Healing Trauma 3: Accurate Assessment Of Safety

We constantly scan our environment on the alert for danger, and our nervous system has a negativity bias. Better safe than sorry!

When your shoulders are up around your ears or you are holding your breath, you are signaling danger to your nervous system. Our conscious mind knows we’re safe but the unconscious needs nonverbal signals. A long exhale signals safety. Looking around the room, our eyes communicate to the brain that there is no danger here.

Somatic mindfulness helps us see what we are communicating to our nervous system, and we can use regulating practices to signal safety which then lowers our level of hypervigilance.

Transcript

Welcome back to Healing Trauma Part 3.

What are you signaling to your nervous system?

This is unconscious.

Our conscious mind might know perfectly well that we're safe in the environment that we're in.

Neuroception is a term coined by Dr.

Stephen Porges in the polyvagal theory.

It is a way that our nervous system assesses our relative state of safety and danger.

Our nervous system has a negativity bias,

Meaning that it's always on the lookout for danger.

It doesn't pay much attention to safety.

Avoiding danger is our priority.

That's what helps us to survive.

We have a history.

A lot of the memories and a lot of the evidence that we have about whether we're safe or not is not only subject to this negativity bias,

But it's also evidence that is collected throughout our lifetime.

What was scary and overwhelming to us as a 3-year-old or a 12-year-old is not the same as what it is when we're an adult.

However,

If our nervous system is signaling danger to us,

One of the ways that we can work with that is to come into this present moment and really look to see what's going on in my nervous system,

My body,

My thoughts,

And my mind.

How can I become more accurate in my neuroception?

Somatic mindfulness.

This ability to check in and be present in our body is one of the ways that we can see what's going on.

When we feel unsafe,

Our muscles jump into action.

We prepare for fight or flight.

We start holding our breath.

We might have a feeling of clenching our gut.

We have fear in our gut.

We either fight,

Flight,

Or flee.

That is how we protect ourselves.

We protect ourselves from predators.

The decision on which one of those to use,

Again,

Is not in our conscious mind.

This is our nervous system,

Based on all of the evidence from our past,

That is making that assessment.

We automatically go into one of those.

Doing these practices,

We can develop the capacity to see what's going on and to change it.

One of the cues,

Then,

That we're looking for is what's happening in my nervous system.

What's happening in my body?

Am I ready for action?

Or am I in kind of a deep freeze?

Do I feel numb and disconnected?

Have I started holding my breath?

Many people develop a lifelong habit of holding their breath,

Which is really an ongoing signal,

Then,

That we're not safe.

Holding our breath in a crisis might be helpful.

It is definitely harmful when that becomes our habit.

Another way that we can become aware of hypervigilance is watching the thoughts in our mind.

Catastrophic thoughts,

Worrying that the worst is going to happen.

One of the problems is that our brain does not know that what we vividly imagine or that we're seeing on video is not real.

If you think about the way our nervous system developed,

Almost the whole entire time,

Over millennia,

Our nervous system developed to protect us from immediate threats.

If we could see it with our eyes,

It was an immediate danger.

Now we're looking at videos of people in traumatic situations.

Most of us can probably remember and have it pop right into our brain,

An image of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers on 9-11.

This becomes part of the evidence.

When we think about COVID-19,

We might have put that behind us in a way,

But our nervous system is not.

We remember that in our body,

In our nervous system.

We remember individual danger,

And we remember collective experiences of danger.

So what do we do?

We need to be more accurate in our perception of safety and danger.

It's helpful to have our conscious mind engaged,

But that's not really where the action is.

The action is in our unconscious mind.

So if we think,

For instance,

Of thoughts,

And we think about them,

We think about the thoughts in the mind.

Most of the disturbing or compelling thoughts have to do with ruminating about the past or anxiety about the future.

There are a couple of tools that we can use that are very effective.

Our brain thinks that what we're seeing in our mind is real and present.

One of the ways to let it know that it's not is to open our eyes.

Do this work with your eyes open.

Lots of times,

We'll be either closed or open.

Closing our eyes,

Or we'll be looking up off into a corner,

Which is a way that our brain accesses the past.

A really simple way to work with this is to tap on your forehead.

Bring your attention away from the thought for a moment and into the sound and the sensation on your forehead.

If you're in a meeting at work and you can't do that,

You could also tap on your knee,

Something to bring your attention away from the thoughts in your mind and into the present moment.

We want to be able to witness our thoughts so that we can see what's coming and going in our thoughts' dream without believing that it's actually happening.

Another very effective way to work with that is to frame the thought.

Again,

With your eyes open,

Imagine that there's a picture frame on the wall on the other side of your room,

And the thought is inside of that frame.

You might be looking at an image of something.

An image of someone's face,

A room.

You might be looking at words as though they're written out on a piece of paper.

It might be a video clip.

Look at it as though it's in a frame.

Notice that it's across the room.

It's not happening in your head.

You're looking at something.

You're looking at an image,

At a video clip,

At words.

And then notice that on the outside of that image,

There's a frame.

And on the outside of the frame,

There's empty space.

Take your eyes around the empty space two or three times in one direction,

And two or three times in the other direction.

And when you've done that,

Look directly back into the frame,

Look at the image,

And notice how it feels to you now.

Oftentimes when we do that,

We get that perspective back.

This is an image that I'm looking at.

One of the ways that images or thoughts feel so real to us is sensation and energy in our body.

We're gonna work directly with that in an upcoming one.

In the meantime,

Though,

You might just notice,

After I did that framing or the tapping,

I noticed that I stopped holding my breath.

I noticed that my shoulders went down a little bit.

I'm not clenching my teeth.

The thoughts in our mind have a direct relationship with us.

The thoughts in our mind have a direct relationship with the way we tense up in our body and with the way our body prepares for action.

Let's work with the breathing practice now.

One of the things that happens when we are afraid is we hold our breath,

And that can become a chronic pattern.

In yoga and meditation,

Often what we're doing is longer exhalations in order to reset our nervous system,

In order to realize that it's safe to breathe.

Cyclic physiological sighing is a practice that's been proven through research now to be really effective in resetting our nervous system.

The way it works is we do a deep,

Double inhale,

So you breathe in fully through your nose,

And then breathe in some more so that your lungs are really full,

And then breathe out through your mouth as though you're breathing out through a thin straw.

The exhalation can take quite a long time when you're breathing out through that narrow space.

Let's do this now.

Deep,

Double inhale.

Long,

Slow exhale as though you're breathing out through a thin straw.

And as you're breathing out,

Let your shoulders soften,

Let your body release.

Work at your own pace.

Deep,

Double inhale.

Long,

Slow exhale.

Breathing in through the nose,

Out through that narrow space in the mouth like you're breathing out through a thin straw.

And let yourself have ease with this as well.

We don't have to squeeze the muscles of the stomach as we breathe out.

Just let your stomach muscles soften.

And when it's time,

Breathe in again.

Deep,

Double inhale.

Long,

Slow exhale through the mouth.

Soften your face,

Neck,

And shoulders all the way down to your toes as you breathe out.

And then let your breath come back to its usual pattern.

Allow yourself to have some ease in your breath and notice your muscles.

When we become alarmed and we go into hypervigilance,

Our muscles get tight oftentimes.

We contract our muscles,

But we're also ready to jump into action.

We're preparing for fight or flight,

Or we're hunkered down in a state of freeze so that we're not noticed.

We're protecting ourselves through shutdown.

So with our muscles,

One of the ways that we can work with softening our muscles,

Letting our muscles know that it's okay to release that readiness,

Is by what we've just been doing,

Witnessing the thoughts so that our system knows that we're not in danger.

Cyclic sighing or longer exhales,

That's a direct signal to the nervous system that it's okay,

It's safe to breathe.

For our muscles,

We could do some stretching.

We could bring our awareness in.

We could move our shoulders around,

Release tension out of our upper back.

We could move our shoulders around,

Release tension out of our upper back.

And neck.

We could move our head.

We could also stand up and do some shaking,

Really vigorous shaking for two minutes.

It shakes things up.

It releases things out of our body.

We could throw the energy into the ground,

Stand with your hands and fists above your head.

And as you breathe out,

Bring your arms down,

Open your hands,

And throw that energy down into the ground.

Release it out of your body.

Then you might do a jump,

A gentle flowing motion or bounce.

Our body knows.

If you have a jittery energy in your arms and legs,

Let your body soften.

These cues that we're looking at,

That's one way that we can work with sharpening our neuroception.

Am I safe?

How do I know?

What are the cues that are happening in my body?

My muscles,

My breath,

The thoughts in my mind.

Then we can move into witnessing the thoughts in my mind.

Witnessing the thoughts,

Doing an interrupting practice like cyclic physiological sign,

And shaking and stretching our muscles so that we can come back to a state of regulation.

We know that right now in this moment,

We are safe.

Reviews

I am seriously grateful that you are here with us… with me… sharing (what I’m sure is) hard-earned wisdom in such a beautiful, tender hearted and skillful way. Thank you Lynn. Your work makes a difference. Namaste 🙏🏼