Swell Recovery

6: Recovery Is A Radical Act: 11 Ways To Attune To Yourself and F*ck The System

• Kate Sutton

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In this episode, we explore how the current political and social climate can impact eating disorder recovery by triggering nervous system dysregulation. Learn why stress can make us vulnerable to old patterns and discover practical tools for staying embodied during turbulent times. We discuss attachment healing as political resistance, how to recognize nervous system states, and ways to create safety in your body when the world feels overwhelming. This episode offers 11 strategies for maintaining recovery while navigating collective stress, honoring grief and anger as necessary emotions, and finding strength through embodied awareness. Perfect for anyone feeling the impact of current events on their relationship with food and body.

Key Points

  • [00:04:10] A review of how the nervous system works - go check out Episode 5, Parts 1 and 2 for a deeper dive 
  • [00:08:36] How stress impacts executive functioning, eating disorder and trauma history,  and how systems of oppression benefit
  • [00:15:00] Diet culture is a vehicle for misogyny and keeps us preoccupied from pursuing power, pleasure and autonomy and connection with the Self
  • [00:20:30] Ask yourself these deeper questions if you’re doubting your recovery 
  • [00:23:30] Embodied resistance and attachment work in recovery 
  • [00:32:48] 11 Things you can do to find safety in the nervous system
  • [00:34:40] How to get back to movement safely - Episode 4 of RDD
  • [00:39:30] Calming Songs for Anxiety on Spotify
  • [00:40:50] Reminders of ways to stay connected to yourself

Resources Mentioned:

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Hey everyone, welcome to Recovery Deep Dish. I'm your host, Kate Sutton, aka Counselor Kate. I'm a licensed therapist specializing in eating disorders and trauma. I also happen to be recovered from my own eating disorder. We're here to get deep about all things long-term eating disorder recovery. We're answering questions such as, how do you choose recovery day after day when you still hear whispers from your eating disorder? What happens when you stop obsessing about food and start addressing the parts of life you've neglected? And is recovery actually possible? Spoiler alert, yes, it is. Recovery isn't just about ditching your eating disorder. So don't be surprised if we get into stuff that comes up in therapy, such as sexuality, body changes, healing from trauma, and more. I'm glad you're here with me. Let's dig in. Hey everybody, welcome back to Recovery Deep Dish. I'm so glad you're here joining me for this sixth episode of the podcast. We are gonna be talking about some... pretty heavy stuff today however don't turn off the podcast there is hope I will be providing some support strategies for you here but our main topic of conversation is going to be how our current social and political climate can create dysregulation in our own nervous system and how that impacts eating disorder recovery. I've been hearing this from people a lot lately, that when things feel chaotic, when our social and political systems are dysregulated, we can feel dysregulated. And that is totally understandable. And it also makes a lot of sense that if historically you have reached for your eating disorder as a safety blanket, that you would want that safety blanket in a time when maybe you feel pretty unsafe or uncertain or worried about things that are going on around you. So today we've got a few different things we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about your reactions, why they make perfect sense, and some things that you might want to consider around how to address the eating disorder voice when it pipes up at you. The other piece is we're going to talk about attachment and embodiment and how both of those things, attachment with yourself and with others and embodiment and trust in your own system are radical acts during a time when the world wants to separate you from yourself and your intuition. And then the last thing that we're going to talk about, because you know me, I love a task, are 11 strategies for maintaining recovery during stressful times. This really, I hope, will be a reminder of things that maybe you already know or provide a sense of hopefulness and mobilization for some of that energy that you need for re-engaging with recovery and understanding why you're doing this hard work and the deeper meaning behind why doing this work is so important, not just for you and your own recovery, but also for all of us as a collective society. The more that we do our own recovery work, the more benefit we bring to the world around us and the more we're able to really connect and have a more positive experience as a community, as a culture, as a society. If you listened to episode five, you will be reminded here of how the nervous system works. And if you didn't listen, go take a listen, but I'm going to review some of these things about how the nervous system works and how it operates in response to stress. Basically, right now, as most of you are aware, there is a lot of stuff going on in our political environment, a lot of chaos, a lot of unrest, a lot of disconnection between people. I think we really live in these silos and we tend to get really isolated and bogged down when we're really faced with some serious socio-political issues. So it makes sense that our nervous system is going to respond in a certain way. It can either make us shut down with too much anxiety threat activation too much input that feels overwhelming or it can get us amped up into this more what we call a sympathetic state that fight flight kind of experience or you might have a little bit of a hybrid you might ping pong between those two states where you feel either really wired restless agitated anxious angry and then you find yourself crashing and into a place where you're feeling more numb, dissociated, spacey, hopeless, helpless, depressed. Some things that I'm hearing a lot are you might be feeling a lot of fear. You might be feeling disconnection, uncertainty, grief around how you thought the world was going to be, disappointment in how it's not, helplessness, anxiety, hopelessness, numbness, apathy, a lot of judgment, anger, disbelief. You might feel the whole feelings wheel at this point. And these are all normal feelings to have. Any symptoms that you have are are most likely a normal response to an abnormal situation. When I was in counseling school, we called a lot of the symptoms that folks were experiencing with anxiety, depression, et cetera, a normal response to an abnormal situation. And I really think that we're in that space at this particular time in our history. These emotions are also gonna physiologically affect our bodies and how we wanna approach nervous system regulation. And so you might notice feeling more tired, wired, both. You might feel more irritable, more prone to nitpicking yourself, your body, or others, more judgy, more apt to drawing quick conclusions or assumptions about yourself and others, definitely might experience some more black and white thinking, like all or nothing thinking, shut down, like you don't want to engage or talk about things, more emotional, numb, and then other physical symptoms that you might notice are things like rashes, pains Thank you. gut health issues constipation diarrhea headaches nightmares trouble sleeping an increased startle response you may even feel like more sluggish or out of body or like more tension in your body shortness of breath or kind of like you need to sigh a lot so just know when you're experiencing those things those are clues from your nervous system that you're experiencing a lot of mental and emotional overload that's creating a very normal response to an abnormal situation. What can happen over a prolonged period of time, like we've been dealing with, is when we're stressed, we regress. That's a good quote to think about in this kind of situation. When we're stressed, we regress, which basically means when we're out of our window of tolerance and we're feeling a lot of stress, we tend to revert to old patterns of thinking and behavior that we thought we had overcome. It doesn't mean that you're backsliding. It doesn't have to mean that you're back at square one and you've made no progress in your healing. It's just a barometer that things are out of whack. You're feeling that overload and that that regression is maybe a sign that you need to attend to yourself in a more proactive or more intense or structured way than you had been when things weren't quite as stressful. We also know that stress impacts executive functioning and decision-making abilities. So if you think about your brain, the lowest part of our brain is our reptilian kind of lizard brain. That part is really focused on survival. And when we are in high states of stress, that part of the brain hijacks all those other higher order parts of the brain and makes it much difficult for our prefrontal cortex, which is the part in charge of rational decision-making and all of that, it makes it really hard to access that part of the brain so that you can be logical and measured in your responses to things. What we're noticing now is that historically, it's not just now, but particularly at this juncture, we're noticing that a lot of the things that are coming at us politically are actually on purpose if we think about it systemically outside political and social influences of oppression benefit when people feel overwhelmed when we feel powerless helpless disconnected and alone we are much less likely to be able to and to choose to take action because our capacity for mobilized action taking is diminished so It's not by chance that systems of oppression like we're experiencing in our political system right now are confusing, chaotic, and dysregulated because it is actively benefiting people in power who are profiting, literally, off of your dysregulation. So I want to talk a little bit about how that connects to eating disorder behaviors and how when we're stressed, we regress, connects to this whole idea of eating disorder recovery. And then we'll get into how to manage that. In terms of eating disorders, when executive functioning is diminished, it makes it more easy to get back on the autopilot of old patterns that used to provide a sense of safety and control, such as the eating disorder. I kind of call it like a safety blanket. The eating disorder is a safety blanket during overwhelming times. And your current feelings that you have right now could possibly connect to past trauma or attachment wounds. So You might notice that certain behaviors of people in positions of power trigger memories, thoughts, or emotional flashbacks of times that you felt hopeless, helpless, out of control, worried, chaotic, misattuned, misunderstood, judged, alone, left out, abandoned, not accepted. Those are all feelings that one would expect to feel when there is a lack of safety in your present environment and I think about this say for instance like with current people in office that their behaviors may remind you of someone like a narcissistic friend or partner or parent and how that might bring up some of those old stressors or feelings even if you've done lots and lots of work around that and so it can feel really frustrating when that happens but i just want to reassure you that it also makes sense and there are ways that we can begin attuning to ourselves and healing that when we notice it come up we can use it as a barometer I also want to talk about other systems. So if we think about all of this in terms of systems, not just politically, I want you to think about any structure that serves to invisibilize, minimize, shrink, control, gaslight, or abandon the needs and physical existence of people. will signal unsafety because the reality is that is unsafe. So if you are feeling all of these things, your instincts are not wrong, okay? Oppressive systems and people who oppress others do this either consciously or subconsciously in order to control people and outcomes for their own benefit. And some structures that do this certainly are like political systems where we're dealing with issues of voter suppression, making people's existence and rights illegal, messing with people's financial security. Those are just three to name many, many others. We also have the patriarchy. which is patriarchy is a system or society of government in which men hold the power and women and marginalized groups are largely excluded from it. And patriarchy can be both external in what we see and experience represented outside of us, and it can also be internalized. And that can happen through societal socialization and the acceptance of patriarchal norms and expectations both by men and by women, and this can lead to a variety of behaviors and attitudes that end up perpetuating systems of patriarchy. Some ways that this might manifest is like women being told they're selfish for expressing discontent, or men viewing emotions as weakness, or experiencing life in the Binary genders, binary ways of being, those are all ways that we get oppressed as people. And another system of oppression is via diet culture. Diet culture and body oppression are intertwined within these larger systems of control. If we really get real about it and look at the deeper issues, this is where I'm saying this is a doozy of an episode. Diet culture is a vehicle for misogyny, and here's how that works. Diet culture creates systems that disproportionately scrutinize, control, and devalue bodies, typically associated with women and femininity, but also within society. know men non-binary however someone identifies right if it doesn't fit the box it devalues that and it establishes impossible beauty standards that keep folks preoccupied with shrinking themselves both physically and metaphorically and this preoccupation diverts people's energy resources, literally their time and money, and focus away from pursuing power, pleasure, and autonomy. So when we're busy counting calories or feeling shame about our bodies, we have a hell of a lot less capacity for challenging systemic inequities and also fulfilling our fullest potential. Diet culture also reinforces this really harmful idea that particularly for women, but people's value lies in their appearance rather than their thoughts, contributions, or just their basic right to exist. It really creates this double bind where people are simultaneously encouraged to consume For instance, products, foods, media, while at the same time being shamed for taking up space or having appetites. And that's a literal appetite or a metaphorical appetite. So By pathologizing certain body types and natural hunger, diet culture ends up creating this framework where bodies are perpetually problems. They're problems requiring control and intervention, which mirrors this larger patriarchal system that positions women as needing to be managed or contained, and people, I said women, but people, to be managed and contained rather than empowered or liberated. Because if people are empowered and liberated, other people can't profit off of them. In other words, when we are preoccupied with making ourselves smaller, we turn the abuse on ourselves. This also makes us less able to think because our bodies are starving, literally and figuratively, and can't get past the food noise. Diet culture, particularly when they get really wrapped up in eating disorders, can literally kill people. or make them so sick that they can't be an active, mobilized part of social change. And what's really messed up about it is that because we've turned all of this on ourselves, the people in positions of power who profit off of this gaslight folks into thinking that things are wrong with them if they do end up getting sick or having a problem. And that just ends up creating this whole added shame and guilt spiral that people internalize and employ. You know, when you really think about it, if you are an evil genius, it's a genius tool for keeping people oppressed. And then we use it on ourselves and tell ourselves it's because we're trying to get healthy when this is literally the opposite of a healthful thing for us. Getting swept up in diet culture is an example of how we get disembodied and disconnected from ourselves. And in a deeper way, it also serves to widen and deepen the attachment wounding that we have with ourselves. We start to mistrust our bodies, our internal cues, our intuition, our sense of self, our likes, our dislikes, our identity. All of that gets... confused and left behind in this search for the thin ideal. And then when that happens, we lose a sense of personal power. We lose our voice. It gets taken away from us because we become reliant on others, this external thing to speak for us and make decisions for us. And then it We also end up getting so shut down because we're either tired or wired that we can't make rational decisions and listen to our instincts. So if you're feeling this way, I just want to say, Wow, that makes so much sense, right? And also you might experience a lot of grief and anger about all of this as you're putting some of these pieces together. It's one, we might feel betrayed by our own selves, but I think it's more important to turn some of that righteous anger out and really look at how these systems of oppression have influenced us and how we want to reject them as we move along in life. So I want you to ask some deeper questions of yourself as you're thinking about some of this. And these are great questions for you to be asking yourself if you are doubting your eating disorder recovery. If you're looking at that safety blanket of the eating disorder and saying, wow, I wish I could just go cuddle up with that right now. I want you to ask yourself these questions. Who does it serve to starve women and marginalized groups? I'm talking about starving both literally with food and figuratively with opportunities, rights, financial security, health care, representation. I want you to think about in your own recovery as How does brain fog and food noise, because you're probably hungry, literally and figuratively, how does that distract you from the real issues at hand? And who benefits from you being weaker in mind, body, and spirit? If you feel yourself starting to get angry about this stuff, great. It's supposed to make you feel angry because it's maddening. How is your inability to take up space literally making it harder for us to have space in this sociopolitical environment? The people who want you smaller will always benefit from your oppression. This is just one of the many ways of trying to make you disappear. And I want to be very clear that these concepts are not body size dependent. Another thing is thinness does not equal health. And thinness does not always mean someone is malnourished. However, thinspiration is this picture presented to us by diet culture as something to aspire to no matter the health consequences. But you can disappear inside yourself at any size. And that's really what we're talking about. I love this quote by Naomi Wolf in her book, The Beauty Myth. Here it goes. A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history. A quietly mad population is a tractable one. This is a time we need to be physically and mentally strong in order to participate at a critical period in our history. Take a moment to check in with your body right now and just notice, am I feeling a little more shut down or I'm feeling more mobilized? Am I feeling anxious? Just notice, okay, this is a practice of embodiment because what we need to do is reclaim embodied resistance. How does all this relate to eating disorder recovery? Deep healing in your recovery involves rebuilding trust with the self and and honoring your needs and emotions. It's a reclaiming. And at a core level, this is attachment work. Attachment healing is the process of repairing our relationship with ourselves when it's been disrupted by trauma, stress, or societal pressures. It involves developing this secure internal connection where we learn to trust our body's signals, where we can validate our emotional experiences, and respond to our needs and responding with compassion. rather than with judgment because judgment serves to only further separate ourselves from ourselves. This process really can create an inner safety. It's what I work with with people all the time. It helps us regulate our nervous systems more effectively, especially when external circumstances feel threatening. So embodiment really is a process of reclaiming and it's a process of resisting structures that want to take away your power. And in eating disorder recovery, attachment healing really means rebuilding trust with yourself. You're honoring your body's wisdom rather than trying to control or silence it. And especially when you're stressed out and those old patterns, that eating disorder safety blanket feels really seductive. A lot of people with eating disorders have also experienced complex post-traumatic stress disorder, CPTSD, which is usually involve some form of relational wounding, whether that was with a parent, a caregiver, a friend, a partner, This can really lead to difficulties trusting others or yourself. And oftentimes people with CPTSD and PTSD have this negative self-view. So they're pretty prone to imploding and turning in on themselves all that anger and frustration and shame and guilt instead of it being directed outward where maybe it actually needs to go. So learning how to repair your relationship with yourself can really support deep healing. And it gives us the ability to give our younger selves what they didn't get growing up. Attachment healing with the self really is a form of political resistance because you're reclaiming your relationship with your body in a world that seeks to disconnect you from your embodied wisdom and community wisdom. When systems of power benefit from people feeling disconnected and adequate and preoccupied with body concerns, developing a secure attachment with yourself is radical. And it takes a lot of courage, but it's possible. If you can nurture self-trust instead of turning inward, imploding with self-criticism, you really can challenge that status quo that profits from your disconnection. And I would also say that this healing process is so amazing because it enables you to access a full spectrum of emotions, also needs, and your intuition. And when you do that, you're going to be building up resources that help you show up more authentically and powerfully in collective spaces. So actually taking the time to re-regulate yourself and reconnect with yourself is going to help you be a better advocate for social justice and for maybe the issues that are really important to you instead of if you're arriving really shut down, hopeless and helpless, tired or wired. So you might be asking yourself, okay, Kate, that's great and all, but how do I actually do something about this? How do I reclaim embodiment and resist these systems of oppression? So the first thing that I would say is you definitely want to become aware of your nervous system state. And in episode five, go back to it, we use this ladder metaphor. So at the bottom of the ladder, we're really shut down. The middle of the ladder, we might be in a more fight-flight state. And at the top of the ladder we're in a more present what we call ventral vagal state where things feel calm connected and you're able to access resources and safety so that's really important you want to know where you are because then you can attune to yourself again that's a form of embodiment and attachment healing and then when you do that you can better choose the strategies that are going to help address the symptoms that you're experiencing in order to regulate your nervous system better. A piece of this that usually comes up for folks is that it can be really hard to take breaks and self-regulate. One, because it can be hard to notice that we're needing a break and needing some self-regulation, but also folks might feel a lot of guilt and shame for attending to their needs when there's a lot of suffering in the world. So I do think it's super important to acknowledge your privilege of being able to take breaks, but also recognize the need for self-regulation in order to show up and arrive in these spaces where you want to be able to support others, but also be able to have enough juice to keep going. I want to acknowledge that I'm a white woman with them privilege sharing this information and people in marginalized groups in this country don't always have the privilege of getting breaks from the abuse of racism, misogyny, transphobia, etc. When and if it's possible, it's essential for folks to get the support they need to have connection and co-regulation to heal. And so I recognize I am not the wisest person on this topic because of the privilege I have. So I really encourage you to check out some additional resources about embodiment and regulation from folks who are navigating this with their lived and professional experience of being in a marginalized group at this time. Some books I would encourage you to read are Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings, My Grandmother's Hands by Russ Momenichem, Decolonizing the Body by Kelsey Blackwell, and and The Pain We Carry, Healing from Complex PTSD for People of Color by Natalie Gutierrez. And then some folks that I would encourage you to check out are Rachel Cargill, Sonia Renee Taylor, Saba Choudhury, Alok Vadmanen, among many, many others. And I will definitely put their names all in the show notes because I think they give amazing launching off points for being able to talk about these topics in a really nuanced way and also give some amazing action points for how to do this work when it can feel so exhausting. Alrighty, so some other ways that we can find embodiment is getting some co-regulation with others, some trusted others as community care. So we really need co-regulation in order to help our own nervous systems heal and finding people who share your feelings and can provide space for hope and connection really is essential for moving up your ladder to a nervous system that feels safe, connected, and well-resourced. And then I want to mention that making space for grief and anger is necessary. It is necessary for healing. It's necessary for attuning to the self. It's necessary for transformation. So practice giving yourself permission to feel these emotions fully in your body and get support for that if that's really hard for you. We live in a culture that is very grief phobic. And particularly if you are a woman in this culture, we get taught that anger is a bad emotion to express because it takes up too much space. And so by this Practicing releasing these emotions, using these emotions for mobilizing that energy, one, that's a great way to reclaim and resist a system that profits off of your self-doubt and your smallness. And it's also a way for you to create deeper healing and connection and continue to work on that embodiment piece. Remember that in eating disorder recovery, making space for difficult emotions is especially crucial because many eating disorder behaviors function to try to numb, control, or avoid these feelings that actually when we really fully experience them, they give us the wisdom that we need for deeper healing. And that, I'm assuming, is part of why you're here listening because you want that in your life. All right, now we're getting to this part of the podcast where I want to give you practical tools. Like I said, you know me, I love a task and it's sometimes nice to just have a list of things to reference. If you are thinking that this information has been really helpful so far, is giving you a lot of food for thought and you know someone who would benefit from this, please go ahead and share it. If you're like, I want them to also have these strategies for how to regulate their nervous system and find safety and embodiment during this crisis, crazy time that we're living in send it their way download it for your own use later. However you need to use this, please do that. So some effective ways to stay embodied and find safety in the nervous system. I've got 11 for you and I'm just gonna list them off, okay? First one, we got some rhythmic deep breathing that can really help the nervous system. Something like four, seven, eight breathing or box breathing will help activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which is a little bit more of the calming side of the nervous system. Number two, grounding techniques. You could use the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 sensory exercise to connect with your present environment through your five senses. So you're going to find five things that you can do. Pick a sense. See, hear, touch, taste, smell. Four of those, then three of those, then two of those, then one of those. What that's going to do is connect you with what's real in the moment because when we're on social media and we're scanning the news, we are so disconnected from what is real and present in the moment. We go on this future-focused rollercoaster ride, and that is incredibly dysregulating. Number three. Do a movement practice. In episode four, we talked about how to do movement safely, and especially if you're in recovery, how not to overdo it. If you're wondering about this or you need some more advice about this, go listen to episode four. Some examples of some movement practices might be gentle yoga and Dancing, walking, forest bathing, just sort of going out in the woods and wandering around, maybe looking for, you know, nature items out in the woods. Number four, body scanning. Regularly pause to notice sensations in your body without judgment. And you might start from feet to head or go from head to feet. There are a lot of body scanning meditations out there. So if you search for one, I'm sure you will find a good one to listen to if you need that to be guided. Number five, a little bit of compassionate self-touch. So that might be a hand on your heart, giving yourself a hug, squeezing your arms can give you some good regulatory touch. Number six, nature connection, spending time outdoors, touching grass, watching water. All of that can help regulate the nervous system and help us feel more safe. Your voice and sound is number seven So humming actually can vibrate your vagus nerve and help your nervous system find a little bit more calm. Making low sounds like an ohm in yoga will activate that nervous system the same way for some calm. Number eight, temperature regulation. So that might be a splash of cold water on the face, a cool cloth on your neck, ice cubes in your hand if you're feeling urgency. All of that is quickly going to shift your nervous system state. And you might want that if you're feeling a lot of that high intense activation or if you're feeling really numbed out, spacey, and dissociated. It will help you kind of get back into your middle ground. Number nine, rhythmic activities. Drumming, rocking your body, swinging, bouncing. These are things that are going to create predictable patterns and rhythms in your nervous system. We rely on rhythm to help us regulate. So you might find some, you know, drum beat music or something that sounds really nice and soothing or rock your body side to side. Or if you've got a rolly chair, kind of swivel in your rolly chair, that can be helpful. Number 10, naming emotions. Name it to tame it. I love that quote. Name it to Thank you so much for joining us. Look it up on the internet. Find a feelings wheel. Name your emotions. You might even want to journal them. What that does is it helps you attune to your immediate emotional state. And when we do that, we are attending to and attuning to ourselves. In other words, we are not abandoning ourselves in the same way that we might do if we reach for that safety blanket of the eating disorder. So name it to tame it. And then last, number 11 is boundary setting. I want you to practice limiting exposure to triggering media. You need to create space for yourself that supports regulation. Our brains literally have not evolved to take in as much exposure to content as we force them to. And that makes our systems more dysregulated and it makes information processing more difficult. So you're not actually getting the quality of information in your brain that you maybe would like to. If you need, some limits could be really helpful. I personally am not endorsed by these folks, but I really like the Freedom app and then the Brick device for limiting phone use. And that really is helpful for those times when you might feel the compulsion to reach for your phone. Again, maybe another little safety blanket for distraction, but that actually just perpetuates this cycle of dysregulation that you find yourself on. Whatever strategy that you use, remember that finding what works for your unique nervous system is a process of experimentation and self-discovery. So different techniques may work better depending on whether you're in that hyper aroused, anxious or activated state, or you're in a hypo aroused, shut down or numb state. I will put a little plug in here. If you are in a hyper aroused state, this could be, I guess, number 12 I have a calming playlist on Spotify that I'll also link here. It's calming songs for anxiety, and they're all songs that have been scientifically proven to help calm the nervous system down. So if you want to check that out and save it for yourself, if you're having a rough day, that might be a good tool as well. So here we are, the end of the episode. I really appreciate you joining me for today as we explored how to stay grounded in your body and your recovery during this crazy, challenging time that we're experiencing. Choosing to stay connected to yourself isn't just self-care. As we talked about, it is a form of resistance against systems that benefit off of your disconnection. Your body holds wisdom that can guide you through uncertainty and listening to it is important, utterly important for your healing and for your empowerment. And regardless of whatever you're feeling right now, your emotions are valid, right? They are valid for our current reality and making space for them is part of healing. It's part of that deep work and why we're here. So before we close, I want to remind you of a few simple ways to stay connected to yourself. You're going to notice where you are on your nervous system ladder. Maybe practice one small grounding strategy each day. Find others who you trust to co-regulate. Set boundaries with your media consumption. And always, absolutely honor your body's needs for nourishment and rest. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you found this helpful, please subscribe so you never miss future episodes about recovery, embodiment, and healing. And you can download this episode to revisit these nervous system practices whenever you need them. If you know someone who might benefit from these tools, please share this episode with them. And I'd be so grateful if you could leave a written review. It helps other people find this podcast when they need support. For inspiration and more resources on how to stay embodied and motivated in your recovery, follow me on Instagram at CounselorKate, where I share more tips for navigating these crazy times we're living in while staying true to yourself and your recovery wise. Until next time, remember your body deserves care and compassion, especially when the world feels chaotic. I'll see you at the next episode.

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