Understanding Why You're Stuck: A Deep Dive Into Your Nervous System - Episode 2

If you only listen to one episode of the podcast... LET IT BE THIS ONE. 

In episode two of 'Successful and Stuck,' We are diving into the intricacies of the nervous system, so we can then learn how to navigate it.  This episode blends personal stories of how dysregulation can show up in life as well the the real science behind how our nervous system works.  

We discuss in detail:

• The polyvagal theory and the essential concepts of autonomic nervous system states: sympathetic (fight or flight), dorsal vagal (shutdown), and the blended freeze state. 
• The importance of recognizing and regulating these states for better mental and physical health. 
• The significance of somatic practices for nervous system regulation, providing listeners with actionable steps and exercises. 

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Transcript

  📍  📍 Hey everybody. Welcome to episode two of Successful and Stuck. I'm your host Patrick Murphy, as you heard in the intro, and I just, I'm, I'm so excited to be here. Um, admittedly, I'm feeling a little nervous like I do at the beginning of every episode. Um, and, you know, might take me a second to get grounded.

So, you know, but I, I told you I was gonna bring you along this journey with, me. Um, and I will tell you what's happening in real time. 'cause I want you to see how I use these tools. I want you to see how I pinpoint, uh, what's going on in my nervous system so that you can start to do it too. So I'm always gonna bring you along that journey.

So, uh, thanks for being here. And I guess like, let's just start with like a little check-in. You know, how are you feeling in your body right now? Maybe you don't want to be in your body right now. Maybe you feel numb, dissociated, whatever. That's okay to, I'm not saying that's a fun place to be. But, but it's okay.

And you're gonna learn why. That's okay. Because your nervous system is trying to tell you something. And right now I'm feeling this impulse of, Ooh, oh my gosh, okay, I gotta show up for all these people and who do I have to be for them? And so, you know, I'm feeling a little like, kind of upward, um, you know, upward energy and, and almost wanting to, to jump outta my skin.

But it's like, no, no, no, I'm not gonna do that right now. I'm gonna feel my feet. I'm gonna stay grounded. And we're gonna get into this episode 'cause there's so y'all, there's so much goodness in this episode. Um, if you listen, if you only listen to one episode of this podcast, make it this one, because today you're gonna learn essentially the structure of your nervous system.

We're gonna dive into some of the nerdy science, but I'm gonna make it relatable. We're gonna make it, you know, down to earth. Um, but you're going to really learn. The structure of your nervous system, you're gonna learn the basics for helping you navigate your nervous system and listen to the signs and the signals that your body is telling you, because you know, as, as we've said before, like your nervous system isn't in the way, your nervous system is trying to show you the way.

And the problem is, is that a lot of the stuff I'm gonna talk about today, this should be taught in schools. We should learn this stuff in elementary school. We should learn polyvagal theory. We should learn the structure of our nervous system so that we can, so that we can then navigate, uh, you know, the ups and downs of life with more skill, with more knowledge, with more understanding.

And that's what today's episode is all about, is bringing you that knowledge and that deeper skill and understanding that, uh, most of us just don't know. And I teach this stuff with my one-on-one clients. I, I teach it in my workshops and every single time. People come out of it being like, oh my gosh, like I had no idea how to actually navigate this.

So that's what today is all about. Um, but first I, I want to kind of reference something and, and lay the groundwork. 'cause I, I really love using personal examples for my own life to really ground this stuff and make it real for you. Because I'm not teaching you anything that I haven't been through fully myself.

I'm never going to do that because that just feels inauthentic for, uh, for me. And so y'all remember from the first episode, if you listen to that one, that, uh, you know, from 2010 to 2015, I was living in New York City and y'all to say that I was always on the go was an understatement. And if you listen to episode one, uh, you heard why, because I was, uh, working a, a pretty demanding job for the Wall Street Journal.

I was also doing Iron Man triathlons, which just those two things alone. Would be enough. Like doing training for an Ironman is like a full-time job in and of itself. But I didn't stop there. I was also on the young alumni board for the University of Georgia's business school, running the regional alumni networks for, uh, for UGA.

Um, I was putting my younger brother through college. I was very involved, uh, at the time in my church and we were starting this new retreat series in the city, which is still thriving to this day and, and the list goes on. But all of that to say I didn't know how to slow down. I had no idea how to slow down and, and I'm gonna reference this example throughout this episode for, for a reason because so many of us, uh, so many of the folks that I work with.

They're stuck in what we call, uh, your sympathetic nervous system state. It's a fight or flight state. It's a, it's a going state or you might be in freeze. Um, there's, you know, it runs the gamut. Um, but it's, it's really common for high achievers especially to be stuck in, in one of those two states. And I remember one day my, my manager at the Wall Street Journal, uh, Elizabeth, who I'm still really good friends with to this day.

She's an incredible mentor, an amazing friend. Um, she called me into her office and it was like the first, like six or eight months after I had moved up to New York for Atlanta. And she was like, she was like, Hey, like walk me through the last, like, couple weeks of like client entertainment and the things you've done outside of work for clients, uh, or outside of the office for clients.

And I walked her through it and it was like three or four nights a week that I was going out with clients. And, you know, it was part of my job. And, you know, I had this unlimited expense. I mean, I was 26 years old living in New York City with an unlimited expense account. It was awesome. But, but at the same time, it was exhausting.

'cause I didn't know how to turn off. And I remember her saying like, Hey, I want you to give me access to your calendar just for purposes of like, I wanna look at it once a week just to make sure that you're not doing more than two things in the evenings with clients. And reluctantly, I was like, oh, okay.

Because I, I knew, I knew it was true. Like I knew I needed to kind of take a step back. But then at the same time, you know, I'm, I'm doing all these things and I'm training for Ironmans and I would wake up, like I'd be out till, you know, midnight or 1:00 AM with clients, and then I would try to wake up at 4:45 AM to go and do like a 30 mile ride in Central Park and my alarm would go off and there would just be days where I was just, now I, I mean I was completely exhausted, but I was just, I was really in this free state of like, oh no, I have to do this, but oh my God, no.

Like I really need to rest. But then the shame spiral would, would come in of, oh my gosh, I'm not going to make it to the finish line of my next race unless I'm able to get outta bed and finish this one training ride on this Tuesday that I need to go and do in Central Park. And that is just a classic sign of a freeze state of knowing you need to do something and feeling that energy underneath it.

But. Really feeling like unable to do so, and then the guilt or the shame spiral happening afterwards. And we'll get more into that later. But I, I give you that example of, um, you know, of, of, of all of that from New York City because like I said, I've lived this, I've lived this. And then, you know, that went on and on until there were, there were days where, you know, like on a Saturday I was just unable to get off of the couch because I, like my nervous system was trying to shut me down.

It was trying to say like, please stop. But there were so much underlying energy. That was like, no, my gosh. Like, no, I, I have to keep going. I have to go to this run. I gotta do my long ride today. And then I've got, you know, 37 things on my to-do list that I have to, you know, go through and whatnot. And then, you know, of course I would just be sitting there like stuck ruminating on all of this for hours at a time, sometimes while also shame, spiraling because I wasn't able to get off the couch and go and do all these things.

And, and then it just became this, uh, like kind of never ending loop that I didn't understand. And y'all, this is while I was going to therapy twice a week, but I was not going to therapy. With, uh, a person with a clinician who is, this guy had two PhDs by the way, but he was not trauma informed and he certainly wasn't trauma trained.

He never once mentioned the word trauma to me. Whereas when I moved to Denver and I found my therapist here, like day one, um, I was, and, and she, like, she mentions trauma. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't have trauma. And you know, now, like we joke around, she's like, yeah, we'll see, we'll see.

And she didn't actually say that, but you know, it's like now, uh, myself working with people, you know, who have past trauma, you know, they come in and, and very often, like, they're just completely unaware, just entirely unaware of the effects that their past has on them. And. There's so many of these things that we don't necessarily consider, uh, to be traumatic.

And it doesn't have to be necessarily trauma. It could just be continued stress over time. Um, so I really want to emphasize that. Like, I don't wanna sit here and say like, everybody has trauma and everybody has stuff that they have to work through and whatnot. And like, yeah, of course. Like we all have our personal things we do have to work through, but you know, we're not gonna sit here and, you know, just say like, everything's a trauma response and whatnot.

We're, we're not gonna do that. I'm going to give you the groundwork for learning how to pinpoint what state your nervous system is in at any given time. And then in subsequent episodes, what you're gonna get is, okay, well I'm in a sympathetic state right now. I'm feeling fight or flight. What do I do? How can I regulate my nervous system if I'm pinpointing that, okay, like I'm, I'm noticing the sensations and the signals that are in my body that are telling me I'm in a sympathetic state.

I'm in a fight or flight state, and how do I come back down and ground and give back to what we call a ventral vagal state? And like I said, you're gonna learn what all of that means, um, right now actually. And so, like I said though, if there is one episode that you listen to make it this one. Because this episode is gonna be so foundational to everything else that we do and the rest of this show, and you're gonna hear me reference these things.

You're gonna help hear me reference these nervous system seats, and then the guests that I have on as well, you're gonna hear them, reference them, or, you know, whatnot. And, and so it, it really is just a foundational piece of, of this whole podcast, but it really is a foundational piece of your life. Like it should be a foundational piece of your life.

And that's what the folks that take my courses, uh, or work with me one-on-one, they come out of it being like, oh my gosh. Like, I wish that I had known this stuff. And I mean, I'm raising my own hand right here. Like, I wish that I had known this stuff because it should be taught in elementary schools, it should be taught in high schools because nervous system regulation is, uh, just foundational.

To living a fulfilled life. It's foundational to, um, connecting with other people. It's foundational to having really rich, fulfilling, loving relationships that we all want. And I can say firsthand nervous systems dysregulation has gotten in the way of every single one of my past. Uh, definitely my romantic relationships and certainly some of my friendships as well.

And I'll tell you some of those stories in in later episodes. But, um, let's go ahead and jump in. Let's jump into kind of the basics of your autonomic nervous system. Your autonomic nervous system is responsible for all of the sensations that you feel. It's responsible for all the feelings that you feel, the thoughts you have, and the behaviors that that you have.

It's essentially responsible for so much of like 99% of what happens in your life. The thing is that your autonomic nervous system, and I'm gonna get a little nerdy brain science on you here and there throughout the, throughout the podcast, but it functions on what we call a subcortical level. And what I mean by that is, so you've got your prefrontal cortex, it's the last part of your brain that that fully develops.

And your prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that is responsible for executive decision making. It's responsible for rational thought, it's responsible for, you know, kind of being able to piece together timelines and information and whatnot. And it's the part of our brain that really differentiates us from other mammals and, and other beings in a big way.

The problem is that your prefrontal cortex doesn't communicate with your autonomic nervous system using like plain English or whatever your, your native language is. It's why we can't think our way out of anxiety. It's why we can't think our way back into a regulated nervous system state because your autonomic nervous system does not understand rational thought or speech or any of that stuff.

It only understands the language of sensation feeling and what I call flavorings. And I'll, and I'll get into that in a second, but essentially the language that your autonomic nervous system speaks is called somatic. And that's everybody's favorite buzzword these days. Uh, both in the coaching space, the mental health space, et cetera.

And, you know, a lot of people aren't really sure what somatic necessarily means. And you know, kinda on a base level, somatic is essentially just of the body. You know, it's the mind body connection. But on a deeper level, through the lens of my training in somatic experiencing and so on. It, it just goes a lot deeper than just, oh, it's, it's being of the body.

So somatic is essentially the language of your nervous system. And when you learn to speak the language of your nervous system to, to tune into the sensations and the feelings and, and just the little nuances that are happening in your body, and this is a lot easier said than done, but, um, or in some cases it's easier said than done.

Um, when you're able to do that, then you learn to be able to navigate your nervous system and navigate life with a lot more skill. And I want to emphasize that all of this, it's a skill. These are skills that we learn. These are skills we should learn, like I said, and. You know, early childhood and whatnot.

And some of us did learn them automatically because we had well-regulated parents. And, and I hope you did. That's awesome. Um, but if you're listening to this, maybe you didn't. Um, I certainly didn't, and I never learned how to actually regulate my nervous system. And So through the lens of both my own, uh, experience with, uh, somatic work, working with a somatic experiencing practitioner like I have for years, and now being trained in it, I have learned to tune into those signs and signals of my body.

And it's a process, y'all, it's a process. But like I said, if you could talk your way through this and, and if you're listening to this podcast and you're one of those high achieving, you know, successful folks, I know that you've tried to talk your way through this. Like we all have. Believe me, there's, I mean, I'm sitting here looking on the other side of my desk at just stacks of self-help books that I have read.

I have listened to every podcast. I have tried everything. I have tried so many different modalities and put so much effort into my healing journey, my growth journey, only to continue to stay stuck. Like I said, I was going to therapy twice a week in New York City. Just doing talk therapy and I mean, it just helped me stay at baseline at best, I would say.

And the reason that I stayed stuck despite putting so much effort in and going twice a week because we weren't actually addressing any of this stuff on the level of the nervous system, because that's where trauma lives, that's also where stress lives, like unresolved stress. Um, that absolutely applies in this case as well.

And so learning to, to speak that language can just unlock so many things for you. We're talking about a system that is 500 million years old. It's, it's the oldest part, um, of, uh, you know, in, in mammals and, and in animals. So this is a really, really old system that is designed. It is pri, it's primary job is to keep us alive.

At all costs. It's to keep us safe and keep us alive at all costs. And it does a brilliant job of that. The problem is where we get stuck is when symptoms of self-protection become persistent, let's say. And when that dysregulation becomes persistent over time, and what I mean by that is, you know, essentially there's kind of like three levels, you know, of your nervous system, and I'm oversimplifying this, but we've got regulation, there's activation, and then there's dysregulation.

And a lot of people will mistake activation for dysregulation, especially with all of the pathologizing and everything that goes on, you know, on like social media and whatnot. These days of like everything means you're dysregulated. Like I saw something the other day where. Um, you know, this, this quote unquote somatic practitioner was saying, if somebody's standing too close to you in line and you're feeling uncomfortable, that means you are dysregulated.

And I was just like, no, that, that's actually, that doesn't necessarily mean you're dysregulated for some people maybe, but that's just your nervous system doing exactly what it's supposed to do. That doesn't mean anything is wrong with you. If you're feeling a level of activation with a stranger who you don't know that is standing too close to you, amazing.

I'm really glad that you're feeling that because you should be feeling that. You absolutely should be feeling that, because that's your system saying, whoa, hold on. We don't know this person. We don't trust this person. Our, you know, our, our archival system. That memory bank is saying, whoa, we don't have any information.

On this person and that activation is actually telling you to do something. And the the problem is, is when we stay activated for too long, that can then slip into, to dysregulation and, and dysregulation. Absolutely. Like chronic dysregulation definitely stems from, from trauma or from chronic stress and whatnot.

And what happens with trauma especially, or chronic stress, is it overwhelms our nervous system's capacity to process it and be with that thing in the moment. And when our system gets overwhelmed, it's, it has brilliant protection mechanisms to deal with that overwhelm. But the problem is, is that when we get overwhelmed, it's almost like a, a piece kind of separates and it just starts looping on its own and it can continue looping because it thinks that that event is still going on, is still going on.

You, you see this a lot. A, a good example is like veterans who have come back from war and, uh, they have PTSD, you know, maybe they were, you know, they were in some like horrific, um, you know, accident or whatnot, um, or got attacked and like, you know, 4th of July fireworks or something. They hear those and all of a sudden their system snaps into, into action thinking that those fireworks, and this is a really good example of the flavoring that I mentioned earlier.

The fireworks represent just that flavoring. Like logically, somebody might know that, yeah, these are fireworks. I'm home, I'm here. I'm not actually in a war zone anymore. But your autonomic nervous system, your nervous system does not know that that is the case. It just hears that loud bang and it thinks, oh no, like we gotta mobilize, we gotta take cover, we gotta do something.

It's a perfect example of, of our nervous system working in flavorings. And so it's just something doesn't have to be an apples to apples direct comparison of something from the past. It doesn't have to look, uh, look, act, and feel the exact same way. It just has to feel a little bit similar. I, I joke around with my clients.

It just, it's the, the LaCroix version, like we've had a lot of, you have had LaCroix. Um, they're not a sponsor of this podcast by any means. Um, but you know, just that tiny little hint of a flavor and our nervous system says, oh my gosh, like this is a threat. This does not feel okay. Like, we've gotta mobilize or we've gotta shut down.

We'll get into all that later. Um, that's what I mean by flavorings. And that's why we can't think our way through when we get activated. That's why we can't think our way through an anxiety attack. That's why we can't think our way out of a free state or depression or, or shut down and whatnot. That's why, because.

When something feels just slightly similar in the present moment, our thinking brains, the prefrontal cortex, the rational part of our brains immediately want to try to make sense of it. And so it starts to kind of loop and you're kind of going through all your rational checklists and everything trying to figure out like, okay, like why am I so activated right now?

Why does this feel, uh, so terrible? But in reality, what's happening is your system is reacting to something in the past, and that disconnect is what keeps those thoughts looping because your, your prefrontal cortex, your thinking brain is searching for the rational explanation for, um, uh, for, for the reason, for the, the logic behind why you are feeling so dysregulated.

But in reality, your system is responding to something in the past. Something in the past that maybe you didn't have the capacity to be with at the time. So that part separated and it just started to loop. And that takes a tremendous amount of energy. That takes a tremendous amount of energy. It means we don't have all of our energy available in the present moment to put toward the bigger goals, the bigger, bolder life that we really want to live.

And that's when we kind of look outside of ourselves and we're like, oh my gosh, like everybody else seems to have it figured out except for me. And then it becomes this loop of like, wow. Like why can't I? Why can't I? Well for folks who have unresolved past trauma, and I lived this story for years, you're not playing with a full deck.

It's like somebody came in and took all the ACEs and all the kings and all the queens out of your deck and you're just playing with. Two through 10 and some jacks. That's what living with past trauma or unresolved past stress is like. Like you just don't have a full deck and you're, you're not really firing all, all cylinders because some of those cylinders are actually firing towards something in the past.

And what we do with somatic work, and this is why this work is so foundational and just so brilliant to living, uh, a really fulfilled, uh, amazing life. What we do is, is we increase over time our capacity to be with that discomfort and just take little bits of it over time to show our system that it is safe.

You have to show your system that it's safe. You cannot just tell your system that it is safe. And that's what we do in somatic work and somatic experiencing as we show our systems. That it's safe and there's a whole method and a way to do that. And, and today is gonna be really foundational, like I said, in terms of, um, taking the first steps to, to learning to navigate your nervous system and be able to show it that it's safe.

So what we're gonna do now, we're gonna jump into what's called polyvagal theory. I'm gonna give you a polyvagal overview and. This was, um, a, a system, uh, you know, kind of a nervous system framework that was developed by Dr. Steven Porges. And there is just so much research behind all of this. All everything I'm teaching you is evidenced based.

It's, it's rooted in science. This isn't just a bunch of like mumbo jumbo, like woo woo spiritual stuff. Um, I tried a lot of that stuff for years, didn't work. Um, I do also still consider myself to be a pretty deeply spiritual person. Um, but when it comes to the nervous system, like there is no substitute, uh, for, you know, employing certain evidence-based, uh, treatments and modalities and, and frameworks.

And this is certainly one of them. So I'm incredibly grateful to, to Dr. Steven Porges for developing this because it's just a brilliant framework through which we can see ourselves, our nervous systems, and the ways in which we, we want to move through the world. So the first thing I'm gonna talk about is called neuroception.

So neuroception is happening all the time. Your system is, is scanning and, and we're not doing this consciously. Um, it's even happening while you're sleeping. Uh, your system just has this awareness and, and it's kind of looking around and, and just scanning 24 7 for threats. And it's, uh, all of this is happening on that subcortical level in what's called your limbic system.

Uh, and, and specifically, uh, a little more, uh, related, uh, I'll get to this later, but you know, we're gonna talk about your amygdala, uh, but your limbic system is essentially, I'm, and I'm oversimplifying this, um, like a hardcore neuroscientist, uh, would definitely be able to pick this apart. So I just wanna be very clear about that.

But I'm, I'm oversimplifying this because it, you know, in this case I think it needs to be oversimplified. Um, your limbic system is essentially your threat detector. Every moment of every day, it's just scanning. And it's asking, is this safe, is this dangerous? Or is this life threatening, safe, dangerous, or life threatening?

And if something is safe, it's just like, okay, like move on. Let's, let's go on if something's dangerous, that's where the reactions come in. That's where the, the mobilization, uh, part, you know, that sympathetic nervous, uh, uh, sorry, sympathetic state of your nervous system, that fight or flight, maybe shut down.

Those things come in to help you navigate the danger. Do we wanna fight this thing? Do we wanna run away from this thing? Like I said earlier, your nervous system, your autonomic nervous system, its only job is to keep you safe and keep you alive so that we can continue the human race.

It is, uh, it's a brilliant survival tool, and that's, its only, only focus is survival. Plain and simple. Then the last thing that your threat detector is asking is like, is this life threatening? And that's a whole nother level of, uh, autonomic nervous system activation in a life threatening state. But it's continually looking for just those flavorings, just those similarities.

Because what it's doing is it's saying like, okay, here's the information that I'm gathering in this moment. Do I know this person? Do I not know this person? Does, you know, if I do know this person, what information do I have on them? So, so that neuro perceptive part of your brain then goes and essentially checks in with what I call the archives.

It's, it's just like the memory bank essentially, because it's looking for those flavorings and similarities, and it's saying like, okay, what information do we have on this thing? And then it's saying, okay, well is this thing, are we determining, is it safe, is it dangerous? Or is it life threatening? And so, you know, if you're walking through the woods.

All of a sudden you come across a bear and we know that like bears are dangerous and we don't want to necessarily casually come across them in the woods. That threat detector is going to flip the switch and sound the alarm, and it's gonna say, whew, danger, danger. And let's say, you know, you scare the bear and the bear just starts racing towards you at full speed.

Well then that's life threatening and that's a whole nother level. Um, that's a whole nother level of, of nervous system activation. And so your nervous system might employ one tactic, um, or, or one state of dysregulation, uh, in order to, fend off, not necessarily fend off, but in order to deal with a life-threatening situation versus a dangerous situation.

Like I said, just going back to this, I'm gonna repeat myself over and over again with some of this stuff because it's so important. Like repetition is key. 'cause I really want you to remember this stuff. The neuro perceptive part of your brain is always scanning for safe, dangerous, or life threatening.

And it's checking those archives to say, what information, what information do we have on this? And then it makes a determination from there. And if we do come into something that is dangerous or life threatening, it's potentially going to choose certain states of dysregulation. And the first of those is going to be it's, I'm not saying it's gonna choose this first, but the first one we're gonna cover today is your sympathetic nervous system.

I. This is fight or flight. Everybody's probably heard of, you know this in one way, shape, or form. You know, we hear, we hear fight, flight, freeze, and shutdown. Um, I also just want to note, a lot of people will say, fight flight, freeze fawn. And fawn actually isn't a nervous system state Fawn is a, uh, behavior, it's a response based on certain nervous system states that will help us potentially stay connected to a person.

You know, it's, it's people pleasing essentially. And, you know, we talked about that in the first episode and we'll, we'll get into that in a future episode, but, but Fawn is not a nervous system state. So the first state, like I said, we're gonna cover is fight or flight. This is your state of mobilization.

So if that threat detector is out there and it sees, uh, you know, it sees a threat, it sees that bear and, and you know, let's just say like the bear doesn't see you, but it's like maybe 50 yards away. And you're like, Hmm, yeah. Like we, you know, we're, we don't wanna be here. You might actually employ your flight response.

And this doesn't necessarily mean that you're like running at full speed to get out of there because I, I live in Colorado. Okay? Like, I know what to do when we come across bears 'cause we need to, 'cause I spend a lot of time in the mountains. You don't ever want to run away. You want to slowly back away from that bear.

But that is still a flight response. Your flight response kicks in when you know, you like, see your childhood bully potentially, um, you know, out at like Chili's or somewhere and you're like, whew. Like yeah, that, you know, 'cause you haven't seen this person for 15 years and the last memory you have of them, the last thing that you remember in those archives is, this person didn't treat me well.

This person's a threat. And so maybe you might back away and sit on the other side of the restaurant. You know, that's the flight response kicking in. And you know, it's, that's not always gonna be the case. You know, every time you might go into free state, you might go into a dissociative state actually, when you see that childhood bully.

So I don't wanna say like, this is the only path, I'm just giving examples of what might happen, um, if your nervous system happens to choose that response. And here's the thing, this isn't a conscious choice. All of this, like I said, it's happening on a subcortical level because your limbic system, your threat detector actually fires before your prefrontal cortex.

It's why when, let's say you're in like a panic attack or like a really severe state of anxiety. So our limbic system actually has the power to shut down parts of our free prefrontal cortex because in the event of. Let's say like a, you know, a bear attack. It doesn't want you sitting there thinking, Hmm, yeah, okay, yeah, that bear, that's, that bear's probably only about 1200 pounds.

Like, I, I think I could, I could probably take that bear. Like it doesn't want you sitting there considering whether or not you could take on the bear. It wants you to either get the F out of there or, or actually go into a dysregulated state and fight it or potentially shut down. So all of this is happening without, really, without choice.

And, and again, that's something that happens with past trauma is it decreases, it reduces our sense of choice, it reduces our sense of agency in any given moment. So anyway, alright. Back to, we're gonna get into that a little bit later. But, um, back to fight or flight. So, uh, fight or flight. All, all of this is, is connected to.

Uh, what's called the vagus nerve, which is the largest nerve in your body. And, you know, it runs all the way from your brainstem down into kind of your, your, um, abdomen area. And it has, uh, essentially two parts. There's a myelinated, and I'll get into what that means later. Again, nerdy brain science. Here, there's a myelinated part and there's an unmyelinated part, the top part, um, from about your heart upwards.

Uh, I might be getting that slightly wrong, so just, you can fact check me on that if you want to. Um, but, um, it's, it's what we call myelinated, which is just a fatty sheath that goes over the nerve that actually allows that nerve to transmit at a much faster pace. So an unmyelinated nerve transmits at about one to three meters per second.

The, the signals travel about one to three meters per second. With a myelinated nerve. The myelinated part of the vagus nerve, those same signals travel at a hundred meters per second. And this is actually why we can't rent a car until we're 25 years old. Because one of the last things that happens in brain development, um, in your, in your early twenties is your prefrontal cortex becomes, uh, parts of it become myelinated.

And so those signals fast. They travel faster. So, you know, if you're driving a car, you're going to be able to react a lot faster in that moment, you know, in, you know, potentially avoiding an accident. Um, so yeah, that's why our insurance premiums go down after we're 25. Uh, um, so anyway, uh, the reason, and this is just a brilliant, like the human body is just so incredible, y'all.

I, I just wanna say that, um. The reason for this part of our nervous system being myelinated is if we are in, uh, a situation where we need to fight or fight, like we need to do it quickly. And so we want those signals to travel faster. So if you are in a sympathetic state, it's gonna feel like your heart rate increases your, it's gonna feel like your breath, your breathing increases, your muscles might tense up.

Because if we need to either flee or fight, we want to be able, we want to prepare. And if you're, if you're watching the video version of this, you're actually seeing me kind of, uh, you know, prep to, to almost stand up or, or whatnot. And. Sympathetic energy can feel restless, it can feel amped up. Um, anger, anxiety, frustration, all of those are examples of sympathetic energy, urgency, fear, um, being really reactive, having racing thoughts, hyper vigilance, uh, catastrophizing, um, and definitely difficulty slowing down.

These are all examples of what it feels like to be in a sympathetic nervous system state. And here's the thing, y'all, there's, there's a range of sympathetic state. We need sympathetic energy just to get out of bed in the morning. We need that fight or flight energy just to literally get anything done, to go to work, to take out the trash, to send that email.

That's, that's what we would call like a lower tone of sympathetic energy of mobilizing energy. That is still grounded where you can, where you can come out of it, the, the problems occur. Where we get stuck is if part of our system or our system is looping constantly in a state of sympathetic energy of fight or flight, where we can't necessarily come back to what we call ventral vagal arrest and digest state.

And we'll get into that a bit later. That's where the problems occur, where we just, we just can't slow down. And, uh, eventually that leads to burnout. And like I said, you know, this is why I was citing that example at the beginning of the episode because. Over time, I was just going, going, going, when I was living in New York and I've had multiple instances where this has happened.

I'm just using New York as an example 'cause it was probably the most extreme. But I was going, going, going all the time. And when I was eventually just kind of getting stuck on the couch in, in those fits of anxiety, that was actually my ventral break trying to come in. And that was the part of my nervous system, the ventral part, trying to say like, whoa, hold on buddy.

Like slow down. But there was all of this sympathetic energy that was wanting to arise or or wanting to work itself out underneath. But it was just like, whoa, hold on. Like we are so tired. And this same thing happened when I was running my startup. I launched my startup in January of 2020, so it's just before the global pandemic hit.

You know, in many ways it was great timing for me because it gave me something to do during lockdown and all this stuff. But at the same time, that was all I was doing and I was so focused, I was so enmeshed with my business that I was just going, going, going all the time. It was all I was thinking about.

And then that eventually led to burnout. And that's what happens when that ventral break tries to come in. When we are in a constant state of fight or flight, and that ventral break wants to come in and tries to say, whoa, hold on. We can't do this anymore. We don't have the energy for this. We don't have the capacity for this.

We have to slow down. That's what happens when we're feeling that state of burnout. And that's absolutely what happened to me. And despite the fact that I was running a mental health startup and was very knowledgeable about all of this stuff, I wasn't trauma trained yet at that time. But I was not recognizing that state of burnout.

I would sit there and I would just stare at the computer for 45 minutes knowing that I needed to get so much done that day because the company, my employees and everybody, they were dependents upon me. And man, I just couldn't do it. And I'm, I'm kind of slowing my voice down right here as an example of that dorsal break, um, trying to come in because it eventually led to just straight up depression.

and. It wasn't until months after that burnout occurred that I was in a session with my therapist and she, and I was just, you know, describing things to her. And she goes, she goes, babe, you're depressed. And I burst out laughing, y'all. I burst out laughing because I was like, oh my gosh, I am, I had every single symptom, including suicidal thoughts that I just wasn't recognizing.

I was just pushing all of that down. And I mean, it was just a classic state of depression, but through the lens of polyvagal theory, um, I don't love using the word depression. I mean, it's, it's what we use colloquially to describe the next, uh, the next sys uh, excuse me, the next nervous system state, um, that we're about to talk about, which is dorsal vagal.

Dorsal vagal. It's the oldest part of our nervous system or the oldest, um, response in our nervous system. It's 500 million years old and it is the state of shutdown or immobilization. It is, uh, it's the state that our nervous systems go into when we see a threat and it's life threatening and our nervous systems determine there is no escape from this.

So we're going to go to the last resort, which is shut down. And it is a brilliant, brilliant tactic that, and this is gonna sound extreme, but. In, you know, let's say a time of, of death or like an inescapable attack that, you know, our, our system just determines, like, we're just not gonna be able to, to make it out of this.

Our system releases, uh, feelgood hormones and, and all these other things to actually make it, or we can even just completely dissociate and leave our bodies, um, because our system is saying, whoa, this is really gonna hurt. Like, this is really gonna suck and we're gonna try to make it suck a lot less for you.

And, and I don't mean this in like a flippant way, um, but at the same time it's just, uh, you know, this sounds so, you know, it, it is serious. But the thing is, is like when these primal parts of us get activated, they're looking to survive. They're just straight up looking to survive. And so, you know, after going, going and going for so long in New York City and with my startup or whatever, whew.

That. That dorsal break came in and just said, or that dorsal, um, state came in and was like, we can't do this anymore. And it just went into shutdown. And, and your dorsal system, it's part of your parasympathetic or your, your, um, dorsal state. It's part of your parasympathetic nervous system. We've heard of sympathetic and there's parasympathetic.

So sympathetic is that fight or flight, right. The dorsal part is, um, is a function of your parasympathetic nervous system. And it's, um, it's also, it's not myelinated. This is why like coming out of dorsal, coming out of depression, um, or coming out of, let's say like a free state, it takes a longer time to come out of it because we're dealing with the unmyelinated part of the vagus nerve, which, like we said, those signals, like I said, those signals don't travel nearly as fast.

Nearly as fast. It's almost a hundred times slower. And so coming out of one of these states just takes a lot longer. And that can be so unbelievably frustrating to the high achiever, to, to people like you and me who are successful and stuck because it's just like, oh my gosh. Like if I could only just do this, if I could only, you know, and the, and the what ifs and and whatnot.

And then the shame spirals come in. But your body is saying no. Like, please, like we've done this for long enough and we need to take a break. We need to take a break. And so coming outta dorsal, it takes a while. It takes a while. We can't just snap our fingers even if we know what to do, you know, we can't just go back like straight back into the gym.

And do the same workout that we've done in the past at like Peak Fitness when we haven't worked out in two years. We've got to ease our way back into it. And, and this was also my story, like when I was coming out of like the deepest, uh, freeze state that I, that I've ever been in about a year and a half ago, like I would go, I could not complete even a 30 minute workout, and I really had to pull back and just do like really gentle, really gentle workouts.

Sometimes just body weight workouts and of course little shame gremlin wanted to come in and be like, come on man, like you're better than this. Like, I can't believe like you're so weak and you know, you can't get this workout. And, and I just really had to learn to, to relate to and deal with that shame gremlin and be like, Ooh, no, hold on.

Like, this is what I need right now because anything more would make me just shut down again. So dorsal feel, it's a state of feeling very disconnected. It's, um, you know, it, like I remember in, in like New York, there were times like where I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. And I could, but I could feel that activation underneath.

But it was just like, no, no, no. That's, that's an example of, of dorsal. And so it feels like, it feels shut down, it feels disconnected. You might feel numb, you might actually just feel out of your body. Um, it's definitely a feeling of, of loneliness, isolation, um, anytime. Like if you've ever gone through periods where it's just, it, it feels like, uh, such an unbelievable chore just to respond to your friend's text or to respond to emails at work.

That's an example of your, your dorsal vagal complex coming in and, and just being rule, hold on, like we're shutting down. It's very much a feeling of I can't. It's like these simple tasks, you know, like texting your friend back feel impossible, and you feel this real lack of agency in your life. And, and even like your posture, like you might feel if you're watching this on video, you might just feel really slumped and um, you know, just like the weight of the world is on you and you just like really, you know, you can't get up.

Um, it's kind of very much just like, well, what's the point? Like, what's the point? Energy and, and the deepest level of it. It's, like I said earlier, it's full blown dissociation. It's a brilliant, brilliant survival strategy to keep us safe. And I've actually, um, actually, I will tell you a story from today about dissociation.

Um, and I've come a long way with this, y'all, but I was actually in a somatic session today, um, where I was feeling shame and I was feeling this impulse to actually go up and to leave my body because the shame felt just so awful. And it was a very familiar feeling because as an adult child of an alcoholic and a, and a trauma survivor, um, yeah, like, like shame was my baseline for decades, decades and decades.

And, um, and I was feeling it today and, and we were actually able to map like a whole pattern where I would feel the shame and I would. The impulse was to dissociate. And it was something that I learned very early in childhood. Um, and it wasn't a conscious learning. It was my autonomic nervous system doing it of whew, this shame feels so unbelievably awful that I'm going to leave my body and disconnect from it so I don't have to feel the shame.

And like I said, it's a brilliant survival strategy and I'm so, so glad that my body learned to do that. But then, you know, as I progressed in adulthood in my thirties and definitely now in my early forties, like it's like that got in the way of a lot of things. And what I've done over time is I have built capacity.

To be able to be with that shame and the fact that I was able just today to be able to notice that impulse to want to leave my body, but to still have enough grounding and enough agency and enough of myself online here to be able to actually notice that and be with it and choose. And I was literally able to choose to stay connected to my body.

Not that it felt great because I was still feeling that shame, but I have increased my capacity to be with that shame and to actually just touch on its edges and, and learn like, ooh, what does this shame need? How do I end up, uh, you know, how can I help this shame, um, you know, essentially re resolve itself and, and what does it need to, to kinda alchemize into, into love and connection and whatnot?

And, you know, I won't get into the details of the rest of the session, um, just because. We don't have time in this episode. Um, I will tell you in another session or another episode perhaps, but, uh, what ended up happening was just a whole series of things that I was able to recognize in my nervous system and be like, oh my gosh, like this is happening.

And I was able to kind of ground and orient, and we'll get into that in a later episode where I then started to feel more of my ventral vagal, uh, complex coming online. And I started to feel more connected. And I, I literally felt like this wave of hunger come over me because my digestion came back online and I felt more connected.

I felt, uh, playful and, and, you know, we'll get into ventral in a, in a bit after we get into freeze, but just noticing that was so unbelievably powerful for me. And, and I, and I actually sat there and I thanked my dorsal vagal complex for. Coming online so often in the past and to keep me safe from having to feel just the, the horrific weight of all of this shame.

And I, and I'm really proud to say like I've gotten to that point and it's, it's amazing. Um, it's really amazing. I was, I was actually really surprised. So, yeah. So that is dorsal. So now we're gonna step into freeze. Well, we're not gonna step into freeze. Um, I don't want you to be in a freeze state. Um, many of you probably are and you're gonna learn a lot more about it, uh, right now.

So freeze actually isn't its own state. It's a blended state of your sympathetic, that fight or flight, that upward moving mobilization. I can energy meeting up against your dorsal vagal shutdown energy. And it's actually, um, I think it's the most active of all of the states because you have a tremendous amount of energy.

On the, the mobilization side, on the sympathetic side, and you have, you also have a tremendous amount of energy that is meeting it, um, on the dorsal vagal shutdown side. So it's like if you took your hands and like, don't do this if you're driving or if you're not in a safe place, but if you're in a safe place where you can, where you're seated, where you can do this, um, like take both of your hands and just press them up against each other.

And if you're watching on video, you can see me doing this. Right now, it's, this takes a lot of energy and I'm pressing, I'm, I'm not even pressing as hard as I can right now, but there's just, there's so much energy being used up in a freeze state and, and the perfect example is just pressing your hands as hard as you can against each other.

It is so unbelievably activated and what a freeze state feels like is, it's like, well, I have to, but I can't. It's. Feeling this urgency around, okay, I've gotta get everything done and I've gotta get through all my to-do lists and everything, but I just can't seem to take the steps to do it. And then potentially getting in like a shame spiral around, oh my gosh, like I didn't get all my to-do lists.

Things say, even though your to-do list was probably completely unrealistic to begin with. If you're anything like me, all of your to-do lists in the past, or my to-do lists in the past were completely unrealistic. Like I said, those days where I was stuck on the couch in New York, I would have a to-do list.

It was like a mile long. It was, it was like a month's worth of stuff that I was thinking that I could somehow get done in a day. Um, so it was completely unrealistic to begin with, but there was just this urgency of like, oh my gosh, like, I've gotta get everything done and I have to get it all done now.

But I can't seem to even get started and take the steps to do it. It's, it's the same state as, you know, we talked about this in the first episode. Taking 45 minutes to write a 5 sentence e mail, I've gotta get this done, but oh my gosh, I have to, I have to complete, you know, I have to, um, continue to, um, to edit and to make sure it's perfect and, and whatnot.

It's a state of feeling wired and tired. That's the best way I can describe it. It's, it's like you're going, going, going, and then all of a sudden, like you get super exhausted and you're like, oh my gosh, okay, I gotta lay down. And then you lay down and then your mind starts racing as soon as you lay down and you feel really activated.

So, you know, like maybe you're tossing and turning, either trying to take a nap or trying to go to bed. And so then like, okay, well, like this naps not working, so I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna just like start doing things. And then five minutes later you're feeling completely exhausted again and the cycle just continues.

And it's like this sense of urgency with no action. And then, like I said, maybe the shame spiral after, you know, afterwards. And it's this feeling of like, you feel collapse, but also like agitated underneath. And so it's, it's this awareness. Um, over time you build this awareness of, of both sides of, of that energy, that sympathetic activation, as well as that, that dorsal vagal shutdown, um, activation bumping up against each other.

And that's, that's a freeze state. And you know, it's just a state of feeling stuck. I mean, the title of this podcast, the name of the podcast, is successful and Stuck. Um, and so, um, I work with a lot of people who are in a freeze state. And it's, it's really tricky to get out of, but it, it is possible.

Like, I want you to know it's absolutely possible and we will talk about this on future episodes, some of the tools and, and the ways that, um, you know, the structure that is required to get out of a freeze state. 'cause you can't just snap your fingers and get out of it. Like I said earlier, that dorsal complex, it's unmyelinated.

So it takes longer to get out of shutdown and so freeze. It's kind of in the name, it's like an ice cube. We have to let that ice cube melt first. We have to melt it. We have to let it melt slowly before we can reach that sympathetic, that that mobilization energy that wants to come up. And it's so interesting.

Uh, I mean, I see this all the time in, in sessions with clients and I've, I've lived this myself as well of, you know, we, we let, we let that energy just melt and maybe their body kind of, you know, starts to, um, like, almost like relax a little bit and like, maybe just like slump, but in like a, like a wheww okay, like a relief kind of way.

And then all of a sudden, like maybe their, like right arm starts to twitch a little bit. Or it might just be like a finger, it'll start to twitch a little bit. Like, oh, like, what's that like to, to just let that happen. And they're like, oh, it's, it's okay. And I mean, you know, the first time it happens, everybody's like, this is weird.

And it's like, yeah, I mean, somatic work is weird. Um, but it's also part of the reason I love somatic work. 'cause it's so creative and it, and it gets, you know, it does get like fun and weird and funky and whatnot. Um, but then maybe that, that, that one finger twitching becomes, the hand starts to move a little bit more slowly and maybe their wrist starts to move a little bit and then eventually it's their whole arm.

And, and that's the sympathetic energy waking back up and, and starting to, not waking back up, but starting to resolve itself. Because in a freeze state, there is always. A tremendous amount of sympathetic fight or flight energy underneath that shutdown. And it's a really common pattern when people are healing and growing, especially doing somatic work where they felt shut down and like, I can't for so long.

And then all of a sudden it's like a switch flips and then anger wakes up, or frustration wakes up and they're like, oh my gosh. Like I'm, I'm just feeling agitated. I'm feeling, um, angry all the time. You know, and, and like, what's happening? Well, it's all of, let's say, uh, I'll just use like a basic, like people pleaser example.

Well, it's all that resentment, potentially waking up of all of the times that you shrunk yourself and minimized yourself when you really wanted to either speak a need or set a boundary or advocate for yourself. That is all of those examples. Speaking a need, setting a boundary, advocating for yourself, that is sympathetic activation.

It's not necessarily dysregulation, but it's sympathetic activation. And when we don't do that, when we squash those things, well, like that gets stored somewhere. That gets stored in our bodies, it gets stored in our nervous systems. And so over time, when we come outta that freeze state, it starts to wake up and then whew.

Like, and so people need help. They need the tools to be able to direct and contain that sympathetic energy that's waking up after they've been in a freeze state. Um, and all of this is possible, but we have to do it in a certain order, in a certain pattern, and we have to do it safely. And that's what somatic experiencing is all about.

It's not just like, oh my gosh, like, let's do quote unquote somatic work and shake it out and scream and release and whatnot. That can actually be really harmful to people. And yeah, there are instances, you know, in sessions where I might tell somebody like, yeah, like, okay, let's, let's shake it out. But we might start really slowly at first to see if their system can handle it and, and then that grows over time.

But anyway, I'm, I'm a little bit down, uh, an, an adjacent rabbit hole here, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of a taste of like what this work actually looks like. So, um, yeah, but bottom line is getting out of a freeze state, because it is this blended state, requires a whole other set of kind of skills and, and processes and awareness in order to navigate that freeze state.

Because if. We let that, if we let that sympathetic activation wake up too quickly, then that dorsal will come back in and say, whew, hold on. We're gonna shut this down because that's too much sympathetic activation. We're not ready for that yet. So we gotta do it just bit by bit, bit by bit. And that's what we call it titration in somatic experiencing.

It's like instead of, okay, I've got a hamburger and I'm going to shove this whole hamburger in my mouth at once, 'cause it just looks so delicious and so amazing, whatever. And, but then if you shove the whole hamburger in your mouth, like, well, guess what? You're gonna choke because that's too much. Because your physical system literally can't handle that.

Um, so that's not a good idea. So we're gonna just take a bite of the hamburger and we're gonna see, huh? Like how does this taste, does that, was that actually too big of a bite? Like do we maybe need to, I. Like, go backwards a little bit and, and just take a, a smaller bite and, and how is my system responding to this?

Do I want to take another bite? Is this the direction I want to go in? Am I ready to take another bite? That's what we do. That's the process of titration is, is just little bits of activation to, to see and show your nervous system. This is showing your nervous system safety. We're not just saying yes, like this hamburger is good, this hamburger is safe 'cause we have no idea, like we're gonna just gonna take a little bite of it to actually taste and see and let our system get used to the hamburger.

Okay, so those were the three primary states of dysregulation. So we have sympathetic fight or flight, we have dorsal shutdown, and then we have the freeze state. That blended state of both the sympathetic and the dorsal. Over time, what we really want to work towards is the primary state of regulation, which is ventral vagal.

This is the the state that we predominantly want to be in. And here's the thing, just because you go into freeze or you go into sympathetic or whatnot, does not necessarily, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Like we don't need to shame ourselves because we went into a dysregulated state. It's just we don't want to stay in that dysregulated state for an extended period of time.

We're only meant to stay in those states of dysregulation for short periods of time, mainly in survival situations. And that's where we get stuck. So when we are in, and this is again, what past trauma and past stress does to us, is it gets people stuck in looping in one of those states of dysregulation and your system doesn't know how to come back down.

To that ventral vagal state. And what ventral vagal feels like is connection. It feels like curiosity. It feels like openness and warmth and joy and flow and love and play and all of the things. It's, it's open, it's steady, it's present, it's content. It's this feeling of being empowered and alive, and it's the state we want to be in most of the time, most of the time, because that's the state where, you know, like I said, like creativity comes back online.

That's the state where not only. Are we able to dream up the ideas and the goals? And that bigger, bolder version is of ourself. It actually is a state where we feel like it's possible, and we have the agency and the wherewithal to actually take meaningful steps toward that bigger boulder, more expansive life.

And, uh, we often refer to ventral vagal as your rest and digest state. Um, this is where, and I literally see this happen. I mean, I, I think I said it earlier, um, when I, I, and I see it happen in sessions all the time with clients, when more ventral vagal comes back online, very often their stomachs will start growling.

And they might even actually start burping sometimes. And they'll be like, you know, sometimes you feel a little shame around. They're like, oh my God. Like, what's happening? And. You know, a lot of my session, I'll do the, the non in-person sessions I do on Zoom. 'cause I work with people all over the globe and, and they're weirded out by it at first, like, oh my gosh, like my stomach is gurgling so much and I don't understand why.

And, and in my mind I'm like, excellence. This is, this is good, good. Like, we want, we want that to happen. Um, not necessarily that, but it's a good sign because what happens when, especially when we go into fight or flight, when we go into a state of dysregulation, our system kind of does like a, a head to toe check of, um, mostly like checking in with our organs.

And, you know, in order to go into a state of fight or flight or mobilization, our system checks in and it's like, okay, like stomach is like, okay, I can give up 30% of my energy liver. Okay, I can give up 15% of my energy, uh, spleen, you know, et cetera. I can give up x percent of my energy to put toward.

Fighting or fleeing because we want as much energy as possible to go toward that state for a very short period of time in order to escape or fight off a threat. And what happens in order to give up that energy, the nerve endings actually retract. And so you, some of your digestion actually goes offline and your stomach isn't actually functioning at full capacity.

So for somebody, and this is why autoimmune uh, disorders like, uh, and like IBS and, you know, fibromyalgia and all of these things, uh, the, these quote unquote, like, almost like inexplicable diseases are so common with trauma survivors. Because our systems go into a chronic state of dysregulation, and then your organs literally aren't firing on all cylinders.

They are, they don't have all of the energy they need because that system, our system is looping in the past because it got overwhelmed and that part separated and, you know, it's, it's looping in the past and it doesn't know how to come back and connect with the whole and come back to a state of ventral vagal.

And again, yeah, this, I mean this is why chronic disease is so unbelievably common, like, sadly super common in trauma survivors. But, uh, it's amazing to see somebody's digestion, like come back online and like I said, it literally happened to me today. Um, more of that rest and digest state came back online.

And I, and I sat there and I was like, oh, good, okay. And like, it was like a switch flipped, y'all. Like it was, I just, uh, suddenly I was so unbelievably hungry in this session. Um, and it's, and it's happened before, but it was like, okay, my, my system is learning fluid fluidity, learning fluidity. And that is ultimately the goal.

When we do nervous system work, we want to learn fluidity. We don't necessarily want to be in ventral vagal all the time, 100% of the time. Yeah. There are times in our lives where we're gonna be, you know, really stressed and we're gonna have to go, go, go all the time. But we want to be able to eventually come back down to that state of ventral vagal and we want to be able to feel certain bits of activation and go into a state of mobilization and I can, and get stuff done, and let me like take some step towards these bigger goals and whatnot, and then come back to a state of rest.

Come back to that state of, you know, letting it all go and recharging and like I said, ultimately feeling that sense of connection, curiosity, joy, you know, et cetera. And that doesn't mean you're not necessarily feeling all of those while you're getting stuff done, you know, towards the bigger Boulder goals.

Right. Um, that, that may very well be the case, but that's an example of your, in a sympathetic state, but it has a ventral tether, like, we'll call it a ventral tether, like a, it's like a grounding wire essentially, where it's like, okay, I can go and I can and, and I can feel this rise in energy and get stuff done, but I, I have this tether that I can come back down to the state of grounding and rest and recharge, et cetera.

So, yeah, that is, that is today's episode, y'all. Um, that ended up being longer than I expected. Uh, so, um, if you've made it this far, I'm so, so glad you listened. And, and the last thing I wanna cover is, uh, a question for you. This is a little bit of homework. So we have this term, we call it vagal tone. And, and when I said earlier, like being able to pinpoint the state of your nervous system at any given time, what I really meant was what's your vagal tone?

And so checking in at any given time, being like, whew, what's my vagal tone right now? Am I actually feeling sympathetic? Am I feeling dorsal? Am I feeling freeze? But then bigger, broader question is asking yourself, what's your primary vagal tone based on right now? Like as you, as it stands right here, like most of the time.

Are you feeling dysregulated? Are you feeling like you are in a sympathetic state all the time where it's like you have your foot on the gas and you just can't seem to figure out how to pull your foot off the gas? Are you in a freeze state most of the time where you feel like you have one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake at the same time and, and you, you can't really figure out, you know how to navigate that?

Or are you in dorsal, are you shut down? Do you feel like the, the foot's just on the brake all the time and it's just this like lethargic, you know, I can't, you know, energy that is the current shaping of your nervous system. And I want you to know, I cannot emphasize this enough, regardless of what state your nervous system is in now, there is a way back to that ventral vagal tone.

There is a path you can absolutely do this. I am living proof of it, and I see this with my clients and I, I have friends and, you know, other practitioners that I know. Um, there, there's just so much evidence of this. Um, you can get back to that state of ventral vagal and that state of connection, that state of creativity and, and love and joy and expansiveness and warmth, and empowerment and aliveness.

You can do it because you can reshape your nervous system. You can absolutely do that. And what this requires is just consistent neural exercises. Consistent somatic exercises, and this is the stuff I teach in my courses. And we're gonna dive into some of this. We're gonna have guest experts and whatnot on the show to dive into a lot of this stuff to help you learn how to reshape your nervous system.

And you're gonna do this through what we call neuroplasticity, and I'll get into that in a, in another episode. But you're able to actually like literally rewire your brain and form new neural pathways in your brain and, and in your nervous system to teach it. To teach that part that is looping, that doesn't know how to kind of come back to the whole and, and rejoin with, with the core.

Essentially. You're gonna be able to teach that part to come back and you're gonna be able to expand your capacity to be with the tough stuff. And when we expand our capacity to be with the tough stuff, we also expand our capacity to be with the good stuff, to be with the joy, to be with the warmth, to be with the, the flow and the openness.

It's, they are directly proportional and we have to go at a certain pace on both sides. 'cause we can't just flip a switch and then go into joy. 'cause that might be, that actually might be overwhelming to somebody's nervous system. And I see it all the time. I see it all the time because somebody goes too far into joy and then all of a sudden that that break comes in, it's like, whoa, whoa.

Hold on. This is too much. We gotta go, we gotta go back. We're gonna shut this down. So we gotta go slow y'all, we gotta go slow. And, and I know that probably sounds infuriating to the high achiever types that are listening to this show. Um, but there's a pacing. There's a pacing. And, and really truly, I can't emphasize this enough, we actually slow down to speed up.

And I know that's like kind of a BS colloquialism that we hear all the time, but it is absolutely true when we do nervous system work. And so, um, over time we're gonna start to create your toolbox, I call it your somatic toolbox. And, and the, the question that I want you to sit with between now and next week's episode is just sit there and make a list of what helps me feel regulated.

What are, what resources do I have? And by resources, I mean, is it a cup of tea? Is it a walk outside in nature? Is it playing with your dog? Is it putting your hand on your heart and just taking a deep breath? Is it connecting with a good friend? Just make a list there. There's literally, there's no wrong answer here.

Like if it makes you feel better and outside of like, you know, hardcore drugs or things that will actually, um, physiologically mess you up. Um, but if it makes you feel better, um, put it on the list. So what makes you feel regulated? So that's your homework for this week. So just make a list and that's gonna be the first step in creating your somatic toolbox and, and helping you come back to a state of regulation.

That state of ventral vagal. So thank you so much for listening. I am, I'm so excited to, to connect with you again next week. Um, and yeah, uh, I would love it if you could, um, leave a comment with the thing that stood out to you, uh, from this episode, the thing that stood out to you the most. So, wherever you're listening or watching this episode, please leave a comment.

Please leave a review because one, it just helps me, um, to, to learn like what's standing out the most and what's helping you the most. Um, and it, it's really informative for future episodes and it also helps this show grow. So, so please leave a comment even if it's just like, Hey, really enjoy this episode.

Um, but if you're willing, I would love to hear what stood out to you the most. Um, and yeah, also feel free to reach out to me on Instagram at Murph Live and, uh, yeah, great being with you this week, and I'll see you next week.  ​