Been awake since 3am. Mainly because I managed to attain a 750 calorie deficit yesterday as part of my weight loss goal… and then of course, woke up with hunger. Eventually got up at 4.45am feeling v stressed... Have since been reading about polyvagal theory, neuroception and interoception/autism.
Strong sense I need to tend to the ‘housekeeping’ of my neuroception, to be better able to access my intuition.
….I’ve just been looking for other images… and oh man, this…
And this…
And this …
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Thank you. This is all so helpful. It helps me to:
- understand why I freeze – eg I’ve been ignoring emails (or at least, letting them build up bcs I can’t face them) since I returned to work after Christmas, 10 days ago.
- understand why my kidney beans are feeling maxxed out again and again… bcs I don’t read the messages of overwhelm and readjust… or at least, I’m so often in overwhelm that I have to override it or I’d be out of work again…
- understand why I loop around freeze/fawn..
- understand why there’s no way I could be anything other than self-employed, to handle the flows and dips of my polyvagal self…
Ok. So how best can I foster my neuroception of safety, especially around work?
I lay awake this morning praying for courage, clarity and strength.
But actually, I’m thinking today, I just need a sense of safety.
Ooh, watch this!:
I might buy this book:
Shall we dialogue?
I realise, re SoD, people need polyvagal safety state of connection to be able to dialogue. Catch 22. You need to talk to feel connected. But you need to feel connected to be able to talk.
So everything is heading in the right direction. Your ‘hemisphere house’ project is coming to fruition.
Ha! It is. Using that brain learning… I didn’t know what for. But it was to help people dialogue, heal, forgive, resolve, relate… And the SoD will do all that. Amen.
Let’s go in… I’d like to hear you again. If we can link up the ‘intuition’ work with the ‘psychological/polyvagal safety’ work, we’re going to be cooking with gas… <3
***AOTH and 15min med***
Attaining the psychological safety of polyvagal ‘connection’ and ‘co-regulation’ with others (vs fleeing, freezing or fawning) seems, for me at the moment, to be about ‘feeling organised and prepared’ about client bookings. We’ve looked at this before last year, when I focussed briefly on the idea that ‘it ain’t square to prepare’.
It’s neuro-perceptual housekeeping, indeed. Your body needs to feel weighed comfortably in place by those ‘safety anchors’ Deb Dana talks about. It is for you – and you are now warmly invited – to discern and drop your safety anchors. Put in the ‘standard operating procedures’ that allow you to feel organised and prepped.
I remember how at school I’d freeze about homework, which ironically we called ‘prep’ – and then how great, freed, liberated and confident I’d feel when I finally pushed through and got it all done.
It’s the anxiety of perfectionism that makes you delay and postpone. You know why.
From the trauma of being criticised and judged for my academic ‘performance’…
So you can bring real, deep self-compassion to the part of you that PDAs. And you can enjoy developing the ‘art of befriending’ your autonomic nervous system, by dotting safety ‘anchors’ around your day. (See Deb Dana) Your threat perception is about being ‘caught out’ or ‘criticised’ or ‘told off’. We understand. This is all for the healing.
Listening to your neuroception (unconscious sense of danger) is part of developing your interoception (awareness of body’s internal messages) which is all part of learning to listen to your intuition.
You want your intuition to be giving you inspiration and creative impulses. It will be happy to! But it will also give you danger signals… which are equally signs that you need to attend to your own human needs…
Allow yourself to tend to your Needs first, then your scope for creativity will flourish. Respond to neuroception affirmatively – not out of fear of shame/rejection/punishment – but consciously and compassionately, in order to meet your own human needs.
What needs can you meet today?
I have a need to meet my needs for:
- Focus
- Order
- Simplicity
- Competence
- Hope/reassurance
Excellent. Want to pick one to work with?
Competence. I need to feel competent. That will allow me to ‘celebrate’ instead of to mourn, fawn, yawn or wanna be gawn. 🙂
So, to use NVC language:
- Observe: You’ve got emails piling up and you don’t know where your multiple bookings are at. You lost your flow due to the Christmas break. But also, it was too busy before the break, and you’re daunted and discouraged at the prospect of jumping in at full speed again. Your new system of ‘creative / bookings / inbox’ has frozen you because it feels like too much. But if you’re just reactive, you get nothing done on developing the business. You resent reacting. You’re ready to create.
- Feelings: daunted, discouraged, stressed, dismayed, freeze/fawny, resentful of clients
- Need: Competence… not just in responding to clients, but in managing your business and workflow.
- Request of self/others: You would like… to get on top of your workflow again. To bullet proof your workflow, with new SOPs (standard operating procedures). You’d like to simplify and streamline your ops.
Yes!
Shall we dedicate some time to that this morning, in the spirit of experimentation? Shall we see if improving your ops workflow increases your sense of both competence and psychological safety?
Research question: Is there a way of making Workflow a ‘safety anchor’?
I think of G sorting out his emails each morning…. But it takes me so long…
Because of fawning/freezing..?
Yes. :/
The ‘other person’ is both ok and not ok there. The common factor is that you are ‘not ok’. Can we prioritise your sense of safety and connection, over all? Can we meet your need to feel, and be, and act, and embody ‘competent’?
We can certainly work with that.
I am undertaking neuroceptive housekeeping (to feel competent, and therefore safe and connected to others)
PS. When undertaking neuroceptive housekeeping, prepare to feel resistance – this is simply freezey dorsal vagal activity. It will shift to sympathetic state (mobilise) and then to ventral vagal parasympathetic (enjoy and connect). Getting used to the constant shifting of those states is part of the practice. You are held and loved. In moving through the states, you are doing the work of healing and befriending your ANS. Keep your eyes on your human need – to be/feel COMPETENT. That is your birth right, sweet soul.
Ty. xxx
Very gently, proving your competence to yourself, one small step at a time. Doing what you need to do to meet your human need to feel competent. Excellent, excellent work. <3