Disengaging the Nervous System - Part Two
Awareness is key to shifting how we engage our nervous system. To step into this space, we need to breathe, take a moment, and observe where our thoughts or emotions are taking us.
Are we being led into a deeper emotion warning us that to stay safe we must keep ourselves small and afraid? I must stay seated to keep myself safe or I may hurt myself. I must stay silent to stay safe.
Recently, I recognized I had to step back from an inquiry and give it some space. As it pushed at an experience I had early on in my business. This time however, I entered that space of awareness and truly sat with the inquiry for a couple of hours looking at it from multiple vantage points to truly see it – and I made the decision best for not only my energy sustainability, but also looking at it from how it could affect my existing clients getting the nights they wanted based on recent years. I know that taking a moment allowed me to step into greater awareness more gracefully.
Likewise, in a completely different experience when I was out to lunch with a friend, I realized that an assignment that was just scheduled possibly would create a conflict with a gathering I was putting together. In this case, I felt the panic energy and the need to send off a text immediately to offer an alternative date for the gathering versus stepping back or waiting until I returned home which would have allowed for a different response.
In the first example, I was in a very calm and present state having been on vacation. In the second one, I had a lot going on between being in between pet visits, visiting with a friend, and a lot of things taking up space in my mind. Recognizing the need to disengage and move into a calmer energy before responding is part of moving beyond the 90-second process and one of my current lessons.
As I have reviewed each of these in recent days, I can also see the situations of the past where I landed in the latter reactive-based mode feeling that urgency to respond. Although I do not know where or when the origin of this pattern occurred, I do know that the awareness both before and after is part of the growth along with pieces to creating a new process for how my nervous system responds to external stimuli.
One is a trauma response based on a story experience we have held onto that occurred a day, a week, a month or even a decade or more in the past. Holding onto the story keeps us reliving what we think happened whether remembered or not. The nervous system’s way of keeping you reenacting your original physical, mental or emotional response to hold you as you were – as a static representation of yourself at that moment the story was created.
The other says yes that is where we were, however, we are dynamic, and ever-changing, ever-learning new lessons - and we are on a path of recovery. We are stronger and more resilient than our past static self that was stuck in that photograph in our mind. We can choose a different or new empowered version of ourselves to get out of the muck of the past and into the present knowing we are loved, supported, safe, and ready to move forward into that something better.
Stepping into that space of awareness is a key to retraining the nervous system’s response. This is something that like everything else is a practice.
