76: Reclaiming the Divorced Body Part 2: Training Your Body to Feel Safe Again

Quinn unpacks how the nervous system asks one question all day—Am I safe?—and why fight/flight/freeze/fawn are wise survival patterns (not personal failures). You’ll learn fast, gentle regulation tools (physiological sigh, orienting, butterfly hug, vagal “voo”/humming), see them in action via pop-culture and literature examples, and leave with a 7-day plan to widen your window of tolerance. The aim: move from bracing for impact to breathing easier—then building a calmer, safer life you actually enjoy living in.

What You’ll Learn

• Embodiment = biology: Your body is a home to be tended, not a problem to fix (Hillary McBride).
• Survival patterns are smart: Fight/flight/freeze/fawn kept you safe; now we teach your body new safety.
• Complete the stress cycle: Don’t power through—release (Levine): breathe, shake, sigh, settle.
• Co-regulation matters: Calm spreads person-to-person (think Ted Lasso).

Fast Practices (Try Today)

1. Physiological sigh (20–30s): Inhale → tiny top-up inhale → long slow exhale (2–3x).
2. Orienting (30–60s): Turn head, name 5 things you see, 4 touch, 3 hear, 2 smell, 1 taste.
3. Butterfly hug (60s): Cross arms, alternate taps L/R while breathing slowly.
4. Vagal “voo” or hum (45s): Inhale, long chest-vibrating “voo” (or hum) 2–3x.

Pop Culture & Lit Mirrors

• Inside Out 2: Anxiety tries to control everything → name it, breathe, integrate (not exile).
• Ted Lasso: Panic softens via breath + safe people (co-regulation).
• The Bear: Unfinished cycles = alarms (tight jaw, shallow breath); the body keeps score.
• Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God: Janie’s embodied “yes/no” as sovereignty.
• Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”: “Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Mini Playbook for Divorced Life

• Text from ex detonates: 1 physiological sigh + orient; reply later from safety.
• First date freeze: Bathroom → butterfly hug 60s → decide from regulation.
• Co-parenting flare: Hand to heart + “voo” twice → This is my boundary. 
• Lonely Saturday: 5-minute sensory walk → call a safe friend/pet time.

7-Day Nervous System Plan

• Morning (1 min): Physiological sigh ×3 or butterfly hug.
• Mid-day (30s): Orienting—name 5 things you see.
• Evening (2 min): Gentle shake-out + humming/“voo.”
• Connection (3 min): Text/call a safe friend or sit quietly with a pet.
• Boundary rep (one line): “I’ll need to think about that and get back to you.”

Quotable

• “Our bodies are not problems to be solved; they are homes to be tended.” — Hillary McBride
• “Trauma isn’t in the event, it’s in the nervous system.” — inspired by Peter Levine
• “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” — Mary Oliver

Resources Mentioned

• Hillary McBride — The Wisdom of Your Body
• Peter Levine — Waking the Tiger (Somatic Experiencing)
• Deirdre Fay — Becoming Safely Embodied

Content Note

Mentions of religious conditioning, sexual coercion, panic/anxiety. Please go at the pace of safety and pause anytime.

Call to Action

If this helped you exhale, share it with a sister who needs a calmer nervous system and a softer Saturday night. Rate + review + subscribe so you won’t miss Part 3: Reclaiming Touch, Pleasure & Boundaries.

 Questions or resources? Email Quinn@postdivorceglowup.com
 

PostDivorceGlowUp.com

Email: quinn@postdivorceglowup.com

Transcript

0:49

Hello Lover. I had someone reach out to me and ask me why I say hello, lover at the beginning of my podcast. And number one, it's because I love divorced women. I have such a deep admiration and affection for divorced women. I think most of us went into our marriages thinking that we wanted it to be forever. At least that was our intention. Even those of us who were really questioning our decision right up to the point where we said, I do. Or in Mormonism, when you just said yes to the very strange. Covenant that the stranger in the temple was reciting to you. And when life goes sideways and we end up single again at some point in our life, I think there is still that deep well of love that we brought to our marriage, that we brought to our children. If we had children that we still have within us that we can give to the world, we can give to ourselves. I just think we are lovers. I think our love is what got us through our divorce. And so when I say hello lover, that's what I mean. I did meet a woman at British Dare Go retreat who was playing with the word lover because it held such. A negative charge for her, and so she was just playing with the word. she heard women talking about taking a lover or this man, he's not my boyfriend, he's my lover. And just playing with that word. And some words are so charged for some people, especially those of us coming out of religion where. You are taken in marriage, but you do not take a lover. And so the first time I chose to take a lover, it was this revolutionary experience that. Uh, help me grow so much. So with that being said, I love divorced women. I think there's such potential for joy and growth and just ecstatic aliveness as we come through this process of being divorced. So last week we started talking about. Coming home to your body, coming out of the guest room and living in the whole house. And today we're going to talk about the language that your body speaks, which is safety and survival. This is the biology of embodiment. It's how we move from. I'm constantly bracing for impact to, I can exhale and maybe I can even enjoy being alive. I talked about Hillary McBride a little bit last week, and she wrote the beautiful book, the Wisdom of Your Body. And she stated that our bodies are not problems to be solved. They're homes to be tended. So when I think of my body as a problem to be solved, there's a lot of anxiety that is created because something is wrong. But when I think of my body as a home to be tended, I. I tend to soften into that idea where I want to keep it up. I want to take care of it. I want to question what will make this more comfortable long term? What are the checkups that I need do. I need a termite inspection. Do I need to get some new paint on some walls? Do I need to get some deep cleaning done? All of those things so that I can enjoy my home long term. So when you think of yourself as this home to be tended rather than a problem to be solved. How does that land in your body? And so to Hillary McBride, I say Yes and amen. I agree. That really hits for me. So here's what we're going to do today. We're going to start to decode your nervous system. Next, we're gonna try a couple of tiny regulation practices. Third, I wanna show you how this shows up in stories. Sometimes it's easier to see examples outside of yourself and how to regulate. Based on literature or pop culture, I just really want this to click for you. And then finally, I wanna leave you with a simple plan for the week. Things that you can actually try to see if you can bring more calmness and grounding into your body. So your body, your nervous system specifically, is constantly asking. Am I safe? And if it senses not safe, it mobilizes, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. But if it senses safe, it lets you rest, digest, connect, create. And for many of us in our marriages, we were in a constant low grade or perhaps high fight. Flight, freeze, or fawn, and after divorce, we bring that nervous system with us, especially if we have histories of coercion control or walking on eggshells and that former alarm that used to serve us. It can get stuck on high alert, not because you're broken, but because you're brilliant and you're brilliantly wired to survive. Our power comes in learning to regulate and how to down regulate and how to treat our body with kindness so that it can switch into the rest, digest, connect, create. So last week I also spoke about Peter Levine and he wrote the book. Waking the tiger about healing trauma, and he talked about that stress cycle that animals go through, where there's the attack, the adrenaline rush, and then they will shake, tremble, sigh, and return to calm. And we humans often interrupt that stress cycle. We hold our breath and we smile and we say that we're just fine. When really we are not fine, we try to keep the peace, but that unfinished survival energy becomes anxiety, tension shut down, or maybe something that the world admires like. Compulsive productivity or compulsive exercising or compulsive something, something to get us out of the anxiety of. Having all of that tension inside of us. So let's make this tangible with a few stories that you may be familiar with. So the story of Inside Out Two where the character inside the girl's brain of anxiety, she tries to control everything. She gets rid of the emotions that she does not see as helpful. And what ultimately helps is to name it, to tame it, to allow anxiety to be there with everything else and to breathe. I think that inside out too, if you haven't seen it, it does a beautiful job of showing how. Dysregulation can happen and anxiety can really want to control everything else, and that it is. Incredibly stressful for our nervous system. One of my family's favorite shows is Ted Lasso. I think most of us who have seen that show really love it, but Ted's panic attacks, I'm so grateful. They gave us a character that was so lovable, seemed like he had everything together, and yet there was. This, this underlying anxiety, him going through the divorce, being in another country, new things all the way around, Set up to fail by so many. And his panic attacks don't resolve through powering through them. He needed co-regulation. He needed other safe people. He needed other people that he could be with. So he had his team, He had his best friend, he had the, the little group, I can't remember what they called themselves, where they would all. Bark. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, those of you who have watched Ted Lasso, you know exactly what I mean. But he needed safe people because sometimes our nervous systems, they are so dysregulated that when. We can be around more deeply regulated people. It allows our nervous systems to start to regulate. Another thing he does is learning how to breathe and to name the problem, to admit the challenge and calm spreads person to person. I saw such a clear example of this yesterday. I brought one of my kids to the ER to see if she had broken her ankle. Good news she didn't, but across the hall in another room was a woman in incredible pain, and she was there alone. The medics had put her in the room and then they were waiting for a nurse to come, and so my daughter was, was fine. There was nothing I could do for her. So I went across the hall to sit with this woman and told her to just hold my hand and look at my eyes and let's breathe together. Because she was hyperventilating. Her heart rate was just. Off the charts. And so as we were able to breathe together and she could look at my eyes and she could hold my hand, there's something so deeply healing about being able to be with someone with a regulated nervous system. And I think that may be one of the greatest gifts that a. Well-regulated therapist or coach or friend can give us is simply being well-regulated and grounded in their nervous system. And so as you think about the time or effort that it's going to take to heal your nervous system and come back to a place of safety. Just know that everyone around you will benefit from the work that you do on yourself, because then you become the grounded, regulated person that other people can rely on. Another great show is the Bear and the man who is the head chef, his. Name is Carmi, but his body carries such trauma from his upbringing with an alcoholic mother, and then the service industry that he's been a part of. And you can see how this trauma is mobilized in him when he gets a tight jaw and there's shallow breathing and there's this explosiveness. And when. The cycle does not complete, the body keeps sounding alarms, and that may be you where it's like my body is breaking down. I see this in my clients who get divorced and they think, well automatically my body is going to be able to rest and digest and create. And that's not necessarily the truth sometimes. You get to a place of safety where the body is like, okay, now we are safe enough to start completing some of these nervous system cycles. And so it goes into something of a healing crisis where you tend to get sicker or your body feels safe enough to break. Because you're not having to live with constant vigilance and walking on eggshells that you were when you were married. It's, it's a. Different kind of life now, even though there may be stressors. So notice that if your body keeps sending alarms, this constant sleeplessness or constant anger or constant tightness in your body, that your body is sending you signals, that there is something that needs to be tended. In literature, Zora Neal Hurston's book, their eyes Were Watching God, the character Janie keeps returning to her own voice, her pace, her choice, embodiment as. Sovereignty. Her body's yes or no, becomes the compass. And as you learn to connect more with your body and choose to develop. A trust with your body and what it's telling you, your yes and no. This embodied yes and no becomes the compass. And for many of us, that yes or no became hijacked early on within Mormonism, they're great at this. They will tell you. They will tell you exactly how you're supposed to feel. You will read this scripture, you'll say this prayer, and you'll feel this way. And so a child who wants to please their parents will read that scripture, say that prayer, and tell their parents, I felt this way rather than actually noticing. What feels good? What is my yes, what is my full bodied no. And learning to trust that Mary Oliver, she wrote this beautiful poem called Wild Geese, and it says this, this beautiful line. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Ugh. That line is a permission slip to complete the nervous system cycles and choose life. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Now, all of those examples, they're not just poetry or TV or pop culture or literature, those are maps of the human experience of learning how to regulate your nervous system. So I wanna do. A quick self-check. When you feel threatened, what is your go-to when you feel unsafe? Do you fight? Fight would look like a sharp voice, tight shoulders. An urge to fix it, or do you go into flight where you can't sit still, you want to escape by scrolling or shopping or cleaning or overworking, but you just wanna get out of the situation. Do you freeze? Do you go kind of numb, foggy, stuck? Feel like you can't think. Or do you fawn? Do you over agree or over apologize? Over explain. Tell people it's fine. Do the people pleasing actions. Now, none of this makes you weak. All of this makes you human. It makes you alive. The work we have before us is to widen our window of tolerance, the zone where we can feel, we can feel everything that's happening without flooding and being overwhelmed or numbing. And checking out. okay babe, it's toolkit time. So let's try one now. Save two for later, and let's go at the pace of safety. So the first thing I want you to try is something called the physiological sigh. You're going to inhale through your nose. As much as you can. And at the tiny tippy top, when you think you can't breathe anymore, you stop and then you sniff in, like you inhale just a little bit more and then you do a slow mouth exhale longer than your inhale, and you do it two to three rounds. And this will downshift your nervous system so fast. So do it with me. Let's inhale through the nose. How was that? Inhale Through the nose. All the way in, in, in, and then at. Tiny, top off. Inhale at the top, like a sniff, and then slowly exhale through your mouth longer than your inhale. This is so incredibly effective at downshifting your nervous system. So keep this in mind. This is one of my go-to moves if I can. You can do it in a bathroom stall. You can do it kind of quietly when you're in a group and just need some space and some safety. It doesn't have to be. A very loud or extravagant show of breathing, the physiological sigh. Okay, number two is called orienting. I want you to turn your head slowly and look around. I want you to come into this moment. Name five things that you can see. And for me, I can see a bike, I can see sunglasses, a candle, a marker, some scissors. Now name four things you can touch. My desk, my microphone, my computer, my phone. Name three things you can hear my fan, my own breathing, a truck outside my window. Name two things you can smell. I have a candle on my desk. I can smell that. I can smell the air of my home. Name one thing you can taste. Just notice the taste in your mouth. Now doing this exercise by noticing your main five senses, things you can touch, taste, see, smell, hear, it brings you into the present moment. It brings you right here, right now, and it reminds your body. This is now. I am safe now in this moment. I am safe because much of our anxiety is about thinking about the past or creating scenarios about the future, about what might happen, and the more we can come into the present moment, into the lived experience of being us right now, the safer we feel. Okay. The third exercise is called a butterfly hug. I want you to cross your arms and have your hands on your upper arms, and then alternate taps. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right. Just a gentle rhythm while you breathe slowly. It's this self-soothing. Bilateral stimulation. Think of the things that you can use both your left and right side for the purpose of self-soothing. One of the things I love is just having some nice hand cream, so I can pull some hand cream out, put it on my hand, and then rub my hands, cross my fingers. Just allow the left side, the right side in order. To have some attention and that crossing feature of your right hand, touching your left arm and your left hand touching your right arm, there's something to be said for that bilateral stimulation on your body. And number four is this v vagal tone. So our vagal nerve. Is one that's gotten a lot more attention recently, so this exercise is specifically for your vagal nerve. I want you to inhale and then. Give me a long V sound like a foghorn, and you want to. Do it in such a way that you feel the vibration in your chest and do it two or three times. It loosens that throat, lump and tells your body I'm okay. So for me. I'm not going to do it right into the microphone, but, um, I'll just demonstrate. So we inhale and then exhale long vu v. And you want it to vibrate like deeply. Another way of doing this, if the voo seems a little bit too loud for you, you can keep your mouth shut and you can just hum a deep inhale and then. Hmm. that vibratory nature of that sound, that vibration is so good for your vagal nerve, and it starts bringing your nervous system back into a place of it's time to rest and digest and create. So let's bring this into the. Everyday divorced girly life. So if you get a text from your ex and it feels like a grenade just landed. and you find that you want to protect yourself and type back a dissertation, instead, do a physiological sigh and orient, look out a window, find a tree. Most things that our exes text to us are not emergencies. You can reply later from a more regulated brain, not your survival brain. You can allow your body to feel that grenade go off. You can feel that fight energy come up in your body. And you can do a physiological sigh and you can orient yourself and come back into the present moment. Okay. How about when you first start dating after divorce and your body flips to a freeze mode? At the door and or at the restaurant, and you're like, OMG, I can't believe I'm doing this. I don't know how to do this. And you're freaking out. Step into the bathroom and give yourself a butterfly hug for 60 seconds and whisper. I'm here. I am here and in this moment I am safe. And decide from safety. Make your decision from a place of internal safety. You can stay, you can leave, you can set a boundary, but do all of that from an embodied place, if at all possible. So how about when a co-parenting exchange goes sideways? I have certainly lived through this. I. And let's say that your Fawn response is really revving and you just wanna make everything okay with everybody. Place your hand on your heart and one on your belly and VO a couple times, And then decide on the boundary that you want to set a boundary from a regulated, grounded place. Or let's say it's a lonely Saturday night and you're living through an old pattern of doom scrolling and drinking wine. Consider a new pattern. Consider a five minute sensory walk. What do I hear? What do I smell? What do I feel? And then call a safe friend, someone that can help you co-regulate, and you don't even have to tell them, Hey, I want to co-regulate with you. Simply hearing the voice or. Being with someone who is in a more grounded space can feel very good to your nervous system. So think of Ted Lasso being willing to say, I need help, or being with his team, being with his friends. And notice if you reach out for co-regulation and the person you reached out to is not in a place where they can offer you. A downshift, they might be unregulated, and you might be the more regulated person. So just notice that if the person that you are making the request of, whether it's verbal or not, if they're actually in a place where they can offer that. And when you don't know what to do, remember Mary Oliver again? And remember that the soft animal of your body, she knows and let her love what she loves. Just let her. I wanna do a couple of minutes with you of a little bit of a guided meditation. And so if it's safe, close your eyes or soften your gaze. And feel your feet and let your shoulders drop. Let's do a physiological sigh. Let's inhale through the nose and then a tiny top off inhale, and then a slow exhale through the mouth. And then one more time, an inhale, a tiny inhale at the top and a slow exhale. Now turn your head slowly to the left, to the center, to the right. Open your eyes and start seeing the space that you are in. And find one thing that is pleasant to look at. Stretch your arms out to the side, and then cross them for a butterfly hug, tap left, right, left, right, and quietly tell yourself, I am here in this moment. I am safe. Then take a deep breath. One long vu on the exhale. Pause and notice if anything shifted. Even 1% can count. Alright, it's as simple as that. Now, why does this matter for divorced women? Because so many of us learned that. Marriage relationship love meant hyper vigilance, that we had to be hypervigilant to stay safe. We had to be hypervigilant to be loved. And regulation, and these exercises are how we teach our bodies a new love story, a story where we are at home within ourselves. I can be with myself. I can choose to love me. I can trust me in this moment. I am safe. And there's no rush to get there. I think it took me a couple of years, maybe even a little bit longer post-divorce, but I remember waking up one morning and my brain offered me the thought. I love myself, I love my body. I am so happy to be alive, and I was so shocked because that was such a different thought than the thought that I. Woke up with for so many years in my marriage, and so to come to a place where I'd been practicing those thoughts and practicing building trust, but I had never experienced until that moment my mind. Offering me that thought that I built the pathways that my brain offered me. That thought it was, it was such a beautiful moment. Now those thoughts are not always there. Just because it happened once doesn't mean it shows up for me every day. I too am human and get to work on. All of these skills to help regulate my body. Hillary McBride, again, the author of The Wisdom of Your Body, she points out so beautifully. I wanna quote her exactly'cause she says it so perfectly. She says, coming home to the body is a slow unfurling. There is no rush. The body moves at the pace of safety. I cannot recommend her book enough. The Wisdom of Your Body. There's another book called. Becoming safely embodied by Deidre Fey. That is also an excellent book. So if you are feeling especially unsafe in your body. I cannot recommend these enough. And there's no rush. There's no rush, babe. So let's talk about the seven day nervous system plan that we can kind of cobble together from all of these pieces. So in the mornings for one minute. Try the physiological sigh three times, or the butterfly hug just being with yourself 30 seconds to a minute and then midday. Take another minute to orient. Name five things you see. Just that much. Just come into the present moment and in your evening, take a couple minutes to gently shake out your hands, your shoulders, your hips. Try some humming or V And during your day, if there's a moment where you're feeling like you need some connection, text or call a safe friend or sit with a pet. Just the two of you just being right there. Try to get your nervous system to downshift and it doesn't have to go from fifth gear to first. That would be a disaster if you've ever driven a stick shift. But slowing down even from fifth into neutral is a good step. And then practice some boundary setting because there are going to be times when your nervous system is activated and you really don't want to have a conversation or give a response right away. So practice saying, I need to think about that and I'll get back to you and you can do that. Because most things are not an emergency. Most things you can have a minute. So take a minute, but practice it out loud before you have to say it in real life. I'll need to think about that and I'll get back to you. So the goal of all of this is to notice your body sooner. Return to safety faster. That's it. And sometimes your level of safety, given what you've gone through and your nervous system, you may not have a high capacity for safety, but it's okay. Because we're just going to be going step by step, as slow as your body needs to go. Just like Hillary McBride says, there's no rush. The body moves at the pace of safety. So if you want to get to a place of safety, trying to rush, there is exactly what not to do. All right, babe. So next week, part three, we get, uh, to be a little bit delicious and brave. We're going to be talking about reclaiming touch, pleasure, and the boundaries That are associated with that work. We're gonna talk about consent with yourself, why fawning shows up in bed for so many women and how to build sensuality without all of the fear because your body, it's not just a site of survival. And look what she got through. Your body, she is a source of joy and pleasure, and we wanna make sure that she is supported in experiencing the life that is available to her. So. Place a hand on your heart, one breath in. Long breath out. Mastery here. It doesn't mean control. It means companionship with your body. And if you would please rate, review, subscribe, so you do not miss part three. And feel free to shoot me an email, Quinn, Q-U-I-N-N, at post-divorce glow up.com. And as always, I will talk to you next week.