Feeling Safe, The Foundation For Healing

Hello everybody and welcome!

I am Alice and this is gonna be a video in which I talk a little bit about what I do and what I offer.

So I am Alice,

I am a neuristic therapist,

I am based in Italy,

I host events and retreats for people especially who are in survival and or people that want to understand how to heal and support their nervous system.

Something really important about the healing process is that the foundation in order to heal it's the state of our nervous system.

The state of our nervous system it's super super important and a lot of people do not have enough knowledge or they do not understand that in order to heal we need to build this foundation of safety.

A lot of people walk in this planet Earth with a nervous system in survival.

What does it mean?

It means that life is a struggle and it means that they are surviving,

They are not blossoming,

You're not expanding,

They're just surviving.

The symptoms of a nervous system in survival are many.

We can either feel in hyperarousal,

It means that we have a lot of energy that is vibrating inside of us because we do not feel safe and we tend to express this energy with panic,

Fear,

Rage,

Worry,

Concern,

Irritation,

Frustration.

We feel that we need to fight,

We need to battle,

We feel that life is a battle,

That life is a burden,

That we constantly have to push,

That we constantly have to fight,

Overdoing,

Chasing.

And then because our nervous system cannot really stay in this state for too long,

At some point we will feel a depletion in that energy and we enter a more hypoarousal.

In the hyperarousal we feel shame,

Shutdown,

Freeze,

Immobilization,

Hopelessness,

We feel trapped,

We feel overwhelmed by everything,

By our emotions,

We feel dissociated from our body,

We feel depressed,

We feel like that everything is too much and we don't have the energy to cope.

And we tend to use different coping mechanisms such as binge eating,

Drinking,

Smoking,

Dumb scroll on your phone,

Shopping,

Gossiping,

Buying.

Everybody uses different coping mechanisms.

Of course when the nervous system is in survival we can't digest well,

We can't sleep well,

We can't relax and we cannot actually absorb the healing energy of the now moment,

Which is something that is always available and around us.

In fact people who are in survival they really struggle to relax,

They feel guilty if they relax or they feel extremely triggered by boredom and calm and peace.

And if you think about an animal when is in nature out and about enjoying the sunshine or a cat lying on the sofa and you know snuggled on the pillow and really absorbing and taking in the healing energy of the now.

He's truly enjoying,

He's truly relaxing,

He's deeply feeling pleasure and he just you know yawn and stretch his paws and this is what animals do when you when you are anchored in safety you are actually able to receive the healing energy of the now instead when we are in survival this cannot happen.

And you know because our nervous system is constantly hypervigilant,

Scanning the environment and perceiving threat,

It's very hard for our nervous system to allow us to receive because we are too busy fighting it's very hard to digest,

To sleep,

To recover,

To rejuvenate,

To recuperate.

And so a nervous system in survival will make you feel like your body is not able to heal,

You can possibly manifest autoimmune diseases,

Depression,

Anxiety,

Eczema,

Psoriasis,

Leaky gut,

IBS,

Autoimmune diseases of various nature.

In my life I had all of this,

I experienced many autoimmune disease like hypothyroidism,

Leaky gut,

Psoriasis,

Eczema,

Depression,

I had all sorts of diseases and I couldn't sleep really well,

I couldn't digest really well,

I developed a lot of food intolerances and I was full of all those symptoms that I told you earlier like shifting,

I would be either overdoing or completely numbing myself and feeling stuck or I was also tending to phone or people please,

Keeping the predator around or the people around happy in order to feel loved and supported and receive attention but I was also being drained by this and so I help people to understand that all of those things you might have issue with autoimmune diseases,

Trouble sleeping,

Anxiety,

Depression,

Trouble digesting,

They are actually coming from the same root cause which is a nervous system that is in survival.

The perception of a nervous system in survival is that we are really disconnected from the environment,

We feel like the environment is against us,

We feel like life is really hard and the entire world,

We cannot trust it,

We cannot collaborate with the world,

We are always put in a situation of having to earn,

Having to fight,

Having to sweat hard and still perceiving that life is totally against us.

So the truth is that when we heal our nervous system and we come back to safety we actually will feel extremely connected to the world,

We will feel like that there is a very good and healthy reciprocity,

We will feel curious towards the world and we will have the sensation that the universe is actually conspiring for our success.

We feel really connected,

We feel open,

Curious,

Grounded,

Very calm and we feel that we keep attracting safe people,

Safe situations,

Safe circumstances.

In order to do so though there is a lot of work that needs to be done in order to understand why your nervous system is in survival and creating a program for your nervous system to come back to safety.

But in order to do so we need to understand how our nervous system works because it's like having a car,

You want to fix it,

You want to help it but you don't know what the engine are for.

So in order to support and help our nervous system first of all we need to understand how it works and that's why I created the course Exiting Survival Mode,

The foundation for any kind of healing which is a self-paced course and is an introductory course that you can take,

It's only audio and it lasts 14 days and that is the beginning of my resources so that is for the beginning if you want to start this journey I recommend you to take that course and then there are more that I'm creating and are about to come.

I want to touch points a little bit on the nervous system first okay so the nervous system work with the principle of familiarity this means that when we were little we got programmed in a certain way by our parents okay they didn't do it on purpose most of our parents gave us what they received so most of our parents have dysfunctional dynamics with their own parents and their own emotions and this is what they pass down to us so when a nervous system is raised in a dysfunctional family system the nervous system make this association it makes this association that says dysfunctional equals love dysfunctional equal my family equal group belonging and so when we had a dysfunctional relationship with our father and our mother our nervous system registered that that is actually love that equals family this equal belonging in my tribe and belonging to my tribe equals dysfunctions so when we grow up our nervous system craves familiarity and so it will reproduce those toxic dynamics with a friend groups or with opposite sex or with love interest because that is familiar and the nervous system prefers a known hell compared to an unknown paradise and so we will keep attracting and entertaining relationships that are dysfunctional because they remind us of our childhood and they they feel more safe for our nervous system this the nervous system affects our entire reality with this principle and so for example our family had dysfunctional relationships relationship with emotions what happened is that when we are little we start to feel and approach emotion for the first time we are not emotions okay emotions are energy emotions they are energy that come through us and wants to be expressed by us but we are not our emotions like we are not our thought they come and they go they are like waves but most people in this planet have always a very unhealthy relationship with their emotions and this entire society taught us to repress our emotions so imagine that you were a baby and you were righteously feeling something for the first time and is very big we have to learn how to handle those big emotions and you might felt you know rage or injustice or frustration or anger or sadness and you had a family system that instead of teaching you how to deal and express emotions in a healthy way they made you feel in danger because you have them so if you were angry somebody told you you cannot be angry oh I will slap you you cannot cry or I'm losing my patience if you cry I will punish you and so on or even family that would reach physical abuse if you were bothering them with with your own emotions what happened is that we learned that our emotions equal and safety and so we make this association we get programmed thinking that expressing your emotions is actually not safe and if you express your emotion you will not be loved and accepted by your group by your family and so you learn very early on to repress your emotions but what happens when you repress emotions well they don't just disappear emotions are energy they exist they are real it's like a volcano that is about to erupt and we put a stone on top the lava is not just going to disappear the lava will break the volcano in another point and it will come up in another side with another look and so this is what happened with our emotions when our emotions doesn't get expressed they will appear in other ways like autoimmune diseases anxiety and depression or they will simply sit in our chakras and they will stay there so we many of us have a lot of repressed emotions that accumulate and became this dense entity sitting in different points of our chakras and this is something else that I help people to release and of course if we have all these repressed emotions the nervous system will feel even heavier because what happened is that our nervous system learned that feeling emotion isn't safe so it will do everything possible for you not to feel them so it will distract you it will numb you it will move your attention and focus on something else it will do everything possible for you to avoid those emotions but the problem is that what you don't express it will persist so those emotions are actually waiting for your nervous system to feel safe enough to process them and they want to be felt and that's why people when they start the healing journey of the nervous system they might feel that they're getting worse in the beginning because when the finally the nervous system feels safe you might have 20 60 30 years of repressed emotion that come knocking at the door and be like okay now you're safe enough can you feel me and can you let me go so in the beginning it almost looked like we're getting worse but in reality we're getting better because finally the body feels safe enough to feel whatever was left unprocessed so the nervous system is a very beautiful and complex machine that was programmed in a certain way and so it will create some resistance because every time we are trying to move into a better pattern of behavior we are trying to move into a sensation that we are safe as we are and that we can process everything and that feeling good and bad emotions it's still safe it's not the end of the world it will resist this because is a pattern that is unfamiliar and the nervous system prefer an unknown hell compared to an unknown paradise so even if it's functional the nervous system will feel threatened by it so we need to be aware of the fact that the nervous system will create resistance we have to become aware of the fact that in the beginning of the journey we might feel worse in order to feel better and we need to take in consideration quite a few things if we want to really do this work the point is that our nervous system dictates the quality of our relationships and real spirituality real spirituality it's not some woo woo stuff real spirituality is actually relationships and I'm gonna explain you what I mean by this when we come out of the womb in this world and we enter this world we are forced immediately to have a relationship with a full-on ecosystem so when you come out of the womb you immediately need to have a good relationship with oxygen with food with people with the environment with the weather with the world with the government with society and not only with your inner world and your inner emotions and your inner thoughts and your inner sensations so if we have a nervous system that is anchored in fear and is constantly in hypervigilance is constantly vibrating in fear,

Lack,

Comparison,

Shame,

Frustration we will not have great relationships and so real spirituality is actually evolving the type of relationship that we have in this world the relationship with self,

With money,

With abundance,

With food,

With your self-esteem,

With creativity,

With people of the same sex,

Opposite sex,

With the weather,

With nature with the government,

With space,

With the stars,

Like everything is about relationships and this is what matters.

You will understand what state your nervous system is by looking at the quality of the relationship that you have.

The reality around us is just a mirror that shows us what relationships need an upgrade,

What relationships need an improvement and so this is the work I do and this is what I help people with but in order to enter this path that will change completely the relationship that you have with things and not only one thing but when you work with your nervous system we shift the relationships in many areas of our life we shift the relationship that you have with self and with your emotion we shift the relationship that you have with others,

With love,

With money,

With abundance,

With health and so is a deep work that will give you a makeover,

An upgrade in many areas of your life.

I always speak about the traumatized dog in my courses and those are all topics that you can go deep in my courses.

So imagine that you have two puppies and you have a puppy that is traumatized and had a really bad childhood,

He was beaten up,

He had a very bad birth and the other side we have a very healthy puppy.

He is one year old and he had a really great childhood,

He was happy,

Treated well and we take these two puppies and we put them in paradise let's say that we put them in my house.

They have an owner that gives them so much love,

So much food,

I prepare a garden for them,

I prepare the toys and a cozy sofa and a little throne in front of the fireplace and everything is just great and I put these two dogs that have completely different nervous systems in the same reality.

What happened?

What happened is that the dog in survival will not be able to receive its deepest desire.

If I go to him and try to feed him,

He might bite me back.

If I go and try to cuddle him,

He might run away.

If I put him outside in the garden and I will show him the toys and the grass,

He will most likely run under the table and engage in coping mechanism.

He might shake,

He might over lick his paws,

He might bite his skin and even though the deepest desire of this dog is to have love and abundance,

He is not able to receive it because his nervous system is in survival.

Instead the dog that is anchored in safety,

He will gladly receive my food,

My cuddle and he will go out there and explore.

He will be playing with toys,

He will take some risks,

He will go and explore in some adventurous path and he will feel supported by the environment.

He will bark,

He will roll on the floor,

He will jump,

He will feel,

He is okay with feeling.

And so this is the metaphor to make you understand people who are in survival.

So you can have two people with two opposite nervous systems.

One is anchored in safety and the other one is anchored in scarcity or fear or trauma and they will perceive a totally opposite reality.

They will perceive a completely different reality and the person who is in survival is actually not able to receive more.

Because why the handle your own emotion,

If you cannot handle life as it is,

If life is a burden and everything is too much for you,

How can the universe give you more?

It's impossible.

If you are too busy fighting,

Bracing,

Defending,

You won't be able to receive.

And shame is a big topic in the nervous system.

Meaning I cannot go to the dog and be like from tomorrow you will eat better,

From tomorrow you will trust more,

From tomorrow you will stop your coping mechanism,

You will stop drinking,

Stop smoking.

We will put even more pressure on the dog and the dog will feel like oh my god I'm not okay as I am.

And again we will add more shame.

And this is what happened to us.

It's just a metaphor to explain what happened to us.

We cannot guilt trip ourselves into change but we need to support our nervous system into change.

And change,

When it's supported,

It will become natural.

It will happen naturally without forcing,

Without guilt tripping,

Without discipline.

It will just happen automatically.

Because when a dog doesn't have or a human doesn't have a reason to feel this pressure,

To feel this fear,

He will not need coping mechanisms.

So the coping mechanisms will go away automatically when we remove all this heaviness from the body,

All this pressure,

And we introduce love,

Compassion,

Support,

And we try and create a program to support our nervous system out of it.

And this is what I do with my clients and this is what I do in my courses that very soon more courses will be uploaded.

But if you want to start from somewhere,

Start with my course about exiting survival mode.

So there is a lot of topic that I would cover today but I want to try and keep it short.

The nervous system will always,

Always look for what's familiar.

And so in order to heal the nervous system we need to remove and try to improve all that programmed it in the wrong way.

So first of all we need to remove repressed emotions.

Second of all we need to close any stress response if they're still open in the body.

What do I mean by that?

In many books even the body keep the score or anyway has been proven that people who went through severe traumas like veterans and the bombs or people car accidents or people that had abuses,

Physical abuse,

Sexual abuse and other type of abuse.

What happened is that the mind understand logically that the abuse happened in one point in time and now it's over.

But the body doesn't.

And what happened to these people that you will see that the stress response is still open is that cyclically,

Monthly,

Especially around the full moon,

They have complete flashback of emotional waves resurfacing and they will feel exactly like the the trauma is happening again in the now.

This is why because the body didn't understand that the trauma is ended.

And this is another thing that I explore in my course is the fact that human we forgot our animal side.

We forgot how to regulate and co-regulate ourselves.

So gazelles and monkeys they know how to self-regulate and how to co-regulate because we are social being.

In order to regulate our nervous system we also need others.

So let's say that a gazelle go in the forest and she meets a predator.

Her nervous system will start to choose how to respond.

Shall we flight?

Shall we fight?

Shall we please the predator and see if it keep us alive?

Shall we run away?

According to what the nervous system chooses a lot of hormones and chemicals will be released in the blood.

If you have to run away the blood or fight the blood will be full of adrenaline.

If you are preparing for death and immobilize you the body will be filled with endorphins.

And let's say that the predator goes away well the gazelle will start to shake her body a lot like for 10-15 minutes.

And then she will run to the park and feel the park as safety.

Why she is shaking?

She is shaking because she's telling the body it's okay stop pumping those hormones.

The danger is gone.

We are fine now.

We are safe now.

Just calm down.

And then she will run to the park because in the group her nervous system will mirror the nervous system of the park and she will calm down because she sees others.

She will go near other and she will be like okay it's all gone I'm safe now.

All of this because she's closing the stress response.

Okay we cannot stay in inactivation for too long.

But what happened with humans we forgot how to regulate our nervous system.

We forgot about co-regulation and we forgot about self-regulation.

And our dangers well are like doubled.

So usually you know in nature the gazelles or you know the monkeys will face tangible and real predator.

Instead in our society we deal with a lot of perceived threat that are not real.

They are not physical.

We deal with scared of not being enough or not having enough.

The bills,

Money,

Schedule,

Work.

I'm not enough.

I don't have enough degrees.

I don't have enough study.

I don't have enough money.

The diseases,

The terrorists,

The government,

The bombs.

So our nervous system it's constantly being activated by perceived threat that are not physical and are not real.

And so that's why half of the planet is actually walking around with a nervous system that is constantly activated.

And so this is a collective battle.

Many of us are in this situation.

We are not just a few.

Okay.

It's a deep work.

This is not an easy work.

This is not for somebody that wants to do this in a shallow way.

This is a work for somebody that wants to go deep.

Understanding their wounds,

Understanding their traumas,

Releasing their emotions and entering a journey to bring back their body to safety.

Knowing that there's gonna be resistance.

Knowing that we might feel worse before feeling better.

Knowing that our old identity might come and will try everything to pull us back because our nervous system loves familiarity and it will die to protect us.

And so it will do everything possible to bring us back to what is familiar,

What is comfortable.

If you are aware of this,

We can start the journey.

We can start the journey with a lot of awareness,

A lot of devotion and compassion for ourselves and thinking that we deserve it.

We deserve to do this job because when we do this job,

You know,

If we were familiar with dysfunctional love,

Now we will enter a path to become familiar with functional love and manifest and align functional love.

If we were familiar with a dysfunctional relationship with money,

A relationship that is about luck,

About hard work,

About sufferance,

We made all those associations with money.

Now we can create a new familiar relationship with money that is based in abundance,

In having a reciprocity relationship with money.

An easy and joyful and creative relationship with money.

Not struggling anymore with luck and not having enough and struggle and money is hard and removing all those,

All the associations that are not taking us anywhere.

And then making peace with the full spectrum of relationship.

You can make peace with the relationship with your emotion,

With your self-esteem,

With others,

With the government,

With nature.

This is what we came here to do.

You know,

I always made the metaphor of the lotus flower.

You know,

The lotus flower is born on the most stagnant and muddy waters,

Okay?

And you won't see the lotus flower going to the complaining desk on the universe and be like,

Sorry,

I cannot grow in this awful,

Stagnant,

Dirty,

Dark water.

Because the universe will look at the flower and be like,

You are designed for this.

You are actually designed for this.

That stuff is actually your food.

You are meant to be nourished by that.

And if you learn how to nourish yourself with that,

You will blossom in the most beautiful flower in this world.

And the same is for us humans.

I know it sounds crazy,

But it's actually like this.

We were designed for this.

So when people understand that,

You know,

It's enough.

We don't need to keep being a victim of our reality.

We don't need to keep being the victim of this world.

Like,

We are designed for this.

This is actually your food.

And if you understand how to use this food to nurture you and not to possess you and keep you down,

This darkness will elevate you.

So the mastery comes when we understand that everything that we have been through was actually meant to feed us.

We were actually here to use these things to blossom.

Instead,

Our nervous system is programmed in a way that those things keep us stuck.

So we need to go out of this loop.

Everything that happened to us will serve us,

Will elevate us,

We will rise above,

We will blossom,

We will expand if we use the things that happened to us instead of being blocked by them,

Instead of being killed by them.

So this is the work I do and I hope you enjoy this video.

Message me or I hope you enjoyed this video.

Make sure you check out my audio course to start and there is gonna be many other courses now also in video.

So if you enjoy video courses,

I will also start the video courses about the nervous system.

Namaste!