because sometimes other human beings are not available at a particular moment, and we need help right now so we can get help from ourselves through the nervous system regulation. The best way to find safety in the body-mind, in the emotional level physically, emotionally, and mentally, is to do long slow. Calm deep breaths. This is going to recalibrate the vagus nerve. If we do this for two minutes minimum, we are going to see a physiological improvement in a sense of calm. So that's our number one. Always consider what is your go-to nervous system regulation regulation tool. I would suggest long, slow, deep breaths because that's the easiest and the easiest to remember. But you can just Google nervous system regulation, you can learn polyvagal theory. You can find a practitioner who can teach you more somatic experiencing tools. You always have this with you. Number two is who or what do you reach out to spiritually to feel held? To know that you're not alone and to know that there is a higher power with you that can provide you with what you can't provide to yourself, and where can you hold on on that level, because we need to notice that when we're scared we reach out and grip. It's like you're falling through a valley and you're trying to grab onto the cliff next to you. You're trying to grab onto little grasses or little branches that are sticking out from the cliff. We're gonna grab on to anything that we can. And so we need to take a look. What did I grab onto that's not healthy? Did I grab onto a self-judgment? Did I grab onto an obsession that something really needs to go a certain way, et cetera, and instead we allow ourselves, not to be like, oh, I have to just let go and surrender. What surrender actually means is you are gonna transfer that grab to the thing that is actually healthy to grab onto, and that you can actually always count on, which is the Divine. So surrendering to the divine does not mean necessarily one way of looking at it, opening your arms and just free falling down that valley, falling off the cliff in that metaphor. Instead, it's actually a reach. It's reaching and grabbing on to, I'm gonna keep going with this metaphor to the angels around you who can carry you on their back with their angel wings. That's the image. That's the metaphor. What does this actually look like? We are praying. We are literally calling out either in our head or out loud to whoever or whatever it is that you feel you most trust in what I'm gonna call the heaven fields. Maybe it's God, God help me. God help me. Maybe it's one of your angels. Maybe it's Jesus. Maybe it's Krishna. Maybe it's your grandma who crossed over who you've always felt so safe with, and who you know is with you and caring for you. Or maybe you don't know, but you hope whatever it is. Whether you're certain of that support or whether right now in this place, you're willing to at least give it a try. That is where you can healthily grab on God, show me the way Ganesha, remove the obstacles, please. My guardian angel, please protect me. Please help me. Mother Mary, I feel so sad, please hug me and help me feel your hug, whatever your thing is, however you do it. Maybe you recite prayer in a way that is more traditional within your lineage, great. Maybe you're doing something off the cuff that feels colloquial. It doesn't matter. The point is that your heart is now reaching for something that's beyond the smaller circle of your personal capacity that has already been exhausted. Those are the two that we're gonna summarize right now. Self-care on the nervous system level and reaching for support, getting that grip, removing it from whatever is the unhealthy control and allowing that grip to go to support on the level of the Divine. Next one, number four. This is the step. Where I mentioned some people feel emotional overwhelmed when they start feeling in their body and there's a lot going on. And you start feeling like you're gonna get maxed out or you're gonna get blown out. So If this is happening, again nervous system regulation is perfect for this situation. So long, slow, deep breaths. And what we need is to slow down and we need to ground. So the way that we're gonna ground is you literally visualize that you have roots going down to Mother Earth. And you feel, visualize, sense, however you do it. The center of Mother Earth, and you feel like there's tree roots or a tube, however you wanna do it, a tunnel of light or a line of light going from the center of mother Earth up to your feet. And your feet are open on the bottom and they're breathing in that connection with Mother Earth. So you're allowing yourself to not just be encapsulated inside your own little body, but you're allowing what you're understanding your body to be, your energy field to be, to be much bigger. So all of the emotions are not trapped in a tiny container. They actually have a much wider space to be able to be in. And that's gonna take the pressurization off. You're also gonna be receiving Mother Earth's energy. You're gonna be receiving a coherent, energetic frequency that is of these lower tones that are gonna provide safety for you. When we feel overwhelm, what happens is we go into incoherent energies that have a high pitch. That's what fear is, that's what stress is, it goes"do do do do do" like that. What Mother Earth's energy is giving us is a, is a lower tone. It sounds more like this:"wooooo woooooo woooo" right. When we're feeling overwhelmed, we can always reach out to other people for support and tell them what we need in order to be supported. What we need is them to provide us with contact, with presence, with calm, maybe simply sitting next to us, maybe simply being on the phone with us in silence. Maybe holding our hand, maybe giving us a hug. Contact does not necessarily mean getting really involved. Touching too much, talking too much, that can actually feel invasive, or it can bring an energy that might not be relevant for the energy that you're currently experiencing. So you can let the person know,"can I have this, but not that. Can you come closer, actually, can you go further away" and you can start learning what is it that you need? What is it you need from other people, and what is it that you need from yourself? So now we're at number five. This is where things come full circle. Now we've had the inner experience. When our attention comes inside, does the inner work, feels the feelings, has the somatic experience, finds a sense of ground finds nervous system regulation, finds true safety, and just allows the expression to go through- both the hard emotions and the soft emotions- we're gonna come to a place where now we're more centered. From this place of being more centered- more centered, more grounded, more available to be in the heart. Now we can look again at the outer world and consider, is there an action that I can take from this place that maybe I hadn't thought of before? Or maybe I was in a totally different head space and I was reactive and I was acting in a certain way that I'm realizing, oops, I need to edit those actions. I need to maybe repair the impact of what I may have done before, through the actions that I thought were relevant or correct at the time, but now that I'm seeing from a more calm place, I have more wisdom, I have more clarity, I have, a view that maybe can show me a different road of how I wanna deal with whatever the current situation is. So now I can go back out to the world and make new choices. So to summarize, let's look at all the questions again. Number one, Am I focusing in the outer world on what's going on out there and how I'm gonna respond to it? Or am I focusing on my inner world and what I can do for my self-care? Both are necessary. Let's make sure that we've checked both check boxes. Number two, now that I'm focused inside, am I up in my head or am I down in my body? This is where I'm gonna find my feelings in the body. So we go to the body number three. What is it that I'm feeling? Am I in a top layer, which is gonna be a hard emotion, a defense layer, Or am I in my soft emotions? Am I in my vulnerability? with Non-judgment we notice each one and we take care of each one. We allow anger to come out through safe physical movement. We allow sorrow to come out or be reflected or get cared for. And we allow fear to find healthy forms of holding on to a sense of control or safety or being supported rather than going for unhealthy forms of attempts at control. And number four, when we're experiencing emotional overwhelm during this self-healing or self-care experience, can we reach out for help and can we give ourselves help? Can we regulate ourselves through the nervous system? Can we open to Mother Earth as a way of grounding? So what's the conclusion here? The body is intelligent. It knows what to do. When you give it a safe container of attention, of loving presence, or at least equanimity, right? Non-judgment, when we're patient, when we're in acceptance of all of our feelings and experiences, knowing that it's simply gonna cycle through and express ourselves, and this is a temporary moment. And at some point in the future, hopefully soon, but at some point we're gonna feel better. We're gonna feel more grounded, and things are gonna feel safer. And right now we are learning to feel safe with our feelings, even when we're feeling angry, sad, scared, et cetera. We're learning to feel safe even when we're in the midst of an outer storm or an inner storm. We're learning to find and be with those textures and that intensity in the body in a way that's safe for the nervous system and in a way where we know that we can always get support from other people, and we always have support from the divine. Sometimes the scariest thing in a situation isn't the situation, but our fear of everything that we feel about it. So we always have the opportunity to start small, to practice often. To allow any difficulty that we're experiencing to be an opportunity to grow this muscle. Now we know what we can do to learn and feel better and to become stronger. And as we do this, we can then also be able to help other people with the same. Blessings. thank you for being with me in The Ground of Love. You can follow this podcast to receive the next episodes, and who is it that comes to mind to share this episode with? Please go ahead and pass this along to them and go ahead and leave a review or a rating if you wish. I thank you for that. For one-on-one healing sessions and a group membership. you can go to the ground of love.com. Blessings to you. May you be protected, held, regenerated centered. And taken forward with all light, love, truth and highest and best health and wellbeing on all levels and taken forward to make the greatest, most beautiful impact doing exactly what you're here to do. God bless you. Protection, grace, protection, grace. So it is.