When We Lose It – Somatic Tools For Regulation

We all have moments when we “lose it.” In this guided somatic practice, we explore how to recognize survival responses like fight, flight, or freeze and gently return to regulation. Drawing on Resmaa Menakem’s The Quaking of America, you notice sensations, use grounding tools such as breath and orientation, and offer yourself kindness after activation. You’ll learn to track your patterns, metabolize stress, and build resilience for future challenges. This practice supports nervous system health, self-compassion, and stronger relationships, even in difficult times.

Transcript

This is a somewhat difficult topic and it's in a difficult time.

I wanted to focus for a bit on some tools that will help us to be stronger and more resilient.

It's a wonderful book by Resma Menakem called The Quaking of America,

An embodied guide to navigating our nation's upheaval and racial reckoning.

So it seems like a good time to be working on embodiment.

It's helpful for us to recognize that there's a lot happening right now.

There's a lot that's challenging for our nervous systems right now.

And how can we work with that in the most skillful way possible?

One of the first things we can do is notice how we can anchor ourselves.

When we perceive a threat,

We have a nervous system response.

This isn't something we decide to do.

It happens.

It's an autonomic nervous system response.

And we go into one of our survival responses.

We have fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

And fawn,

Which are very familiar to us.

And Resma actually included a more intense fight response,

Calling it the annihilate response.

When we are in these extreme situations,

That that might be something that comes up.

Awareness of what's happening in our nervous system is really essential.

One of the ways that we can work with not going out of body and not going into these responses is to soothe ourselves.

So resource ourselves,

Quiet our mind,

Remind ourselves to take a breath.

When we pause,

When we're aware,

Okay,

I'm starting to get escalated.

Then we can notice what's happening in my body.

If it's a fight response,

It might be fiery or hot in the body.

And then we can turn towards what's happening.

Often when we feel some kind of activation of a survival response in our body,

We start to try to make it more comfortable to get away from it being so uncomfortable.

And so that's one of the things that we can work with.

We don't need to always escape from what's going on.

We could be present with it.

We could turn towards it.

As we work with all of these nervous system regulating practices that we do,

We learn to stay present in our body.

We're going to relive or activate an experience of when we've gone over the edge.

One of the ways that we can helpfully work with that is to stay present in our body.

As we're thinking about it,

And as we're visualizing it,

That practice can help us to stay in our body when something's actually happening.

And to respond from the best parts of ourselves.

When we're in a survival response,

All we're looking for is surviving.

We're not thinking about kindness,

Compassion,

Integrity.

We actually don't have access to those parts of ourselves.

And then to metabolize any energy that remains.

To acknowledge that when we're in a fight response,

When there's something really active happening,

That we have a residue that we could be aware of and move into metabolizing that,

Getting it out of our body.

Shaking,

Or dancing,

Or breathing,

Or there's different ways we can do that.

For something like this,

A somatic inquiry,

It's usually helpful to do a lower level one so that we can work with it and still maintain awareness that we're doing a practice.

We all sometimes lose our temper,

And occasionally it's quite strong.

Somatic practices help us to sense when we're getting closer to the edge,

And then they help us to settle and stay,

Step back away from the edge.

When we are stressed personally,

We have a lot of experiences where we're a little closer to the edge,

Perhaps.

We don't know what's going to happen.

That's always uncomfortable for our nervous system.

I don't know what's going to happen,

So how can I keep myself safe?

That's one of the things that generates a lot of catastrophic thinking.

But what if that happened?

What if this happens?

We're working with,

Okay,

Things are pretty hard right now.

How am I going to manage?

How am I going to build up my resilience,

My strength,

So that I can manage better?

And then if we do go over the edge,

Our somatic awareness of,

I didn't want to say that,

Or I didn't want to yell at that person,

Or whatever that might be,

That idea is,

How can I come back?

How can I bring myself back into regulation?

That helps to reduce the amount of tumbling over the edge,

But it also helps us to come back more quickly.

Pick something,

Not a 10 out of 10,

An incident when you went into a fight or flee,

And then bring that incident into your mind.

The most important thing here is to remain aware in your body that you're here in the present moment where that is not happening.

We're looking at,

We're bringing something up.

You could anchor in with your eyes.

You could look around and notice that's actually not happening right now.

You could use touch.

You could hold your own hand.

You could do a couple of cyclic sighs.

Let's take a couple of breaths.

That will help us to remember to come back into the breath as well.

The deep double inhale through the nose,

And then another,

And then a long,

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

And as you're breathing out,

Let your whole body soften.

So I'm breathing in,

Double inhale out through the mouth like you're breathing out through a straw.

Just notice your body.

Here I am in a safe situation.

I'm doing an inquiry that's going to probably be agitating,

And I can remember that I'm here.

If you start to lose it,

Stand up,

Look around,

Open your eyes,

Just do something to break the trance and then come back into it.

As you're thinking about an incident,

What was it that created the stress or the conflict?

Pick something specific.

Who was there?

What was going on?

A lot of things are very common.

Maybe you were driving and someone did something that you perceived as scary.

Maybe they were going too fast or they passed unsafe or probably all had those types of experiences.

Bring something to mind.

You could remember what did your body experience as the stress started to mount,

Or you could feel that in your body right now.

What's happening in your body as you're remembering?

What is it that activates you?

Let yourself feel that in your body.

And did you sense that you were getting close to your edge?

How did that happen for you in this example?

Could you sense I'm starting to get hot?

Was there fear as part of that?

What was the threat?

When we're going into any kind of a survival response,

It's a response to a threat.

So did you sense yourself getting close to the edge,

And how did that show up in your body?

You started holding your breath.

Maybe your heart started pounding.

As we're sitting and paying attention to this,

Maintain this awareness.

What was going on in your body?

If it's feeling like it's getting too intense,

Like you're really getting drawn back in,

Then step back from it a little bit.

One of the things that might be happening is you have images.

If the images seem to be kind of drawing you in and creating more intensity,

Then you might look at the images.

Imagine what was going on in that situation.

You could open your eyes and put the images,

An image of somebody's face,

A video clip up onto the wall on the other side of the room.

So what that does is it helps our brain know that we're not actually in a situation,

We're looking at an image.

And look at it over there.

Notice it's in a frame.

Bring your eyes around the empty space around the frame a couple times in each direction.

I can see I'm just looking at an image.

How did that awareness show up in your body?

Was it sensation?

Is that a familiar sensation to you?

So we've all had these experiences.

We've all had the experience of being in a situation that's just building up.

And we've all had the experience of in a situation where there was volatility,

Where things were kind of going along okay,

And then boom,

Something happened.

We've all had the experience of being tired and then our resilience is not as much.

So noticing your body,

Noticing your breath,

Looking around the room.

What was it that happened in this instant that you're remembering that pushed you over the edge?

So maybe it was the buildup of it and you finally just reached the point where I can't handle that anymore.

I'm not going to take that anymore.

And you went into some kind of response.

And what associations came in?

If you've had similar experiences,

If most of the time when you're at that family dinner,

For instance,

That person starts to drink and then they get really insulting or whatever the circumstances are,

You have all of those associations and that expectation.

You don't have as much resilience around that.

You're not willing to cut them a break.

But also it could be just that you're ready for it.

You know that that's what's going to happen.

And in fact,

It's happening again now.

That's going to intensify your response because you have all that built up memory of that.

Keep breathing.

What happened that pushed you over the edge?

And what did your body experience as you went over the edge?

What did you do?

Notice what was happening in your body as you remember that now.

What was happening in your body as you went over the edge?

And use these tools now to stabilize,

To stay present.

Breathe,

Let yourself remember that you're here.

Now,

What did you do?

And what did you say?

These aren't the times when we bid it back and didn't say anything.

These are the times when it released and we were kind of freaking out or we were saying something.

Did you say things that you regret?

Did you say things that are common?

Because we're not using our kind heart.

We're using our survival brain.

What did you say or what did you do?

And did it last for a long time?

Kind of wear itself out?

Was it one strong thing you said?

Was it a series?

What happened?

And then what happened after that?

And what did you do that helped your body to begin to settle?

So we've had this big response.

Often we cry.

When we have a lot of anger and fear in our body,

We have a lot of strong responses.

And was there anybody around you who did something that helped you to settle?

You might have had someone around you that made it worse.

But was there somebody around you that helped to let you settle?

We talk a lot about co-regulation where one person is really activated about something.

If we can stay calm and breathe,

We don't have to tell them to calm down.

That doesn't usually work.

But we could just stay calm and steady.

We might catch their eye.

We might give them a sympathetic look or touch their shoulder or whatever that might be.

What,

If anything,

Helped you to settle?

Did you remember to breathe?

Did you look around and notice,

Okay,

I can lower the level of threat I'm experiencing right now?

What's your situation there?

And notice now,

How do you feel in your body?

Especially compared to five minutes ago.

How do you feel in your body now?

Well,

One of the harmful things that can happen is when we shame ourselves after we've gone into a fight response.

The nervous system does its own thing.

One of the ways we can work with our nervous system is we can acknowledge that there are some things that help and some things that are harder.

When we're well-rested,

We have more resilience.

If we're tired,

We're stressed,

If it's an ongoing stress,

Or if there's an association,

If there's danger,

We're easily dysregulated and we're more vulnerable to losing it.

That's something that we could work with generally,

Just try to stay as well-regulated as we can to use all these practices to build up our resilience.

But once we've lost control and we've gone into a fight response,

Somebody else might intervene and say,

You should be ashamed of yourself for yelling at that person.

It might be our inner critic.

We might be just stuck in a shame spiral.

We feel like,

Oh,

What did I do?

Let's just sit with that for a minute.

What was happening for you around shame?

Was someone shaming you?

Was your inner critic berating you?

Did you just sink into a shame response?

Or maybe you're feeling some of that energy now.

One of the things that we can always do is to offer ourselves kindness.

We can't offer kindness and compassion when we're in a fight response.

We have to come back into regulation first.

So as soon as we can come back into settling,

Letting our body kind of soften a little,

Look around.

If you're still feeling a bit agitated,

You might stand up and shake,

Or you could do a couple of breaths,

Breathing in through your nose,

A long exhale.

We can always offer ourselves kindness.

When we do these inquiries,

Part of what we're doing is getting to know our own habits and responses a little bit better.

One of the reasons we do a practice like this is to see what are the thinking patterns that are underneath that.

How do we go into a fight response?

What does it feel like?

The truth is that we're in a fight response because we feel threatened.

And the more intense the threat,

The more intense the response.

It's interesting for us to know,

This is the kind of responses that I often have.

What is your pattern?

And then what do you feel?

What do you feel in your body?

What do you feel emotionally?

Can you come back into regulation enough to give yourself a break and offer yourself some kindness?

It's a helpful thing to be watching,

To know that we're not alone in this.

We all have a nervous system that will put us into a survival response if the threat is great enough.

When we have been in a response like that,

Sometimes we might need to make a repair.

If it's something that's ongoing with people that we're around a lot,

Often that is the case.

We can talk about that and say,

I'm sorry,

I lost my temper.

I didn't mean to actually say what I said.

And we can have a conversation.

Sometimes,

Not always.

We don't have to shoot ourselves around that either.

I just appreciate our honesty and our courage.

When we are more aware of this and more aware I'm in a fight response,

How can I come back into regulation?

That's really helpful.

Reviews

thank you so much, lynn❣️
it / YOU really helped me again to understand and regulate

I had trouble picking something to focus on. However what I found very helpful is reminding myself not to go into the shame spiral. And looking around the room to remind myself that I am safe. Thank you for offering this.

Very helpful, Lynn. This practice well deserves a spot in my toolbox for those moments when I need reminding to offer myself some kindness. As always, thank you.

Thank you for this timely and helpful talk. Calming. Practical. Just what I needed!