Tips for Rootedness: Emotional Self-Regulation

In this episode of Uprooted by Unwanted Change podcast, host Kiran Prasad and her daughter Nikita Prasad, Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) trainee,  discuss the importance of emotional self-regulation during life transitions.  They talk about the concept of the window of tolerance and the 'pain body' and use examples from their own experience of practical strategies for returning back to baseline when emotionally uprooted.

Welcome to the Uprooted by Unwanted Change podcast about managing life transitions. Whether it’s due to relocation, politics, natural disaster, job loss, death of a loved one, divorce, breakup, finances, or injury or disease…change is never easy - especially when it’s unwanted. 

I’m Kiran Prasad, teacher, speaker, and author of “A Mindful Move: Feel at home again’ based on my 29 house moves. While I’m someone who’s always yearned for stability, the only constant in my life has been change! I’ve finally come to an acceptance and found purpose and meaning in it all by helping others going through the same. 

On each episode, we’ll focus on a topic of unwanted change with guests sharing stories of resilience and insights into how they navigated their journeys. Together, we’ll discover a community of inspiring individuals and create a system of support for one another.

In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, may you find peace and rootedness. 

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Transcript

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Information shared is based on personal experiences and not meant to replace medical or other professional help. Hi everyone! Welcome to the Uprooted by Unwanted Change podcast about managing life transitions. I'm your host, Kiran Prasad. Thanks for tuning in. If you're new to the show, I want you to know that every other week, I have a guest on the show. And in between, when I don't have a guest, I have a solo episode where you get to hear a bit more about my own journey through unwanted change. Well, this will be an unusual episode, because today, my daughter, Nikita Prasad, will be my co-host. I'm so excited about that! And today's tips for rootedness are for emotional self-regulation. We're talking about rootedness. So what helps us feel steady when life uproots us? And I'm going to let Nikita introduce herself, tell you a bit about herself. Welcome Nikita! Thank you so much, mom! It's so nice to be here as a guest. I'm such a fan of the podcast. I literally listen to every episode as soon as it dropped. And I always tell mom this, but I I would listen to it even if I didn't know you. So I'm truly a fan. It's a super honor to be here. I promise that it's not just nepotism as to why I've been brought in to co-host a tips for rootedness episode, which like mom said, are usually just hosted by her. And that is because she wanted my professional and academic opinion on this topic of emotional self-regulation. When I say that, what I mean is that in addition to having spent about the last decade in the tech world, I also embarked on a journey of getting my master's degree in marriage and family therapy in 2023. I had been working and really enjoying my work with people, but I was increasingly realizing that I had so much passion for the mental health world and all things to do with self-improvement, just like mom. And so what I realized is that in order to unlock more of what I wanted to dive into, it was really important to get more education in that space. And so I am on my third and final year of my master's degree, which is our practicum year, which actually also means I get to see clients at the moment. I have a mixture of individual clients that are adult. I also see some kids and teens. I also have a family and I also see a couple. And so I have this really diverse group of clients, which is awesome. And it's enriched what I've gotten to learn in my education as well. So I'm really excited to bring in some nuggets of that to our conversation today. But I do definitely want to make sure I reinforce that because I'm still in school, and I'm a marriage and family therapy trainee, I am not yet a licensed therapist. And so just want to make sure that I throw that out there, but I am still really excited to share some of what I have learned through my professional, personal, and academic life. Also to be able to learn from you, mom, about your experiences with these things. So I also wanted to share a little bit about why I'm very personally interested in this topic of emotion, emotion self-regulation, if that sounds good to you mom. Of Course. Perfect. So Part of the reason why I think this is so important is because I think emotional regulation serves as a foundation for the way that we experience the rest of life. It kind of serves as the lenses in the glasses of life for us. However, we're feeling internally, that's going to influence the way that we behave and experience the world out there through the ups and the downs. And so I've seen that change happen inside of me personally. I remember being in a group interview for marriage and family therapy for my program and my current program director, asking all of us prospective students. Why do you want to be a therapist. For me, so much of that answer was because I've experienced the transformative nature of therapy through being a client. I had the most wild moment a couple of weeks before that interview where my partner, we were in the middle of a conflict and he looked at me and he was like, wow, you just stay so cool, calm, and collected during our conflicts. You're so even keeled. I looked at him like he was mad! I was like, wait, are you talking about me? Because mom, you will know this, but would we have described Little Nikita at any point during my childhood, teen years, or even early twenties as even keeled? No. Exactly! I was really reactive. I think I had a tendency to have a short fuse and really let my emotions guide me. So to go from being, you know, in that state to having one of the closest people in my life regard me, and still does to this day, regard me as able to have a handle on my emotions. I know therapy works. I'm, I'm the proof! And so it's really fun to be able to kind of come full circle and talk about this topic with you. But I'm really curious, mom, how has emotional self-regulation come up throughout your lifetime? Yeah, thanks. I'm really proud of the work you're doing, by the way. Everything you're learning as well on your course. I personally, I've been through many unwanted changes in my life, as you know, and you've been through some of these with me, Nikita, especially the house moves. Not only was I uprooted physically in my life, but emotionally too. And I'd go through periods of feeling homesick, or isolated, and even sometimes feeling depressed, at having to once again, having to relocate when I didn't choose to. And I had to learn to manage my anger, resentment, and other difficult emotions that would arise. Eventually, I developed strategies for managing these emotions. And I would share them with all of you, my family and with friends to help you all navigate your own life transitions. This actually is how this became the premise of this show, at the encouragement of you Nikita. In fact, Nikita is the wind beneath my podcast wings, as I like to say. And honestly, this podcast wouldn't be possible without her. When I do these tips for rootedness, you know, I run it through with her. So she puts in a lot of time helping me on the back end as well like that. I'm so excited for you to finally get to meet her, which you do today. Mom that is so sweet. You give me too much credit. Coming up with all of this was a total collaboration, but it was really born out of your life experiences that are so valuable. So thank you for adding a layer and telling us so much about what the emotional experience of those changes were like for you. I would love to dive a little bit deeper for our audience who may have varying levels of familiarity with the topic that we're talking about today. I'd love to go through some basic definitions. In terms of emotional regulation and self-regulation, we'll get to it, but I feel like something that is equally important to define and maybe sets us up to better understand it is the opposite of self-regulation, which is dysregulation. And we really only need self-regulation because of those periods of dysregulation. Now you might be asking okay Nikita, what's dysregulation? Well, There's a lot of different ways that it looks and words for it that we have in society. But think about the Hulk when he totally loses control and he turns into a different person. Think about the term when you lose it, when you're spiraling. Mom, I go to school with a lot of Gen Z folks and believe it or not, there's a new term. They call it a crash out mom. So when you're crashing out, that means that you're dysregulated. Did you know that one? No, I've never heard of that one before. That's new to me. I learned something. Well, I notice in our slang as Brits, crash out often means I need to go to sleep. I'm tired. I feel like I'm going to crash out. So I was really confused when it first came up. But that's now how they really talk about this feeling of, I'm completely not myself. I've lost it. And so essentially it's when our emotions, typically negative emotions, become, and you can actually be positively emotionally dysregulated too, but it's a little bit less common and less destructive because it might just look like being very excited. But negative dysregulation can be anger, it can be sadness, it can be anxiety. And it's really the state when those feelings are so powerful that it feels like they have taken the driver's wheel from you, the steering wheel, and they are at the helm now. And you feel like you're just so long for the ride. And so, emotional self-regulation, if we're going to follow that same metaphor, is the process of taking that wheel back for yourself and being able to be in control and maybe just have your emotions be passengers. They have their appropriate place. Is that metaphor making sense? I just want to make sure. I absolutely love that analogy Nikita. You're always so good with your analogies. That's a really good way of describing it. Yeah, I appreciate it. And I think that we've all been there, right? And so that self-regulation is really our ability to self-soothe, to be able to bring ourselves back from that emotional brink. One thing that I really want to reinforce is that the end state of what we're talking about on this podcast today and of self-regulation is not to never be dysregulated. That to me is an unrealistic goal. And I think even if we spent 20 years at a monastery, there is still a chance that we would get to that state at times. I think it's normal. I think it's natural. What mastering self-regulation is really about is to have a toolkit of what to do when you do feel out of control. That's what we're going to chat about today. But again, it's also not about being devoid of emotion altogether. And one thing that I want to clarify is that emotion looks different for every person, every family, and every culture. So you may see high expressed emotionality in a person that you know or in their culture, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're dysregulated. It's more about, again, who's in the driver's seat. So if they feel in control of themselves, but they're very wildly expressive, that's not what we're talking about here. And mom, in our culture, being Indian, being Punjabi specifically, we, we have big emotions and feelings, right? Absolutely! Yeah, that's why I was so pleased you made that point. Thanks for adding that Nikita because culture that plays a huge part! Exactly, exactly. And so to dive a little bit more about what we really mean when we are talking about that regulation versus dysregulation, I want to talk about this concept that I learned in school called the window of tolerance. And so the idea of the window of tolerance is almost try to imagine a little bit of a chart where underneath there's sort of this hypoarousal. That's the first layer. And that's where you might feel shut down, exhausted. What's above, weighing above on the opposite end of that is hyperarousal. And that looks like anxiety, maybe your heart's racing, you feel totally out of control. That is hyperarousal. And everything in between is the window of tolerance. So that is the window of space where you are feeling like you can manage things as yourself. I think feeling like yourself is a really big part of it as well. Again it's not about difficult things not coming for you, it's just about being in a space where you feel like you can handle those things. As I mentioned, being kind of under stimulated can be this shut down phase. And then being really, really activated can be that hyperarousal. And we're aiming for the stuff in between. But as you sort of picture this little sandwich, if you will, imagine that that window of tolerance, that inside part where you feel really good and you feel like yourself, that is not the same for everyone. We're not built the same. We didn't have the same life circumstances. So think about things like childhood trauma, growing up around a lot of stressors, thinking about having generational trauma, like being from a line of people that have been through really difficult things and that being passed along, that's called Epigenetics, that idea that we carry some of that encoding within us. There's differences in personality, there's differences in life experience. And so those are all going to dictate how much we can handle at any given time. And mom, today you brought up another really good one that I hadn't even thought of. That's more dynamic, that's more in the moment, right? But you were mentioning also the idea of how many stressors you're facing at one given time. It'd be really neat and tidy if life did a thing where it gave us one at a time, right? That would be the dream. That's not the reality. So if you're already, if you're staying within your window of tolerance with one or two things that have come along, but then a third thing pops up, that might just be enough to knock you all the way up into hyperarousal or have you fully shut down into hypoarousal. I mention this to point out that it's not great to judge ourselves or others for the way that we're reacting and compare because it's just not a process that's comparable for each person. And so I'll pause there for a second because I feel like that was a lot, but what do you think as I talk about that window of tolerance? Yeah, I'd never come across those terms. And I love how you described it and the hyper and the hypo side of it and the sandwich, as you mentioned as well, and being right in the middle of the sandwich. I was going to say meat of the sandwich, but since I'm vegan, the non-meat of the sandwich. The beautiful veggie stack of the sandwich. Exactly. I'm glad that I'm glad that's all making sense. And I think you're exactly right about just wanting to be in that beautiful middle of the sandwich, whatever might be in your sandwich. It's really important to note that we don't make our best decisions or have our best interpersonal interactions when we are in the bread. That is not when we want to be having, you know, resolving things because sometimes there's things that knock us into hyper or hypoarousal that are on our own, but more often it's because of our interactions with others, whatever that might look like. And so engaging when you're still not in your safe zone is, is just something that we might want to avoid. But one of the best pieces of news about the window of tolerance is that it is not static for you throughout your life. It's not like, okay, you're born with it and that's your tolerance and that's it. One of the big things we actually work on in therapy is slowly widening that window of tolerance and how can you create the best conditions for you to be able to manage things in a way that doesn't make you feel dysregulated. And over time, can sitting with these things that make you uncomfortable, build up that tolerance. I just love to see that process happen in others. I've seen it happen in myself. So it's super exciting. But what happens if we don't? What happens if we do go out there and interact with the world when we are dysregulated? Well, shouldn't surprise you that it can act as a little bit of a contagion. So think about the last time that you were in a space that was maybe feeling neutral, maybe even feeling good, and somebody came in like a line of wire. Someone came in, hot! They had experienced something tough or they were mad at someone and they just start venting it out to the group and suddenly the whole vibe is off for everybody, right? That is emotional contagion. Then it can send others into dysregulation and so on and so forth all the way out. And so that's yet another reason why it's really important to be mindful of where we are currently at with our own window of tolerance. And then maybe be able to make some choices if you encounter someone out in the world that seems really dysregulated. You might want to check in with, okay, I'm actually in my window right now. So either A, I can help if that's your position with that person. Or B, if it's like at the bank, you might want to say, I'm going to see myself out and preserve my energy today. And mom, you described something so similar to me when I was a little bit younger, like back when you exposed me to some of the first concepts I had really heard about within psychology. That was a different conception of this idea of dysregulation. So could you tell us a little bit more about that? What exactly were you referring to there though? Just that domino effect of dysregulation on the people around us. Yeah. Yes, and one of your favorite authors and kind of how they think about it. I always love talking about my favorite author! I need no encouragement for that. Yeah. Yeah. And I love what you said. I kept nodding along through a lot of that. Like I could really relate. Some of the things you mentioned, they're reminiscent of what I've learned through the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, my favorite author, as you said, and world renowned spiritual leader. I really love his book, A New Earth. I've mentioned The Power of Now before. That's a bit tougher to get through, but this one I think is a lot easier to read. And it's such a great book for our current times right now. I think we all could do with that right now. So Eckhart talks about the concept of a pain body. Something we all develop through the years and it's due to an accumulation of old pain. We all have that. However, if we don't acknowledge our emotions, we don't manage them, our pain body will just grow. It'll keep growing. And have you ever been around people where you can literally feel it? Their heavy energy, you can feel it. Our pain body, it mostly lies dormant until something or someone triggers it. And it's important to become aware of it, to have that awareness, feel it in our body before it becomes intense, before it grows. And we become a creature, you mentioned that, about where we become this sort of creature that's possessed. We're not ourselves at all, that's not us. And so, you know, how does that show up in daily life? Well, my family members, you all are familiar with the concept of the pain body because I go on and on about it. I've taught it to my family members as well. So when we're in our pain body, we tell each other and we ask for a time out. Because it's not a good idea two colliding pain bodies. They're bad news! So when we're aware of it, we try to do that. We're aware and we think, no, no, this is not a good time to talk. But sometimes it's too late and we're well beyond that window of tolerance that you mentioned Nikita, that you spoke about. And that's when, like you said, we can just lose it with one another. Tempers can flare, criticism is hurled, and things are said that will be regretted later. Now, luckily, most of us in my family, I'd say, are quick to forgive and move on. And it's a bit like it makes me think of the ducks Eckhart refers to in his analogy in that book. Don't think you've told me about the ducks yet? You don't know about the ducks? No, I You're in for a treat. So he says after two ducks get into a fight, they get over it really quickly. They separate and then they float off in different directions. Each duck flapping its wings vigorously a few times to release all the pent-up energy during the fight. After they flap their wings, they float on peacefully as if nothing had ever happened. Wouldn't it be great to be like that? I know I can see you laughing. It'd be great to be able to be like that, like ducks. Instead, we often keep that fight going by thinking about it, ruminating, spinning a story in our mind of how mean the other person is, blaming, judging, holding resentments. Or thinking or talking about it for days, and months, or even years. I'm sure we can all relate. I think we've all done that at certain times. I'm sure you can relate too, Nikita. Our mind keeps it alive, replaying that story like a movie. Since our body can't tell the difference between real and imaginary, it could make us physically sick. But what we can learn, Eckhart says from ducks is to flap our wings, translates to us letting go of the story. And I say that we can literally flap our arms. I can picture all of us doing it. And so what I mean by that is that any physical activity, to shake it off. Go off for a walk, you know, if somebody's really riled you up. Go off for a walk, do something physical. That way it helps us to return to the only place of power, which is the present moment. If we fail to regulate our emotions, as Nikita mentioned, then there is that domino kind of effect towards others. And Eckhart shares his own story about, this gave me the chills. He shares about after helping a client with a heavy pain body, to release some of that heavy energy, he felt those effects himself afterwards. Because when someone came over, they commented how they could feel this heavy energy in the room. After that, he went into a restaurant and there was a guy who was really worked up about his food. He got eventually thrown out. I think in the end they had to call the police on him. He was really getting out of hand. And the waiter later came up to Eckhart and he said to him,"Did you do this?" It's really strange. It's so, so interesting. That negative energy he was still carrying with him, people can feel it. I think we've all been in those situations where other people can feel it. I loved your vivid description of this pain body and what that can look like, and it sounds like you and the rest of my family too immediate and extended are have become acquainted with and aware of our pain bodies through you teaching us about this. And so tell us about when you notice yours kind of start to come on the scene? It's especially when people don't take no for an answer. When I've said no, because that's a huge one for me. I've even had to cut people out of my life who consistently do that. Like I said, I've talked about my people pleasing on the people pleasing episode and how hard I've worked to try and overcome that. It makes me feel very disrespected. If I've told someone no, I expect they would respect that. Hey, Nikita how about you? How do you notice when you're slipping out of your window of tolerance? I appreciate you sharing that. it's so understandable that that sounds like it's a big trigger point for you. I think we all have our own personal trigger points that may not be the same as someone next to us, but they might have to do with our life experiences and things like that. So similarly, there's sort of a how and a what to me being aware of my window of tolerance. And so the how is kind of like a how do I know that I'm there or I'm getting there. Then the what is what gets me there. And so for the how, I notice it very physically, mostly. My hands get really hot. They get sweaty and slippery. My breathing speeds up. My speech speeds up. I'll talk really fast. I'll speak really loudly. There are definitely, of course, those emotional intensities as well, where you almost... see red. I understand why people use that phrase because it does feel like it really takes over. Just mentally, suddenly cognitive distortions, that's what we call them in therapy world. But things like black and white thinking or catastrophization, when my thoughts suddenly get really black and white, as I mentioned, that's a good sign that I'm getting out of that window of tolerance. In terms of the things that get me there, there's a couple different things. So I'd say in relationship, whether that's a partner or a loved one, whoever it might be, um, that can look like I'm feeling misunderstood or let down by someone. And I think that is related to my life experiences. Like I try so hard to be understanding of other people and I try really hard to make my intentions understood. So when they're not, it really, I just can't handle it very well. Um, but I will say it happens to me not in a relational setting as well. It happens to me when I'm alone sometimes too. You talked about the fears, facing our fears in your last tips for rootedness which was a wonderful episode. Some of my fears and thinking about my fears can really get me into a dysregulated spot as well, even when I'm by myself. So we'll chat a little bit more about that. When I talk about tips of what do we do? How do we handle it then when we're in this dysregulated state? So. Are you cool if we start to talk about some of that? Before we move on to that, I just wanted to say, I'm so glad you mentioned about the physical manifestations of how we can become aware and realize that's really important because that's how sometimes before it's gone too far, you know, those first few inklings of feeling it in our body, becoming aware that the pain body is getting activated or it's the window of tolerance, you know, we're kind of verging outside of that. It's becoming aware of that. And that's so important to notice it in our body. I'm so glad you brought that up. Exactly. Our body is just such a good thermometer for what's going on inside of us. So I love that. You're right. That should be the prerequisite is noticing. It's trying to notice what's going on, what you're experiencing, how you might be getting out of that state where you feel like yourself and into a different state. Once you're there, a few more tools I wanted to talk about. The first one is externalization. And I love it and I use it with my clients so much. One of my favorite tools. And you talked about it long before I ever formally educated in the therapy space mom. Really? It's the idea that, oh yeah, you talked about it. We would talk about, if I said, I'm so angry when I was a teenager, right? You would sometimes kind of gently correct me and say, you're feeling angry, right? And that is a super important distinction because When you say, I am angry, what you're really saying is I am anger. And you're not, you're not just any one emotion at a time. And I think kind of saying that you are really reinforces that that emotion is at the driver's that steering wheel. And part of how we get our power back is to reframe. One of my favorite, favorite reframes is anger is here. Anger's coming into this space. That's so interesting. Or like, silence just showed up. How curious and, and getting curious about those players, but kind of like Inside Out. Inside Out is such a beautiful movie that has really helped with this type of externalization, being able to see that pain body or see that emotion as something outside of yourself, which can help you remember the parts of you that you are when you're not dysregulated. So that's my first tip is that externalization, realizing that your feelings aren't you. The second thing mom has to do with the ducks. I'm so glad you talked about the ducks because believe it or not, we might want to take a page out of Taylor Swift's book and shake it off. As she says, I'm the big Swiftie, as my mom knows. And so what the ducks do is actually what every other species on earth other than humans do after a stressful conflict, which is they quite literally shake. It's called somatic shaking and it is how they get rid of trauma. And what happens with animals that don't do that shaking is that they can actually get stuck and sometimes they can even die if they are not given that opportunity to shake. We actually got the chance to watch a clip about that in our trauma class, which was really interesting and I feel super privileged that we even have a trauma class in my program, super rare. So what do I mean when I say like shake it off or like why that somatic shaking is so important? Well, these experiences that we're talking about, yes, they affect our emotions. Yes, they affect our thoughts, but they are primarily happening in our bodies. Our central nervous system has these two different systems. It has the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system that are a part of it. The sympathetic nervous system kicks in when we are in distress. It makes our heart race. It gets us ready for fight or flight. It literally gets our blood pumping. And our parasympathetic nervous system activates when we're feeling calm. It's our rest and digest. So there's fight or flight versus rest and digest. It's when we can learn, use logic, and really access our best selves. And so grounding in somatic exercises because this is a physical experience of going from one state to the other, we can use physical sensations to get ourselves back into our bodies. And so it might be shaking mom, it might be doing grounding based exercises, it might be reminding ourselves that we're back in our bodies. And I feel like you're going to talk about some things that are related to that. Um but this can be especially helpful with little kids that might be throwing a tantrum, things like that. They're feeling their emotions in such a huge way. It's good to give them physical touch points to remember that they are, you know, a body within the space. And so that's the second one is that idea of like those somatic exercises. Then the last one that I think is so beautiful is inner child work. So it's called self-soothing, right? The ability to regulate ourselves. But what if we took that so literally? Self-soothing, serving as a soother to ourselves. Well, I did this recently. I've tried it for the first time ever. Um, Mom, I talked about my fears earlier and you know this and you've been through every step of this with me. I had a really bad irritable bowel syndrome growing up. Really tough. I would need to use the restroom urgently, urgently in any situation, sometimes like seven times a day. It was really extreme. And so while thank goodness, my physical condition has improved, the mental anguish of being afraid to be in a car ride or afraid to be somewhere without a bathroom, that has still stuck with me at times. And so recently I was driving from Orange County to Los Angeles, a drive that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. And I was, had an appointment and I felt like I might be running late for the appointment, so that's a trigger. And I'm driving on a highway in traffic, which is another trigger because it doesn't feel really easy and accessible to reach a bathroom. I started getting really dysregulated. I could feel my fears escalating to a point where I didn't feel like myself. What I decided to do was place little Nikita, cute little Nikita, mom, that you used to dress in the sweetest little dresses, I pictured a specific little Nikita in a green velvet dress with a little full style fringe. And I sat her in my passenger seat and I decided to be this wise adult Nikita. I said to little Nikita out loud, it's okay. You're feeling a little scared. I think you're feeling a little nervous. I feel like you're feeling like we can't use the bathroom or that if we pull off the highway, we'll be too late. We'll get late for the appointment, and it's okay to get late for the appointment. I'm not going to let you suffer. If you need to go to the bathroom, we're going to pull off. It's not a big deal. It's okay to be late. Everyone's late sometimes. And I could vividly imagine the two of us in that car and it was just me and it was me talking to myself out loud. It really, really helped. And so, um, these times that we feel dysregulated, we can go back to these vulnerable parts of ourselves. And it was really beautiful to, to interact with it. So I remember first telling you that story moment. It was so nice. I loved how you used that inner child work to help you with that, with the IBS. You know, I didn't know you were still facing it. I thought you'd got over it completely. Yeah, the physical side, I feel like I really have, but the emotional side is still there. And so it's interesting to see you know, how those scars can show up. And so how about you, mom? What are your biggest tips for working with being outside of your window of tolerance or being in that pain body? Okay, so for me, being present or mindful. And I've spoken at great length about that in one of my episodes, the mindfulness one. tips And so being present in the present moment, and it's often the antidote or prevention for this. This tool, it can be used. on a daily basis as a part of daily practice. You could use it in the form of mindfulness meditation or even through everyday activities like walking, cooking, eating, even mundane things like laundry and brushing our teeth. And my son and I, we often revert to that. We use that. He's great at reminding me to be in the present moment. Like just recently when I started our phone conversation, I think a few days back. I was really complaining about the heat and having no AC right now. And he asked me to think of a few things that went well this week. And he even ended our conversation with each of us sharing what we could observe around us using our five senses. And in my mindfulness episode, I share about the five, four, three, two, one technique, if you want a structured technique for doing that. But he was just saying, look, mom, you tell me what can you see out of your window, which wasn't a lot. I was indoors, but still, he got me to focus on being present because I wasn't, I wasn't being present. He was out hiking and he said, oh, well, I can see this and that and I can hear the birds. And it was so soothing for me. I was the one who benefited more than him because I felt like I was on the right, on the hike with him. And it really helped calm or soothe me, self soothe me. Like you said, it was really great for that. So I think just bringing ourselves in the present moment because a lot of time these emotions come about because we're in our heads, in our thoughts. Thinking of the past or fears of the future or worries, that's one that's always helped me. And also the other one is to just, like I said, tell the other person how you're feeling and press pause. So this can be practiced in small non-threatening ways in our daily life as well. When I can feel my window of tolerance reducing, when my pain body is activated, I just go ahead and tell the other person, especially with my family, I can, because we speak in that same language of the pain body. And I tell them, I can't continue this conversation. If their pain body is triggered too, it makes it much tougher because, they may want to continue the conversation. That's happened a few times and it can cause greater emotional dysregulation, certainly for me at those times. I've had to use my assertiveness skills, my boundary setting skills, and I'll just say, I need to put the phone down. Sometimes they may not be listening even they're in that, like you said, when we go into that mode, people can even stop hearing you. So I say, no, I've got to put that phone down, I don't mean to be rude, but I have to cut off this conversation. Sorry, I can't do it. We'll have to do this another time. And again, Vinnie, my son, he's very good at using this technique. I think I've used that with you. I've tried to remind you to do that with certain people. But It's that press pause. And sometimes it might be just for a few minutes. But if we are so worked up and so upset or angry, I think even pausing for maybe two days, three days or until we, again, we listen to our body, become aware of our body. Is our body still feeling the effect of that? And if we are, we're still feeling that anger in our body or resentment or whatever it might be, we want those emotions to kind of just taper down a bit before we go ahead and speak to somebody. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. I really appreciate you mentioning the ways that it's shown up for you. I love that you shared some of those ways that you deal with and deescalate. And I love that thing about pressing pause too. I think it's so important to realize when we're just not going to get anywhere productive or where we could do further harm if we continue the situation in that state. And it's always staggering to me, mom, when you create these tips for rootedness or when you've just been doing certain things my whole life to learn them in school as actual techniques. And this is just yet another one of these. It mirrors this thing called the negotiated time out that we do in couples therapy or with families where this is actually a technique that we say. We say, look, you're, you're way too out of the zone. Nothing productive is going to happen here. How can we kind of mutually agree on when to just call it? And as you said, it doesn't work perfectly. There are times when someone really wants to just keep going in. I think that's such a great observation. And so I know that... one thing that we really wanted to touch on is some of the most common situations where people might experience this. And unfortunately, I know you've had a couple of them come up in your own life this week. So can you tell us and for our listeners, for your listeners, I'm sorry, oh taking them on for a second, for your listeners, can you tell them when they might see some of this dysregulation most commonly show up? Well, one big one I can think of is just last Saturday when I went out with a friend and somebody went into her car just as she was pulling into a parking spot. Her car got dented at the back. That's a situation I think listeners could relate to where you could really get worked up and upset and angry. I don't know if I can think of any other. I think of holidays, I think of times that are really intense and something that you mentioned earlier was when things compound, right? So I think we should also be on the lookout for it if we know we're having a bad week or a bad day, just knowing that we're gonna be more sensitive, more vulnerable. The meat and or... wonderful veggie stuffing in our sandwich is just gonna be so thin. So we need to be aware and take care of ourselves accordingly, right? And so I think that may lead us well into kind of wrapping up our topic for today, if that sounds good to you. Which is just recognizing that why is this important, especially in the context of uprooted, this wonderful podcast, this ecosystem? Well, because when life comes around with unexpected changes, we don't want to be facing feeling so uprooted for so long within ourselves at the same time as trying to deal with those external circumstances. Again, to normalize and de-shame, we are not saying you're not going to be uprooted emotionally, that you're not going to be dysregulated. We can almost guarantee that you will, you will face that. That's part of being human. And so some of the tips and tools are just that awareness of that window of tolerance. Where are you on that scale right now. I think sometimes people can recognize hyperarousal more. That feels more like the hulking out or crashing out as the kids say today. But hypoarousal is also shut down. It's when we feel like we can't handle anything. That's outside of our window of tolerance too. So just know when you're there. The pain body was such a good thing that you brought in on that conception of this being that isn't you or being aware of what your closest people in your life, what does their pain body look like? So that you can really gently help them identify it, but also know when you're not gonna get anywhere productive in conversation because that's out. And some of those big regulation strategies. So externalizing your emotions, using flapping your literal wings and using some somatic tools to get yourself back in your body. Talking to that inner child when you're going through something hard. The mindfulness, as you said, mom, snapping yourself back into this moment right now, which is all that exists. I love, you always used to ask me when I was growing up, "Is everything okay right now? Is anything wrong in this moment?" That is really powerful when we're going through a hard time. Then when it is relational, when it is about conflict with others, press pause so that you don't dig yourselves deeper. Kind of devise a system where there's the mutual understanding that you need to step away. And it was just so fun learning more about you, mom. That's the beautiful thing about these close relationships that we have is that we know each other and yet there's always so much to keep learning. So I truly feel so grateful to have been your guest today and I will let you kind of do your usual discussion right with the listener. Thank you Nikita. You did an excellent job summarizing all the points, all the things we spoke about. You did it beautifully. I want to thank you for helping me with my tips for rootedness today. It made for a much more interesting show and listeners uh are always hearing about you from me and they got to hear from you directly and learn from your wisdom, your insights, and some of your therapist training that you've received so far. You're going to be an excellent therapist one day. Thank you so much, mom! It's so And thank you listeners. My wish for you is to be able to return home to yourself within your body. If you are internally uprooted this week. Now this part is tough for me because this is the point in the, in the show when I usually introduce my next guest for the following week. Sadly, there will be no guest because I need to take some time off. I need to practice some self-care and take some time away from this podcast to prioritize some other things in my life. And I'll still continue to work behind the scenes to bring you new guests and to record them for when I do resume, which is most likely in the new year. I'm going to miss you all. I love doing this podcast. Thanks for making this show possible. And in the meantime, what I'd like you to do is to please catch up on episodes you haven't listened to yet, for you to share with others, subscribe on YouTube or on the podcast apps to stay informed of when I'm going to resume, if you subscribe. And stay connected via my Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, my website, jaskiranprasad.com. That's J-A-S in front of my name, Kiran and then my last name. I'll have all of these in the show notes and feel free to contact me with questions, comments, the topic you'd like me to cover when I come back, or if you or someone you know would make a great guest, and I'm trying to introduce more diversity if I can of ages, cultures, everything, worldwide. Take care everyone and I'll see you in the new year. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, may you find peace and rootedness.