And let me give you some examples on what early activation can look like.
So you can start to build some.
.
.
Understanding of where they come up and how you can begin to see where your window of time is your chest could tighten it's subtle at first a little bit of tension but it's there your jaw could clench i think i brought this up earlier and you might not even notice it until your teeth start to ache with some people that's how bad that they are squeezing their jaw Your breathing can be shallow.
You're taking short breaths up into your chest instead of deep belly breaths,
Your thoughts start racing and you're not present anymore and you're in your head and you're rehearsing arguments,
You're thinking about what I need to say next,
You're anticipating attacks,
Your hands can even get tense,
Maybe you're gripping the steering wheel and you notice that you're potentially,
If you're driving a bit faster than you should,
Maybe your fists clench without you realizing it,
You may feel heat rising in your body,
Especially in your chest and face.
So these aren't character flaws at all.
This is information.
This is your body telling you you're edging out of this window of tolerance.
This lets you know you're getting close to the edge and we need to do something before it escalates past that.
But here's what most of us do,
We ignore it or we can push through it because you've got the capacity to do so.
We tell ourselves I'm fine or I can handle the pressure and we wonder why we exploded when potentially something very little was said to us minutes later down the line.
The skill you're developing here is noticing the signals earlier on so you can intervene before you're fully dysregulated and it's actually now impactful to you.
