Catastrophic thinking itself is not healthy.
It really leads to an alarm in our nervous system.
Our nervous systems get very activated because they don't know that we're not in danger.
So we respond to catastrophic thoughts as though it's actually happening in our real life and our nervous system is going to become more hypervigilant,
We're going to have higher stress,
We might have high blood pressure.
Almost always we're not going to have a healthy breathing pattern.
We're going to hold our breath,
We'll breathe in our chest or our bodies will get very tight.
Learning to recognize catastrophic thinking and then have some tools to bring ourselves back into a more grounded,
Regulated nervous system state is very helpful for our general health as well as our happiness because I know what it's like to be completely at the mercy of these catastrophic thoughts and I also know what it's like to not be.
We all get caught up in things sometimes but then it can become quite a habit in the brain and in the mind.
It's wonderful to know that there are things that we can do to work with that and to regulate.
One of the ways that the nervous system works is that we need evidence in the body to know that we're safe.
One of the things that we do is we can look around the room,
Notice cues of safety.
We need to notice that with our body,
So our eyes are very helpful for that,
We could turn and look behind us,
We can hold our own hand,
We can feel our feet on the floor.
There are many,
Many ways now that we can work with this in our body and in our nervous system.
The breath is very important when we're safe and relaxed and we've all probably had an experience of that even if it's not our predominant experience.
We can notice that our breath gets smoother.
We can take a big inhale and then take a longer exhale.
It takes about six seconds on the out breath for the nervous system to really get the message that we're okay.
We know that if we're in some kind of a dangerous situation physically in our bodies that we're probably going to hold our breath.
If there's a predator that they won't notice that we're here.
We're going to do something that's not really healthy.
We're going to hunker down in our body,
We're going to get really tight.
So to open our body,
Let our breath move,
Let ourselves really soften and relax is going to be very helpful in terms of knowing in our body that we're safe.
Knowing in our head that we're safe is okay.
Where we really need to know it is our primitive brain and survival system need to know it.
That's what we do with these practices of grounding.
One of the things that I think is so helpful is to understand and to know what is it that's driving these patterns of stress and compulsive thinking.
It all boils down to the nervous system with our body,
What's happening in our body.
To know that we have a primitive brain,
That trauma,
The traumatic memories don't tell time so when we're getting kind of sucked into something it's often because we feel like we've gone back into time when we actually weren't safe.
So all of these ways of present moment awareness have a very practical application and that's why it's really good to know many,
Many tools.
To learn how to down-regulate our own nervous systems is really a key to having a settled mind and also to just be able to enjoy our days.
