Soothing Our Child Nervous System

Our childhood experiences affect the development of the brain and nervous system, and have a lasting effect throughout our adult lives. Let your healthy adult self connect with and comfort your younger self. Learn simple, powerful practices to build long term strength and resilience, and to emotionally self-regulate when you are stressed. The last six minutes are some answers to participant questions. This is part four of 4 Insight Timer live talks on the nervous system in July 2021.

Transcript

So let's take a couple minutes as we start to do a few nervous system regulating practices.

It's an exciting time to be learning about this and working with this.

And then there's,

You know,

Dr.

Steven Portis is a researcher who does a lot of work and developed the polyvagal system and really looked into fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

What's happening there.

Now we take this out of the lab and out of the yoga meditation traditions and into how do we work with this in our daily life.

One of the first things that we can do is to look around the room that we're in.

And we know that we're safe.

Our bodies are safe right now because we wouldn't be here doing this otherwise.

So in our conscious mind,

It makes sense.

What happens in our nervous system is we have so many experiences from when we were a child where we didn't feel safe and we weren't safe.

We were really all on our own and had a feeling that nobody really would notice if something bad happened to us.

And we didn't really have anyone to go to if something bad did happen to us.

So that experience in the nervous system,

Which might seem kind of innocuous,

And they didn't really give that much emphasis before,

It was kind of like,

Well,

Okay,

If you were hit or if you were sexually abused or something like that was going on,

Then that was seen as abuse.

Adverse childhood experiences also include neglect,

Which really means nobody was paying attention.

You really felt like you were on your own.

These habits of I'm not safe,

I'm on my own,

Those experiences and that assessment was correct at the time.

And it's not correct now.

So we can update our nervous system,

But we can't really do that so much through our conscious mind because our nervous system doesn't really work with thoughts.

It generates thoughts,

But it's not convinced by thoughts.

So when you look around your room,

You're looking at the cues of danger or safety,

And you're letting your eyes take that in directly.

Is there anything in the room that could hurt your body,

Physically hurt you?

And our eyes can take that information in.

And then another thing that we sometimes do is we look behind us.

And we look and see,

Is there anything behind us?

And we know there's not anything behind us that could hurt us,

But we look and see so that our eyes could also tell us that.

And then when we know that we're safe,

One of the things that happens is that our body relaxes and our breath relaxes.

One of the ways that we protect ourselves from danger if we're in a predator situation is that we stop breathing,

We hold our breath,

Our breath gets really shallow.

We don't want to be noticed.

This very functional protective mechanism from thousands of years ago isn't really functional now.

What happens is our nervous system believes,

Unconsciously,

Our unconscious body believes that we're not safe.

And so we hold our breath,

We get patterns of that.

But a third of children that go to school,

Grade one,

Are already breathing in their chest.

So physiologically,

In our body,

We're meant to breathe using our diaphragm,

Which is this big muscle attached to the lower ribs.

And what that feels like in our body is there's very little motion in the chest.

And as we breathe in,

Our belly expands,

Our stomach rises,

And then as we breathe out,

Our belly softens and it comes back towards the spine.

Just notice for a moment,

Put your hand on your heart and another hand on your belly.

And just this is quite a regulating practice.

Just notice your hand on your heart and notice your belly.

And on a practical level,

We're just seeing that there's not much movement in the chest.

And movement happens in the belly.

And so if it's mostly happening up in your chest,

Or if you're reverse breathing,

Which sometimes happens too,

It's another stressful breathing.

So if you're doing either of those,

The remedy is mindfulness to bring your attention into it.

And then as you're breathing out,

Let your belly soften and come back towards your spine.

And we can also feel the support of our own hand.

So just like we can let our eyes take in the information that we're safe,

We can feel the warmth of our own hand.

And notice the rhythm of your breath.

If you're holding your breath,

It's signaling,

It's a nonverbal signal to your nervous system that you're not safe.

And this happens from childhood.

So we develop these habits and patterns generally in childhood.

And they happen for a good reason.

Oftentimes children are not safe.

We're overwhelmed.

We might be physically unsafe.

And often we're emotionally unsafe.

We've become parentified in the sense that we're the ones responsible for keeping our parents happy or keeping everybody calm.

It's a lot of pressure to put on a young person,

And it doesn't belong there.

And a child's brain is not developed to the way that a child could actually do that.

It's not possible.

So children need stable,

Well-regulated adults.

And we all know that that doesn't happen for many,

Many children.

As we're healing and as we're tuning into this as an adult,

We could just acknowledge,

Wow,

I can tell from my breathing habits that I must have had a lot of stress and tension and fear in my body when I was younger.

And now as an adult,

I can work with that.

And what happens is as we breathe and as we let our body relax and our breath become smoother and larger,

More continuous,

That signals our nervous system that we're safe.

So it's the actual breath,

The pattern,

The feeling in our body.

If we're breathing like that,

We must be safe.

Otherwise we'd be holding our breath if we were in danger.

So that's kind of an explanation for it,

But it's a nonverbal signal.

We can do a deliberate practice of longer,

More continuous,

Softer breathing.

And that's giving a direct message to our nervous system that it's okay to settle.

Another way that we can comfort ourselves and soothe ourselves is holding our own hand.

If things are getting kind of intense and you feel like you're not really able to stay focused and that can happen,

The way traumatic memory works is that it doesn't have a timestamp.

So if something happened to us when we were five years old and we were scared and maybe physically hurt as well,

But we were scared is enough,

Then that gets stored in our body because we didn't have a way to really process it at the time.

Unless it was an outside threat and then you ran home and they comforted you or you fell on the sidewalk and skinned your knee and you ran home and they comforted you,

Then you're starting to learn,

Your nervous system is starting to learn,

I can go to my parents or adults.

They will notice that there's something wrong.

They will help me.

They'll comfort me.

They'll soothe me.

And for a child,

We don't have the brain development at that age to comfort ourselves,

To regulate our own system.

We need to co-regulate with an adult.

So if we didn't have that,

Maybe we had it for some things.

I certainly had it.

My parents fed me and kept me in a safe home.

I didn't have any physical violence in my home.

I didn't grow up with that impact on my nervous system,

But I also didn't feel like I was really seen,

Like I really mattered,

Especially as I got into puberty and into my teen years.

It was very clear that I was on my own.

So we look at those experiences now and there's a whole mess kind of in there.

We might have a lot of shame.

We might be shaming ourselves for the things we did to calm ourselves down or to connect with other people.

We probably were shamed by adults for not being able to keep it together or for lashing out.

Sometimes the ones of us who goes into freeze,

We just kind of stay at home and read.

Or now it would be maybe video games or something like that.

Those are the easier children to be around,

Especially if you have traumatized parents.

So we look at this experience we've had and you know the interesting thing about the research is that it only takes about 30% of the time to connect with a child.

Parent doesn't have to be correct or on duty 100% of the time.

A third of the time is enough.

And sometimes when we think about coming home from school,

Did anybody stop what they were doing and look you in the eye and welcome you home?

And if we didn't have that experience,

Then what was the impact of that experience?

When we're not attended to,

We feel like there's something wrong with us because aren't we supposed to be?

Aren't our parents supposed to be there for us?

But if you're a parent and you're thinking,

Oh my gosh,

You know,

How many times have I been wrapped up in my own thoughts or I haven't really attuned to my kid?

You could let yourself off the hook a little bit too.

We don't have to be perfect.

We only need good enough parenting and to come back into our own body.

With children,

We talk about making a repair and we talk about that within couples as well.

The Gottman Institute talks a lot about that.

So how do we make a repair when there's a breach in a connection?

So we might tune into that person.

We could look them in the eye.

We might give them a hug.

These are all things that we could do with ourselves.

In order to heal the disconnection that happened because we were overwhelmed and afraid and anxious as a child,

We need to bring our adult self back into the picture so that child knows that they're not alone.

Bring your attention back into your body,

Your body in this moment in time.

Notice your breath again and let your breath signal your body that you're safe now.

A few minutes ago,

I mentioned that traumatic memories don't have a timestamp.

One of the things that happens when we start working with our trauma,

But just when we're living our life,

Is that we're often hijacked back into a time when we weren't actually safe,

When we felt overwhelmed or alone or we were really outraged by the injustice of being scapegoated or we were just sick at heart from being bullied at school,

Whatever it might have been.

We kind of flashback to that and we forget,

Our nervous system forgets that we're not in that situation anymore.

Let's take a moment now to let our adult self be the comfort and the support and the connection that we might not have had when we were a child.

Let yourself come to just bring forward a memory.

It doesn't have to be a huge one,

Just a memory of when you were distressed,

Afraid or anxious,

Something where you felt alone,

Overwhelmed.

Notice what age it is.

How old are you in that memory?

If you're looking at the experience from your own eyes,

Like if you're in the kitchen looking at somebody in the kitchen,

Take a step back so that you can see the whole scene with you in the image as well,

So that you can notice with your eyes that you're looking at a memory.

You're not looking out of your own eyes at a memory.

You're looking at yourself in the memory.

Maintain awareness of your breath.

You could be holding your hands.

Notice your feet on the floor.

A lot of these tools that we use for grounding and regulating our nervous system are just reminders that we're here in our body and that we're safe right now.

Bring to mind an age,

An image of some time in your childhood when you didn't feel safe.

As you're breathing,

Let your shoulders relax.

You're clenching your teeth.

Let your jaw relax,

Your chest,

Your back soften,

And let your breath be smooth.

Let your belly be soft.

Just imagine if it's a visual,

That's great,

And if it's not,

That's fine too.

Just to give yourself the felt sense of,

I could be back there with my child who was really upset and I could offer them some comfort,

Some safety.

What might you do?

Maybe sometimes we'll give ourselves a hug.

We'll see ourselves sitting beside ourselves on the bed maybe.

So for me,

It was often my adult self sitting with my 12-year-old,

Just sitting on the side of the bed and letting her know that she wasn't alone anymore.

You might hug the child.

You might be looking right into their eyes.

Now what would you want to say to them?

If something comes up,

You could say it and then let yourself come back into a stillness.

Just notice your breath.

Let them co-regulate with you.

Right now in this moment,

You know that you're safe.

There's no danger here.

You're looking at a memory.

You're aware of your body,

Of your breath.

You could look around the room again.

Remember,

Let your eyes know that you're safe.

And sometimes things come up that you might want to say to that child or sometimes things come up that that child would like to let you know.

What was it like for you?

And at the time,

Maybe you didn't have anyone to show or anyone to tell or anyone who could comfort you.

But now you're here paying attention.

What would that child like you to know?

And just like you would soothe any child,

You might say,

Hey,

It's okay.

It's not your fault.

I feel really sad that you had that experience and that you felt so alone and you're not alone anymore.

I'm here.

Remain aware of your body and breath in this moment.

Let your breath signal your nervous system that now you know that you're safe.

You could hold your hands.

You could put your hands on your heart.

You could give yourself a hug.

You could tap alternately side to side.

Just remind yourself that you're here in this body right now and you're safe.

Because children so often blame themselves for anything that's going wrong in their life,

It can really be helpful to really with a heartfelt knowing that your child now it was not your fault.

And not to say that our parents were horrible people either.

As adults now,

We can often look at that and go,

I can see there was intergenerational trauma.

I can see that must have been so difficult for them too.

And that still doesn't make it our fault that they weren't able to give us the connection and care and safety that we needed.

So we could genuinely reach out to our younger self and say,

This was not your fault.

It was not your responsibility.

And you're not alone now.

I'm here.

And sometimes memories will come in that feel kind of overwhelming and we get swept back in.

So then we could use our grounding practices.

You could tap on your forehead for a minute.

Just take your attention away from the thoughts into the sound and sensation of the tapping on your forehead.

You could take some breaths.

You could shake.

You could stand up and move around.

Open your eyes.

Put the images on the wall on the other side of the room.

There's lots of ways that we can remind our nervous system that right now we're safe.

Just keep coming back into awareness of your body right now.

The room that you're in,

You can look around again.

Would anybody like to share anything about their experience doing this practice or does anyone have any questions?

I try to say things to my son like I enjoy being with you.

Oh my goodness.

Yes.

I can't remember a parent saying that to me either.

I enjoy being with you.

She doesn't have any specific memories of the hard times.

That's very common actually with traumatic memory.

When we disconnect from ourselves,

We might think that that's a bad thing,

But it's actually a very functional thing.

So if we're feeling overwhelmed or if we're being hurt,

It doesn't make sense to try and stay in the present moment.

As children,

We don't have the capacity for that either.

So oftentimes we'll daydream or we'll get involved in some kind of a fantasy.

In more extreme cases,

Sometimes people will say,

Well,

I was up at the top of the room at the ceiling looking down at my body while it was being hurt.

There's a range there of experiences,

But everybody knows what it feels like to just kind of tune out.

So if you're in a relationship where someone's always nagging at you or something,

Probably you're not hearing that very much of the time.

When you're a child,

If you're having experiences of abuse or neglect or anything that's really hard like that,

One of the ways that our brain protects us is that it just disconnects,

It dissociates.

Then when that happens,

Our brain actually doesn't store the memories.

The part of the brain that stores the memories might also be offline.

So sometimes people will have trauma,

We know we have trauma as children,

And we might not have specific memories.

We might not have explicit memories,

They're called.

We might have implicit memories,

Which means we have a sense that something happened,

But we might not have the visual images or the details that would go along with that.

And that's a protective mechanism of the brain.

I kept saying,

I believe you.

If we had had someone when we were a child say,

I believe you,

What a difference that would have made.

I have very strong memories where I disconnected from my body.

And so it's no wonder when we're looking at connecting now that it's so hard,

Because our nervous systems,

Our habits that we have right now with our body and breath,

It's like a historical record of our nervous systems through our whole life.

So if we've had a lot of trauma,

Disconnection,

We were holding our breath,

We were disconnecting,

We were kind of leaving the scene.

And so we're not going to have a lot of memories and we're not going to have a lot of maybe even interest in,

But certainly not confidence that we could stay in our body and feel what's here because the traumatic memories get associated and stored in our body with sensations.

So if we go into that black hole in our gut or that feeling of bracing through the back of our neck and shoulders,

We might remember something that happened.

And then if we get swept back into that memory,

It's going to feel like we were there again.

And so the key,

Absolute foundation to healing from our past is to stay here in awareness in the present moment,

Grounded in our body,

Working with our breath,

So that we know our nervous system knows that we're not in any danger now.

Mentioning traumatized parents.

It's good to work out from both directions.

So as a child,

We're all children,

We all had parents of some manner,

Some people were in foster care or had really abusive parents,

Some had different kinds of experiences,

But we all had an experience of somebody was taking care of us,

Even if it wasn't very well.

And not everyone has had the experience of being a parent.

But one of the things about being a parent is that it's really,

Really important to stop shaming ourselves for having unhealed trauma that caused suffering for other people.

And I've had that too in my own relationship with my son when he was young.

I wasn't able to protect him because I couldn't see what was going on.

And I had to do a lot of work with that and really come to a compassion for myself that I was absolutely responsible.

And I couldn't do it better at the time.

That still happened.

So that's a really difficult thing to work with.

And when we're looking at our own parents,

Who we can see sometimes is not all we can look at that and see their own trauma.

It helps to try to cultivate some compassion,

Even as we might not have anything to do with them.

They might already have passed,

Or they might be alive and we're just they're too dangerous for us to be around.

And so it's so complex and it's so much in our heart that trying to be kind and compassionate with ourselves is really essential.

In that exercise,

I was able to be seen.

That's lovely.

When I was a child,

I felt I'm just a household chore.

That's so often the case.

And sometimes it's children are expected to take on a lot of responsibilities,

Sometimes because parents are overwhelmed and they can't manage everything.

But oftentimes it's because one or both parents are checked out,

There might be addiction or something in the family.

And having to take on those kinds of responsibilities as a child is really hard.

And it was not your fault.

It was not your fault.

That's not what you deserved.

You didn't have those experiences because there was something wrong with you.

And that's what children tend to believe.

We believe that because if we could really see clearly that it's our parents,

Then we would realize we don't have any hope for making the situation better.

So we turn against ourselves and we think,

Well,

If I could be something else,

If I could be smarter or prettier or whatever it might be.

For some parents,

They might think,

Well,

You know,

I did everything okay.

I sent my kid for lessons and rewarded them for the good report cards at school and all of that.

The child might still have had the experience of the only value I am to them is that I make them proud.

They don't really see me.

And this whole thing about authenticity and really being seen is something that's very damaging to all of us as adults,

Too,

If we're not getting that.

But as a child,

It's really hard.

And that's part of why I wanted to do the series in August on authenticity and attachment.

So we're going to go way more deeply into this.

There's such a value in connecting with ourselves.

And Dr.

Gavron Maté talks about the effect of trauma and trauma being anything that just is overwhelming at the time that we can't process.

The effect of it is that we disconnect from ourselves and our sense of value and from the present moment.

And so as we come into the present moment,

We're aware of our breath.

We're using our safety in this moment to signal our nervous system that we're safe.

And then we have the possibility of really seeing ourselves and connecting ourselves.

And we all long for that.

And that kind of superficial inclusion isn't enough.

But this really deep knowing ourselves and seeing ourselves is really important.

Reviews

It's amazing how a simple sentence can explain so much... "I believe you" had me in tears ❤️

Beautiful and just what I needed to hear. Thank you!

Really like the psychoed around the nervous system and trauma. It was great we got sometime
to reconnect with our inner child. Your style and voice are very soothing!

Absolutely wonderful.Explicit and assertive.Thank you.
Bless you 🙏👼🌻

The image of my adult self sitting with my 5-year and 12-year old selves was so powerful. Comforting and acknowledging their fear and saddness - validating their experience and providing the comfort they didn’t receive.
Thank you

Thank you for sharing the blessings of your life. Peace, Mary

You just explained my life ha! I’ve been working very hard for the last 5 years to get myself into a life I can live and be happy, it’s finally paying off!