Character Development: Self Regulation And Affirmations
In this episode, we explore the strength of Self-Regulation, an expression of the virtue of Temperance. Self-regulation is the capacity to stay connected to ourselves as emotions, thoughts, and sensations shift. It allows us to pause, respond with intention, and return to balance without suppressing what we feel. Self-regulation is not about control; it is about presence. Through reflection and affirmation, may we strengthen our ability to meet each moment with steadiness, care, and choice—remaining connected to ourselves, to others, and to the shared work of being human. Peace and blessings, Hannah
Transcript
In a world that often focuses so much on what we lack,
It's easy to overlook the incredible internal strengths that each of us possess.
Grounded in ancient philosophy and modern science,
This series invites you to reconnect with the innate strengths that make you who you are,
Promoting balance and harmony in everyday life.
Whether you're looking to boost your confidence,
Overcome negative self-talk,
Deepen your relationships,
Or simply invite a greater sense of well-being,
My hope is that this series offers a practical and uplifting path to personal growth.
Hello beautiful people and welcome back to our character strengths affirmation series.
In each episode we explore one of the 24 character strengths identified by positive psychology,
Strengths that fall under the virtues of courage,
Humanity,
Wisdom,
Justice,
Temperance,
Or transcendence.
These strengths are universal and they help us show up as our highest and truest selves.
Today we are continuing with the virtue of temperance,
Which is the family of strengths that help us regulate our emotions,
Manage impulses,
And live in alignment with our deeper values.
The virtue of temperance includes the strengths of forgiveness,
Humility,
Prudence,
And self-regulation.
Today we are exploring our fourth and final strength in this category,
Self-regulation.
Oof,
I gotta tell you I'm pretty pumped about this one.
I'm pretty excited.
Of all of the strengths that I talk about in my day-to-day life,
Self-regulation might might be at the top of the list.
I think that I might talk about this one more than almost any other strength.
I talk about humility a lot,
I talk about love a lot,
But self-regulation is like one of the foundational ones for me and especially in the work that I do.
So I'm pumped.
We'll dive in.
The VIA Institute defines self-regulation as the ability to process and manage one's emotions,
Behaviors,
And desires.
So for that it's really related to our capacity for discipline.
Can I sacrifice what I want in this moment for what I want ultimately?
And can I act in alignment with those long-term goals rather than those short-term impulses?
Self-regulation can look really different depending upon our histories,
Our environments,
And the roles we were taught to play,
But I tend to think of self-regulation as in general our ability to stay in relationship with ourselves,
Especially when environments get chaotic or when things get hard.
It's the practice of noticing what's coming up inside of us and responding with care rather than pushing through or checking out.
It's how we find our way back home to ourselves using whatever supports are available in that moment.
Maybe that's breath,
Maybe that's movement,
Maybe it's grounding to your external environment,
Maybe it's more of a cognitive reflection.
So that we can come back into a sense of alignment within our body,
Within our emotions,
And within our surroundings.
Any one of the strengths that we explore in this series can be really performative,
But I think that this one in particular can be one that we see performed a lot.
I see it at least a lot,
Especially in wellness circles,
You know,
Where all of a sudden we're at meditation and everybody's got perfect posture and sits with their legs crossed in a particular way just because that's just how they sit,
You know,
But they never sit that way in any other environment.
Some of the greatest meditation teachers I know will show up to meditation and be like,
I'm laying down.
You know,
It's not a performance.
So one of the things I'm going to be talking about a lot in this episode is the fact that self-regulation is not about suppression of emotions,
It's not about being calm all the time,
And it's not about some kind of performative perfection or control or really bypass.
For those of you who are new here,
Bypass is my special interest.
It's my area of research is in right now in spiritual bypass,
But in general in this kind of concept of virtue bypass,
Which is part of why we're doing the whole series.
And now you're getting all the context,
But I see bypass a lot with self-regulation where it's like,
I'll just think my way into being calm.
And it's like,
Okay,
Well,
Your body's gonna tell a different story until you actually process that stuff.
And let me tell you,
I did that for years,
I did that for years,
But we learn.
Another one of the reasons that I think that this strength is really unique is because maybe more than any of the other strengths,
It really requires that we work with the body and our emotions and our mind,
Because self-regulation is about seeking coherence within and between these things.
Our thoughts,
Our emotions,
Our behaviors are not separate systems.
They are constantly talking to one another through the nervous system.
When the body feels safe,
The mind has access to openness and choice.
We talked about this way back in the curiosity episode when we discussed the broaden and build theory.
Basically,
When we perceive some kind of threat,
The body contracts,
The heart goes into protection mode,
And the mind narrows.
Our emotions often arise as messengers.
These are signals moving through the body before we have any words for them,
Which again is why we're working with the body here.
A lot of time before we can even try to work with the mind.
So many of us try to jump straight into trying to make sense of what's going on,
And it's just avoidance of the physical reality of your experience.
Self-regulation isn't about just thinking differently.
You can't just talk yourself out of a nervous system that's overwhelmed.
We're working with the body,
The breath,
Muscle tension,
Heart rate,
Sensation.
We're working with emotions,
The felt experience of what's happening.
So these are the stages that I go through every time I teach meditation or yoga.
We always start by checking in with the baseline.
What's going on in the body?
Then we check in with our emotions.
You know,
Is there a salient emotion that's showing up for you in this moment?
Where do you feel it in the body?
Is there an array?
Is there a quality of neutrality?
Maybe all you feel is resistance.
That's fine.
We're just going to notice that.
Where do you feel that in the body?
And then we bring it back to the breath.
And then we go one layer deeper,
And we check in with the thoughts.
What stories,
What interpretations,
And what meanings are we assigning to our experience in this moment?
What am I telling myself that all of this says about me?
And I will tell you,
I know all too well how those thoughts about the emotions and about the body can get us caught in like a mental loop.
Maybe you can engage in practices that we'll talk about in a little while that allow for you to get out of your head and into your body and into the moment.
Otherwise,
We can also use the mind as an ally.
Our nervous system listens to language.
It's incredible.
You know,
I do narrative approaches to trauma work.
I've both received that,
And also I conduct it.
And it's incredible the way that the body understands and will listen to and reintegrate past versus present tense language,
Or how we talk to ourselves.
I mean,
Obviously,
I believe in this.
It's the whole foundation of affirmations.
You know what I'm saying?
Like,
This is episode one stuff.
So with self-regulation,
We can use repetitive,
Steady phrases,
Mantras,
Loving-kindness statements,
Affirmations that can help orient us when we feel overwhelmed.
Ultimately,
And I'm gonna say this throughout this entire episode,
But self-regulation is not about forcing calm from the top down.
It is about building safety and balance from the inside out.
It is about establishing a baseline within ourselves that we can come back to.
And from that place,
We have a greater capacity for real choice.
Self-regulation is one of the greatest protective factors in mental health.
Not because it necessarily keeps us serene all the time,
But because it helps us stay connected through difficult experiences rather than being overwhelmed by them.
When self-regulation is strong,
We can notice internal cues before escalating,
Engage the body's calming systems,
Interrupt spirals,
Choose values-based responses,
And widen our window of tolerance.
In the work that I do with clients,
Whether it's children or teens or adults,
Self-regulation is the foundation.
Many of my clients are not struggling because their emotions are just quote-unquote too big.
It's because nobody ever modeled for them,
Nobody ever taught us how to actually regulate them.
Especially if we're working with trauma,
Our bodies are living in response to something that happened a long time ago.
And it's still reacting to our environment as though that thing is still,
As though we're still in danger.
Really,
I mean,
I could get into the neuroscience of trauma,
But the hippocampus,
Man,
Let's just make it so oversimplified.
And I'll just say,
Like,
The hippocampus is like,
What do you want me to do?
You want me to organize these memories into a I don't think I can do that.
I don't think I can do that.
And so the body's like,
So you mean to say time doesn't exist and it's still happening?
Okay,
I'll just react as if it's still happening.
So when you go,
So when you go into doing trauma work,
There's generally three stages.
The first stage is always going to be resourcing.
It's going to be,
Before we dive into this,
Your body is going to,
We're going to,
This is going to be risky.
You know,
We're going to go into it.
We're going to re-experience what happened to you probably and end the loop,
Like close the story so that it's kept in the past where it should be.
And then we can integrate it and find meaning out of it.
That's stage three.
But stage one is,
I need to know that you know how to take care of yourself after the fact.
Your body needs to know that even if it gets put in a stressful environment,
You know and it knows how to come back to a safe baseline.
It is about re-establishing a sense of trust with your own body and with your environment.
And that requires learning things like balanced breathing.
I oftentimes will use like bilateral stimulation,
So tapping.
I use a lot of music.
Music,
Whether any kind of sound healing is fabulous,
Especially if people are sensitive to being in tune with internal cues.
Listening to music or like different hurts can be fabulous for that.
Ecstatic dance is an awesome option.
Things like yoga,
Sure.
Tai chi is great just for moving stuff around.
Honestly,
With kids,
We just jump around.
You know,
Progressive muscle relaxation,
Tightening the muscles and then releasing them.
I think that this really points to the fact that when it comes to healing work in particular,
The point is not to think that like,
Oh I'll just get calm.
Like I've got stuff that's in my nervous system.
I'm agitated.
Something's going on.
I'm unregulated.
Something's triggered me and I am unregulated.
I'll just do some breath work and be calm.
It's like no,
Like there's going to come a point where you actually have to go through the grief of it too.
In my own healing process,
Self-regulation looks like allowing myself to be activated.
Tears,
Shaking,
Movement.
These are signs that the body is releasing what it could not express before because it wasn't safe.
Self-regulation is not preventing moments where we feel like we're out of control of our body.
It's about honoring the wisdom of the body and knowing that it's just doing what it needs to do to let go of something or to move it through it.
Self-regulation does not prevent us from experiencing these moments.
It creates a container where they don't have to scare us so much.
I also want to say that humans were not designed to regulate in isolation.
From an evolutionary perspective,
Safety was never an individual achievement.
It was always shared.
For most of human history,
Being near trusted others meant protection,
Survival,
And access to resources.
Our nervous systems still carry that story.
Connection is not a luxury.
It's a biological regulator.
And y'all,
I'm just gonna tell you right now,
The research on this is really adorable and sweet.
I'm recording this on Valentine's Day of 2026,
And it's just like so perfect to get to talk about these studies.
One of my favorite examples comes from Schnall and colleagues in 2008.
It's an older study for sure,
But it's iconic.
In this experiment,
People were asked to estimate how steep a hill was.
When the participants were standing next to a supportive friend,
They literally perceived the hill as less steep than when they were standing alone.
Even just imagining a supportive relationship changed how demanding the environment felt.
The takeaway of that one,
Our brains don't just feel safer with support.
They actually interpret the world as less threatening when connection is present.
Another really cool study.
Okay,
So for my prep for this episode,
I was looking this study up because I read about this study years ago.
And it's really sweet because it turns out my old boss is on the paper.
2006,
Again,
Older but classic study.
The lead authors were Cohen,
Schaefer,
And then my old boss,
Dr.
Richard Davidson from the Center for Healthy Minds.
They used fMRIs to look at the brain and how it responds to threat.
Participants were placed in a scanner and told that they might receive a mild electric shock.
When they were alone,
The brain's threat center just completely lit up.
When they were holding a partner's hand,
That threat response significantly decreased.
And remarkably,
Even holding a stranger's hand reduced activation compared to being alone.
Our nervous system calms down in the presence of other people.
This is what researchers refer to as social baseline theory,
Which is the idea that our brains expect support.
And when it's available,
Regulation becomes easier and actually less metabolically costly.
This is why self-regulation and relationships are inseparable.
In my clinical work,
I often see that strengthening one person's regulation,
Especially a parent,
Can shift an entire regulation system in the family.
Now,
Does that mean that there will be perfect harmony all the time?
Absolutely not.
Rupture is sometimes necessary,
And emotion is sometimes the doorway into truth,
And conflict can be a part of health.
This is a good time to segue into our section where we talk about the importance of balance.
We use,
I don't know who we is,
It's just me,
I,
It's just me.
I use Aristotle's golden mean,
Which is the idea,
Well,
And then the Values in Action Institute also uses Aristotle's golden mean,
Which is the idea that virtue exists in the balance between two vices,
That of underuse and overuse.
So in the next little bit,
We're going to be deep diving into what this can look like,
As we do in every single episode.
Underuse of self-regulation often shows up as being self-indulgent,
Emotionally dysregulated,
Impulsive,
Underdisciplined,
Or unfocused.
Underuse is not generally a lack of insight or effort.
So before you go judging yourself for being all over the place,
I totally get it.
It's often the result of cumulative stress,
Unprocessed experience,
Or insufficient co-regulation,
Conditions that narrow the window of tolerance and make steadiness much harder to access in the moment.
Underuse of self-regulation occurs when the capacity to pause,
Integrate,
And respond becomes temporarily,
Or more than temporarily,
Unavailable.
Emotions,
Impulses,
Or sensations move through the system faster than they can be organized or contained.
From a nervous system perspective,
This reflects a state where internal resources are being stretched super thin,
And regulation relies more on immediate relief than long-term alignment.
So as always,
I've identified a few,
I don't know if I've always done this,
I feel like I've just kind of started doing this.
I think in the beginning I was like,
I'm talking too much.
And now I'm like,
Yeah,
That's kind of the point.
You know,
Like,
Why am I doing this?
Who's this for?
I don't know.
I've just,
I'd be like it,
I just want to help.
So I'm just gonna give the information that I have.
I have organized some examples of what this can look like.
One is emotional flooding.
This is where the emotions are rising faster than the system can integrate.
So this can look like suddenly feeling overwhelmed by something very small.
Crying,
Panicking,
Or snapping,
And then wondering,
That was weird,
Where did that come from?
Shutting down mid-conversation because everything feels like too much.
Another example,
Now we're getting more into the impulsivity side of things,
Is acting from reactivity instead of our values.
So this can look like sending that text that you immediately regret.
Thank God now we can like edit text messages and unsend them,
Like,
Can you imagine?
Making big decisions late at night or in the moment of distress.
Ending conversations abruptly just to escape discomfort.
Reaching for relief now even when it will cost you later.
Another example is more about our,
This,
They use the language like self-indulgent,
But I think just having difficulty tolerating discomfort.
This is about avoiding feelings or truth because the body reads discomfort as danger.
This can look like distracting ourselves the moment discomfort arises,
Avoiding conversations that matter,
Putting things off,
Not out of laziness,
But because they feel so emotionally heavy or because they trigger so much shame from the past that we're reacting again to the past instead of what's happening in our present moment.
In terms of like the relationship to discipline,
I always like to also try my best to speak to the implications for boundaries.
Not being regulated,
Not practicing self-regulation often looks like saying yes when you mean no,
Or exploding after suppressing everything.
So this can look like over committing and then feeling resentful,
Holding it together until it all spills out at once,
Struggling to follow through on limits you set,
Feeling guilty for needing space.
Just another example,
Spiraling thoughts.
This is giving,
You know,
Catastrophizing,
Shame loops,
Rumination.
We've all been there.
This can look like replaying conversations over and over in your head,
Turning one mistake into a story about your worth,
Getting stuck in those mental loops.
When I teach,
I often will say like maybe your mind is just chewing on something like bubble gum,
You know,
Like it's just grinding in the back of your jaw all day long and it's like,
Oh my gosh,
I'm exhausted.
I'm exhausted.
And it's because I just won't let myself just let it go and surrender and tend to the body in this moment.
That gets us into the next illustration,
Which is body-based overwhelm.
So this is when you really notice it more physically.
This could be racing heart,
Tightness of chest,
Shakiness,
A pit in your stomach,
Feeling foggy or numb or disconnected,
Needing to lie down after emotional stress.
I,
For me,
Man,
This manifested in some bananas ways when I had all my stuff and had no means of processing them in any way.
I just started passing out.
I wish I could say I was kidding.
But those of you who knew me freshman year of college at the University of Wisconsin,
Oh my gosh,
I don't know what was going on in my nervous system back then.
I don't know what was happening.
But I would,
You know,
When you stand up too fast,
And you're like,
Whoa,
Lightheaded there.
It was like that.
But all the time,
All the time,
I would just collapse.
It was like for an introvert,
Nightmare.
Nightmare.
I would be like in a lecture hall and get up and just be on the floor.
And hundreds of people just looking at you,
Just worst case scenario.
And it was when I started processing and grieving,
All of a sudden,
Body stopped reacting in that way.
I developed like a tick or like a twitch.
I had like an,
It was,
I lived,
I can like feel it.
Oh my gosh,
It's so bananas to think about how this used to feel in my body.
But I had a shoulder tick.
It was like an anxious shoulder tick.
Same thing.
My nervous system is just processing things,
But my mind would stop it.
And then I couldn't move it all the way through.
So yeah,
Man.
If you listen to these,
And you just start getting on yourself,
That's not why I'm doing this.
The point of this whole series is not so that we can judge ourselves.
It's so that we can go Oh,
Man,
I am not alone.
Isn't it so sweet that I have an intention to be a good person?
And how can I learn that that requires grace,
And patience and understanding?
Under use is not a flaw.
It's a nervous system asking for safety,
And support and gentleness.
When I'm working with trauma,
I often will be talking to people and they will be like,
I have not felt calm since XYZ happened.
And you can see it all over them.
You know,
It's it's really it's it's heartbreaking and such an honor to get to be present with it.
Truly such an honor,
I could get like,
Immediately so emotional thinking about it,
You guys,
Damn it,
I care about them so much.
But you know,
And they'll be like,
I just want to get back to where I was.
And it's like,
Okay,
If we understand a healthy nervous system as a beautiful flame campfire that you and other people can come around and warm their hands and dance and celebrate,
And then trauma and life's hardships is just taken cold water and pouring it pouring it right on top of that fire.
If you're alive,
There's a burning ember in there.
And if you try to take logs that you were putting on that big fire to try and rebuild it,
You're actually going to take away some of the oxygen from those coals.
We need to learn what kindling is.
You know,
We need to start smaller.
We need to start with just just feeding the tiny little flames.
And that is the stuff that is just self regulation.
That is breath work that is movement that is coming home to the body and asking what it needs.
Okay,
Overuse of self regulation occurs when the capacity to monitor,
Contain and control internal experiences becomes overly dominant.
Emotions and impulses are managed through restriction rather than integration,
Often prioritizing composure,
Predictability,
Or control over responsiveness and authenticity.
In the VIA research,
Overuse of self regulation is often described as constricted,
Inhibited,
Tightly wound,
Or obsessive.
From a nervous system perspective,
It reflects a system that maintains safety through vigilance and restraint,
Limiting emotional range in order to prevent a disruption or loss of control.
I'm just thinking about some of the overachievers,
Some of my men out there,
Some of my military folks,
First responders,
Let's say it again.
From a nervous system perspective,
It reflects a system that maintains safety through vigilance and restraint,
Limiting emotional range in order to prevent disruption or loss of control.
This is generally an adaptive strategy that develops when expression is risky,
When responsibility is high,
And or when steadiness has been rewarded over spontaneity or openness or vulnerability.
So same thing,
I'm just going to go into some examples.
One is emotional suppression.
This is that inhibition,
Constriction.
Staying calm when anger or grief is actually appropriate.
This can look like smiling through the hurt,
Intellectualizing emotions instead of feeling them.
I did that for years.
I did that for so many years.
I still will do that.
I will still be in.
.
.
I'm like so emotional.
I'll cry all the time.
I'll cry right now if you want me to.
I'd be happy to.
I'd be delighted.
I'm cry baby number one.
And yet I will still at times be like so safe in the intellect.
Like that can't touch me.
Like that does not have access to my heart in no way.
No way.
No way.
And it's because I'm scared.
It's because I'm scared.
It's the I'm fine when you're in a room on fire.
And again,
Some careers require you to be.
.
.
Some careers,
Firefighting,
Require you to be like I'm fine in a burning room.
Like I cannot afford to go there right now.
The question becomes how do you then manage that emotion that was pre-triggered when you get off the clock so that you don't get completely burned out?
You know,
And that's true with metaphorical fires and real fires.
And what happens is that when we shut it down and we shut it down and we shut it down,
All of a sudden we're impacting that connection of our emotional signals.
Interoception is our ability to be in tune with how we are showing up emotionally.
Proprioception,
How am I showing up physically?
These are neural networks that if we silence,
We are debilitating those neural networks and we have to devote time and energy to rebuilding them.
Another manifestation is hyper control and hyper independence.
It's that tightly wound,
Needing to control to feel safe.
This can look like doing everything yourself even when you're exhausted,
Struggling to receive help,
Feeling tense when things are unpredictable.
I'm thinking about some people I know.
Believing rest or support has to be earned.
When's it going to be enough?
You know,
So many people have learned to base all of their worth and their capacity to do,
Do,
Do,
Do,
Do,
Accomplish,
Accomplish,
Accomplish,
Cannot rest.
And rest is where regulation happens.
There's also the like everything's a fine agreeable type.
You know,
The archetypes that fall into this are the like good soldier,
Good girl,
You know,
Being composed and capable at the expense of authenticity.
This can look like prioritizing composure over honesty.
Being praised for resilience while you're like,
I'm struggling.
Minimizing your needs to keep things running smoothly.
Or making yourself invisible in your own experience.
Another example and very similar is the sort of perfectionistic composure.
This is that obsessive looking endlessly grounded while feeling numb or depleted.
This one comes up so much in the bypass literature.
It's like the foundation of spiritualizing.
It's the I'm just going to sit so perfectly on my cushion and look so enlightened and be so obsessed with what I look like in terms of performing self-regulation that actually I have so much tension in my shoulders and low back I can't even tell you.
It's the self-monitoring,
The not allowing yourself to feel anger but also not excitement or desire.
And it's about,
You know,
It involves losing access to play and spontaneity.
Let's see here.
I'm trying to go through these.
This episode got long,
Y'all.
I had a lot to say.
Self-regulation as avoidance.
So this is more the other component.
There's,
In bypass literature,
They've identified two big parts of it,
Which is spiritualizing,
Which we just talked about,
And then psychological avoidance.
And so this is using tools to bypass truth.
So this is meditating instead of having a hard conversation,
Using breathwork to override anger rather than actually listening to what is this anger trying to tell me,
Staying above it when something actually might need to be addressed.
And again,
In the context of boundaries,
Maybe you're regulating yourself so much so that you don't actually have to set the boundary.
I'll change myself so that I can make this relationship work.
That's all good and well and even admirable,
But in healthy relationships,
There's a certain level of balance.
Like we don't want to just regulate away every emotion that signals that something might be wrong.
This can look like talking ourselves out of anger when it would actually be protective,
Staying composed in situations that actually require a firm no,
Or ignoring body cues until resentment or burnout appears.
If your regulation requires self-abandonment,
That's not regulation.
That is survival in pretty clothes.
So I'm just thinking about the like philosophy bros and sisters out there.
I'm trying not to be gendered,
But like philosophy bros is like a term.
Who are out there and they're like,
Yeah,
I don't know.
I'm like a stoic.
I'm like a stoic.
I just override my emotions.
I don't need them.
I don't need them.
I got reason.
I got my intellect.
And that's just not,
They're just not reading the books.
You got to read the texts.
That's not stoicism.
Stoicism as a philosophical tradition originating from ancient Greece and Rome is centered on discerning what is within our control and what's not and responding to life with reason,
Virtue,
And acceptance rather than impulsive reaction.
Major thinkers,
Marcus Aurelius,
Seneca,
For example,
All said stoicism does not advocate emotional suppression.
It emphasizes clear perception of reality,
Awareness of emotional responses,
And intentional action aligned with values.
Emotions are to be acknowledged,
But are not intended to dictate our behavior.
Meaning like we don't want to make major life choices from a place of that state,
But we do have to honor them and process them.
It's so misinterpreted as like emotional detachment,
Toughness,
Not needing anything.
The nothing affects me.
I feel nothing.
I have transcended emotion.
Meme.
That's just not stoicism.
Hashtag that's not stoicism.
That's emotional avoidance dressed up in a toga.
From a bypass perspective,
This is where stoicism gets confused with the overuse of self-regulation.
Overuse of self-regulation borrows the appearance of stoicism without its substance.
Instead of discernment,
There is control.
Instead of integration,
There is this false containment.
Emotional experience is managed through constriction rather than metabolized through awareness.
What looks like steadiness is often a nervous system maintaining safety by staying tightly wound,
Inhibited,
Or emotionally narrow.
The difference isn't whether emotion is present,
It's whether it's allowed.
True stoicism creates space for feeling and choice,
Whereas overused regulation narrows experience in the name of perceived safety.
One is rooted in wisdom and values,
The other in protection.
When self-regulation is balanced,
It doesn't disconnect us from our humanity.
It helps us stay in relationship to it.
Balanced regulation doesn't mean getting it right all the time.
It means having enough awareness and flexibility to move toward what's needed in the moment.
Balanced self-regulation allows emotion without flooding and steadiness without shutting down.
It looks like feeling anger,
Honoring it,
Finding healthy outlets.
Maybe it's boxing,
Maybe it's singing certain music,
Maybe it's going for me,
I go for runs,
Without exploding or suppressing it.
Letting emotion move through the body without being carried away by it.
Using structure when things feel chaotic and softness when things feel rigid.
Knowing when to stay with discomfort and when to offer yourself some relief.
And this is where skills come in,
Right?
Not as tools to control ourselves,
But as ways to support our nervous system and come back into balance.
What this looks like in everyday life,
You know,
It's usually not that dramatic.
It's actually pretty ordinary and repetitive.
It's made up of all those little small nervous system nudges woven into everyday moments.
Using the body to settle the nervous system could be singing in your car,
Gentle movement,
Stretching your shoulders,
Stepping outside for a minute,
Helping the body metabolize emotion again instead of holding it in,
Orienting through the breath.
One intentional breath,
Longer on the exhale than the inhale,
Then another,
Then another.
The research tends to support anywhere from three to ten.
Again,
We're not trying to erase feelings,
We're just making room for them.
Grounding when your mind starts to spiral.
This could be putting your hands on your chest or your belly,
Naming five,
Things you can see,
Hear,
Feel,
Touch,
The whole thing.
Pressing your feet to the floor.
You know,
There's that joke about touching grass.
It's so for real.
Like actually go touch brass and copper and silver.
No.
Go touch rocks and feel the breeze through your hair and the sun on your face.
Let the mind support regulation instead of overriding it with those repetitive phrases that we talked about earlier and that we'll move into in just a moment here.
Forgive me if I sound like a broken record,
But balanced regulation does not eliminate dysregulation.
It shortens the distance it takes to get back to ourselves.
It is not about never wobbling.
It's about trusting ourselves to fall safely and knowing how to get back up again.
Before we dive into the affirmations,
We'll pause for a quick blessing.
May we learn to listen to what's happening inside of us with kindness.
May we trust our bodies when they signal the need for movement or rest or care.
May we allow ourselves to wobble without shame and to return without rushing.
And may our growing steadiness help us stay connected to ourselves,
To one another,
And to the world.
I will read each statement twice,
Pausing in between to give you a chance to repeat them out loud to yourself.
And I do recommend saying them out loud.
The statements that are easy to embrace,
Savor them,
Appreciate them,
Stand like a mountain in their truth.
And then the statements that feel not so good,
That feel uncomfortable or foreign,
Go ahead and say them anyway.
This is where we are doing the work,
Rewiring those neural networks.
This is also where we gain insight into unhealed wounds,
Limiting beliefs,
And ingrained biases and judgments toward ourselves or toward a particular way of being.
It's great material for journaling or discussing with a counselor or trusted friend,
Maybe even someone doing the series with you.
Whether you're just waking up,
Walking your dog,
On your commute,
Or getting ready for bed,
I hope these affirmations serve your deepest,
Greatest,
Highest self.
And with that,
Let's get started.
I am regulated enough to meet this moment.
I can pause and feel what's here.
I can pause and feel what's here.
I can connect to my body and my breath.
I can connect to my body and my breath.
I allow emotion to move through me.
I allow emotion to move through me.
I respond with intention rather than urgency.
I respond with intention rather than urgency.
I trust my ability to return to balance.
I trust my ability to return to balance.
I listen to what my nervous system is asking for.
I can hold discomfort without rushing to fix it.
I can hold discomfort without rushing to fix it.
I can trust the floor beneath me to hold me.
I can trust the floor beneath me to hold me.
I choose responses that align with my values.
I choose responses that align with my values.
I can stay present with myself even when things feel intense.
I can stay I allow myself to soften.
I have options in how I respond.
I have options in how I respond.
My vulnerability is a strength,
Not a weakness.
My vulnerability is a strength,
Not a weakness.
I come back to myself again and again and again.
As always,
Thank you so much for being here and for joining me in the commitment to work on ourselves so that we can be better for ourselves,
Have more joy and meaning and purpose.
And so that we can be better for the people that we love and for the work that we do and for the strangers that we meet in coffee shops and in traffic.
And so that we can contribute to the betterment of humanity as a whole and the planet at large.
Go in peace everybody and I will see you next time.
Bye
