Healing Trauma 15: Emotional Regulation And Self-Compassion

One of the most important things in healing trauma is developing a kind, compassionate, attuned relationship with ourselves. It begins with regulating our nervous system because when we are in a survival response we literally have no access to self-compassion and connection.

The nervous system is very simple. If we're holding our breath there's danger. If we're breathing smoothly with ease, we're safe. If we have catastrophic thoughts in our mind, that's what we believe. In this session we practice ways to regulate our nervous system, like cyclic sighing and relaxing our muscles.

"I come back into an attuned kind connection with myself. I feel that in my whole body and my heart. I'm on my own side." Accepting and loving ourselves doesn't have to wait until some mythical time in the future when we feel more acceptable. We can love ourselves right now just as we are.

Transcript

Welcome back to Healing Trauma,

The last in our series,

And one of the most important things we can work with and know,

Developing a kind,

Compassionate,

Attuned relationship with ourselves.

And from there,

We can move that out to other people as well.

It starts within.

One of the things we know now about the nervous system is that when we are in a survival response of fight,

Flight,

Or freeze,

That we have no access to compassion for ourselves or for other people.

We can be in one of those survival responses for years,

And it explains a lot about why we don't feel as safe around each other as we used to.

Nervous system regulation is one of the most important things we could do for our own mental health,

Our own happiness,

And for the state of the world.

Review some of the many practices and tools that you could use to come into or come back into a state of regulation.

Practice somatic mindfulness.

Be aware of the sensations,

The energy in your body,

As well as thoughts in your mind,

To give you an early warning when you are starting to go into dysregulation.

In this series,

We worked with a lot of the conditions that create the dysregulation.

Core deficiency beliefs,

Inaccurate,

Assessment of safety,

Not being able to stay with or be comfortable with the sensations and energy in our body,

Inner critic,

Disconnection.

We disconnect from our body,

And then we walk around mostly in our head,

And oftentimes in a survival response,

A fight,

Flight,

Freeze.

The benefit of learning the basics of trauma.

How does it work?

What's going on with the nervous system?

Recognizing that big T trauma,

Is only one element of trauma.

Many people have childhood developmental trauma,

Where we did not feel safe enough in our childhood to develop a healthy neural network,

Our brain,

Our nervous system.

Ideally,

They should have happened in childhood.

There's also the ordinary trauma of daily life,

The frustrations,

Being left out,

Not having enough money,

Housing or food security,

Loneliness and isolation,

And fear.

We're afraid.

Climate change,

Corporate greed,

Other people being in a fight response.

We need to find ways to come back,

Get regulated,

And nurture compassion,

Kindness,

Empathy,

Connection.

That's where the real healing happens.

Bring your attention into your body right now.

If you've got your shoulders,

Your shoulders,

Your shoulders,

Your shoulders,

Your shoulders,

Your shoulders up around your ears,

You're clenching your teeth,

You're holding your breath.

See if you could let that go.

Let's do several breaths of cyclic sighing as a reset.

Breathe in through your nose,

A deep double inhale.

Breathe in fully and then breathe in some more.

And then a long,

Slow exhale through your mouth like you're breathing out through a thin straw.

Deep double inhale.

Long,

Slow exhale through the mouth.

And as you're breathing out,

Relax your forehead and eyebrows,

Mouth and jaw,

Neck and shoulders,

Upper back,

Your belly.

A couple more times.

This is such a simple practice and it can really bring us back into regulation.

From here,

We can start working with building and nurturing capacity,

Being able to be more kind with ourselves.

If you were to say these words,

I love myself.

I'm kind to myself.

When I become aware of something that was hard or painful,

I don't any longer go into attacking myself for it or blaming or into shame.

I have compassion for myself.

Wow,

That was tough.

My adult self comes in and connects with that younger self.

I'm sorry you were so alone and so scared.

What happened was not your fault.

I'm here now.

You're not alone anymore.

Sometimes when we say those words like I love myself,

Or we look into a mirror into our own eyes,

And we can hardly stand to look at ourselves.

That's a real sign that there's a disconnect there.

There's some unhealed trauma.

And we can work with it as a practice.

Our brain doesn't know the difference between being alone and between something that we vividly imagine and something that's actually here.

Something that we see as a video or something that we see with our eyes in our immediate vicinity.

When we think about the impact that that has,

We see videos of people experiencing trauma,

Climate catastrophe,

Violence,

And our brain interprets the world as completely unsafe.

If that could happen to them,

It could happen to me.

We can also use that structure and the way the mind works to give our self experiences of safety.

We can act as if something is true.

And our brain will also begin to believe that.

When we have our adult self,

When we are regulated enough to come out of a fight,

Flight,

Or freeze response,

It does take a lot of practice.

It takes time.

And it really works.

We really can be much more emotionally regulated.

Notice sooner when we're getting out of regulation and come back in.

That is something we can do.

Then we can come into that connection with ourselves.

It's only when we're regulated,

When we're not in a fight,

Flight,

Or freeze response,

That we can have compassion for ourselves or for other people.

This is the most important work that we can do for healing,

For ourselves,

Our own happiness,

For our friends,

Family,

The people around us,

And for the world.

To come into nervous system regulation,

Be emotionally regulated,

We can see more clearly,

We have more accurate neuroception,

We have the experience of safety.

When we notice that we're holding ourselves back,

We can see more clearly,

We can see more clearly,

Or that we're breathing really shallow,

And then we start to breathe more deeply,

More smoothly,

Diaphragmatically,

Our body gets the message then that we're actually safe.

The nervous system is very simple.

If we're holding our breath,

There's danger.

If we're breathing smoothly,

With ease,

We're safe.

That's one of the reasons why doing these nervous system regulating practices are so powerful.

If we have catastrophic thoughts,

Our mind,

That's what we believe.

We can get absorbed in a trance of worst case scenario thinking.

And then as soon as we notice,

We bring ourselves back.

Sometimes we can just come back and go,

Oh,

Wow,

Look what was happening there.

Other times,

We might need to use one of the tools,

Tapping on our forehead,

Put the image of the video clip into a frame on the other side of the room.

Notice the image,

The frame,

The space on the outside,

Take your eyes around that empty space a couple of times in one direction,

A couple of times in the other direction.

And then when we look back into that frame,

We realize that in fact,

That's not happening right now.

Come back into the body.

And then we can do something to counteract that fear and activation that we just experienced because of that thought.

We come back into the possibility of seeing more accurately and of compassion.

Of kindness.

When I realized that my mind was so full of catastrophic thoughts that it just had me in its grip.

When anything potentially was harmful or dangerous,

I just went to town with it.

Well,

What if this happens?

Well,

Then that.

And then this other thing.

And my mind was so engaged in the possibility that something would go wrong.

And in the really specific visualizations of what could go wrong.

That my whole nervous system was in a state of alarm all the time.

My heart was kind of shut down.

I didn't have room for feelings because I was in an alarmed state where I needed a survival response.

And that was what was going on.

My mind was trying to figure out ways to keep safe.

Understanding our nervous system,

Our brain,

How it all works is really helpful.

Part of what makes it difficult.

We're moving through our day and something reminds us of something that happened in the past.

We might go into an inner critic attack,

Or we might be experiencing shame.

Our whole body is affected when we feel shame.

We tend to lower our eyes.

We have limited capacity to reason.

Shame is a somatic experience.

Our breath changes,

Our shoulders slump,

Our eyes come down.

We often have associated negative thoughts.

I should have been able to do.

I should not have.

I'm a loser.

What's the matter with me?

When we're in a situation like that,

There are many things we can do in the moment.

One is to come up out of the shame posture.

Lift your eyes up.

Look out into the world.

Bring your collarbones up.

Let your shoulders come down.

Take a few deep breaths.

Stand up and move around.

Shake it out of your body.

Do cyclic sighing for a couple of minutes to reset.

And once we're back into emotional regulation,

We have the capacity to come into kindness.

Shame is meant to immediately correct a behavior that could get us kicked out of our community,

Out of our family.

Toxic shame is when we feel like we are the problem.

We're not the problem.

We're the problem.

We're the problem.

We're the problem.

We are shameful.

We're bad somehow.

That's not true.

It is our experience and it is often the way that we are shamed.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Not that behavior is wrong.

And it's really hard for us to feel compassion when we feel like we've done something wrong and that we are wrong.

Noticing and having the skills and the resilience to keep coming back,

Keep looking at it more accurately.

Okay,

I do feel regret or I do feel shame about that behavior.

And I can make a correction in how I behave.

It's not who I am at my core.

Come back into knowing at my core,

I am good.

I'm a good person.

I've been traumatized.

I've been hurt.

And I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

I'm not a good person.

And I'm not bad.

I'm good.

Come back into knowing your own intrinsic basic goodness.

Coming into connection,

We can support ourselves.

We can give our nervous system the experience of safety,

Of connection,

Of attuned empathy.

Even if we never had that at all when we were growing up,

We can provide that for ourself now.

We can be on our own side.

And what most likely will happen is that we will notice at times that we're not,

That we're in some kind of an encounter or a relationship where we're diminishing ourselves,

Where the inner critic is attacking us,

Where we've lost sight of our own goodness.

We're falling for the core deficiency beliefs.

These are all part of what happens with trauma,

Part of the disconnect from ourselves,

Our sense of value,

And the belief that we're not alone.

We're not alone.

We're not alone.

We're not alone.

We're not alone in the present moment.

We can come back from that.

We can see that it's happening.

We can course correct,

Come back into regulation.

Let's do a compassion practice right now.

If you have a mirror available and you want to do that,

You could do it looking into a mirror.

You could also have your eyes closed.

You could have your hands on your heart.

I love myself.

For this short practice,

Ignore the inner critic or any kind of argument that your mind might come up with.

Let yourself settle into that.

I love myself.

I'm not perfect,

And I love myself.

Let yourself feel that in your whole body.

Let your body soften and relax.

Bring ease into your breath.

Feel the support of your own loving presence.

I do my best to be kind,

Compassionate,

To be present and aware with other people and with myself.

I'm doing my best to heal the trauma so that I can be more emotionally regulated.

I can be kinder,

Have more access to compassion.

I'm on my own side.

When I notice I'm in a shame response or I'm believing the inner critic,

I notice that earlier.

I come back into regulation.

I take a few breaths.

I'm not alone.

I'm not alone.

I'm not alone.

I'm not alone.

I'm not alone.

I'm not alone.

I'm not alone.

I come back into a tuned,

Kind connection with myself.

I feel that in my whole body.

I feel it in my energy.

I feel it in my heart.

I'm here for myself.

I'm on my own side.

I know my own basic goodness.

I love myself.

I accept myself as I am.

That doesn't have to wait until some mythical time in the future when I feel I'm perfect.

I accept and love myself right now.

I am on my own side.

I cultivate a kind,

Compassionate relationship with myself.

I am willing to do the work of healing,

Of building strength and resilience and connection.

I love and accept myself.

This is the end of the Healing Trauma Series.

I hope these are a support in your journey of healing and coming into that deep knowing that you are okay just as you are.

You are worthy of your own support and kindness and love and respect.

These practices are helpful to do again and again to look into our neuroception,

What I'm believing about my childhood,

That's not true.

To practice regulating our nervous system so that it's stronger on a daily basis and also that we know what to do when things get really tough.

This is possible and I am really happy to be part of your healing journey.

Reviews

Thank you so much for all of these tracks! Will definitely listen again!

This series was so helpful! Your words and voice are soothing, and that alone helps regulate my mervous system. The practices are also extremely useful. Thank you!

Big thanks for this series, which I have bookmarked and will come back to again and again. ❤️‍🩹❤️