Incomplete stress responses, reacting vs responding, expanding your window of tolerance, and welcoming yourself home.
An invitation to get curious and allow exactly where you are, to be enough at this time.
Getting curious:
– how often do you run from discomfort?
– are you able to be in the present moment or does your anxiety, rumination, to-do lists, etc., take over?
– how do you respond/react to life, to yourself, and to your loved ones?
– how connected and attuned are you to your body?
– are you comfortable in your body or does it feel unsafe?
– do you know what it is asking for, or do you often feel unsure of what it needs?
When we meet this curiosity without judgement, allowing all to be exactly as it is, it creates space for miraculous shifts. Frequently living in our heads, in fast-forward or in the past, disconnects us from how our bodies are in the moment and therefore removes our access to what our bodies need.
We’ve all been there – life hits us with something that feels unbearable.
We can’t digest it, we don’t know how to be with it or allow it, we feel ourselves beginning to run. Only we aren’t necessarily running in the physical – we’re disconnecting from our bodies because we lack the capacity to feel the sensations in their fullness. In simple terms, it feels too unsafe to feel the perceived reality.
Often this reaction is a survival mechanism that happens automatically outside of our control.
We take our power back when we practice becoming aware of it and allowing. This doesn’t, and shouldn’t, happen overnight.
Over time, with awareness and intentional practice through the felt senses (and often with a guide to support you and lend you their nervous system as you begin to feel into your body and expand your own, safely) this can become your go-to response. You can begin to respond to life, rather than react to it.
When we first lean into this curiosity and begin to invite ourselves to feel what has previously not been allowed to be felt, it can be intimidating and, at times overwhelming. Modern day life seems to train us to stop feeling, and fear begins to build around it. This belief that it is not safe to feel is something that we see in a lot of people. And to be fair, there is good reason for this. We have not been taught how to safely feel our emotions. We have not been held, and therefore, do not know how to hold ourselves or each other. Without those safe support systems in place, and without the nervous system capacity to hold ourselves, it can feel very unsafe to feel the big emotions our bodies/minds/souls have been protecting us from by disconnecting or disassociating.
When we allow our pain, emotions or thoughts to be exactly as they are without judgement, they often transform and soften on their own – without us needing to control anything. What we resist persists, so, when we are resisting feeling or noticing what is asking to be shown to us in our bodies, it tends to get louder and more disruptive until we finally listen.
For many people (myself included) the body asking us to listen can come out through symptoms. “Hello! Listen to me, notice me, love me!” the body is screaming, “please feel what is asking to be felt, complete this stress-cycle so that I can let this thing go!”. These parts of ourselves really just want to be loved.
An incomplete stress cycle is when, for any reason, the body doesn’t fully feel and process a stressful event and this energy gets stored in the body. Maybe you had to keep on moving forward in the moment and didn’t know how to return to it later to allow it to complete. Maybe it didn’t feel safe to feel the fullness of the experience so it got repressed. If you picture all the incomplete stress cycles that have happened throughout your lifetime, as energetic balls in your body, can you see how your body would fill up with them eventually? How many can your body continue to hold before they begin causing other challenges? Eventually, your body begins to scream through symptoms, dis-ease, or challenging life events, trying to wake you up and get you to listen.
The more we can practice noticing when we veer off track and bringing ourselves back into the present and back into our bodies as needed, the more naturally in-tune with our bodies and our intuitions we can become. The more connected we are to our body, the more aware we are of it’s needs and the more able we are to meet them. The more old, trapped emotions we allow ourselves to feel, process and complete, the more space we create in ourselves. The more we can hold our own truths and experiences, the less we naturally disassociate or disconnect from our bodies.
Often one of the goals in my work is to support you in gently and safely expanding your nervous system capacity (or window of tolerance) to hold your own truths and be with what is, in any given moment. Sometimes this is in completing past, incomplete stress cycles. Sometimes it is through energetically clearing what was never yours to begin with. Often it is supporting you in safely and slowly, beginning to feel. Brick by brick, building that felt-sense of safety in your body and welcoming yourself home.
This blog post was inspired by today’s group session for patients living with complex chronic diseases, a 5 week series that I offer through an internal medicine clinic in Vancouver, BC. Today was week 2 of our series, and the discussion portion was all about what I’ve shared above, plus guided practices and energy healing to support this process. For those of you who don’t have access to me through the medical system, I’ve privately recorded a similar offering that you can access on-demand through my shop. I’ve called it, “5 Week Series – Meditation + Energy Healing Transmissions for Complex Chronic Diseases, Health, and Navigating Life” and it is a pre-recorded, on-demand, 5-week series for you to rest and receive in the comfort of your own home, on your own schedule.
However you begin or continue this process for yourself, congratulations! There is no greater gift you can give to yourself, than the ability, space, and openness to welcome yourself home.
