You ever have one of those weeks when you feel like you’re drowning in your own negative emotions? Pain, shame, judgement, discomfort. Too much going on for you to process and so you slip into overwhelm, shutdown and collapse and a shame spiral takes over. From sympathetic to dorsal vagal as I wrote about in the post below last year.
Root Chakra 'I am'
So now that we know how we can physiologically help manage our stress hormones time to turn to the embodied psychology piece.
That’s the thing about change - it requires expansion but that in itself can be destabilizing and then you trigger a contraction. My time in Oz felt expansive vs return to the UK and stressors of normal life. Shrinking into feelings of inadequacy, fear and stuckness.
Expansion is about moving towards healing and resilience as experienced as:
Relaxed Musculature
Deeper Breathing
Grounded Presence
Increased Body Awareness
Curiosity and Openness
Flexibility in Thinking
Sense of Safety and Trust
Exploration of Resources
Integration and Growth
Vs the last week which has shown signs of me reaching the threshold of my distress tolerance which has been experienced as:
Increased Muscle Tension
Shallow Breathing
Hypervigilance
Emotional Intensity
Difficulty in Thinking or Concentrating
Feeling Overwhelmed or Flooded
Avoidance Behaviours
Physical Discomfort or Pain
Feeling Stuck or Frozen
Heightened Startle Response
Peter Levine, the pioneer of Somatic Experiencing, coined the term "pendulation" to describe movement between contraction and expansion. It involves moving back and forth between sensations of safety (expansion) and discomfort (contraction).
I would benefit from finding equilibrium or balance between the two. To find the inner rhythm of healing (source). As Peter says in the interview below ‘trauma is not just about what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of that present empathetic other’ going on to say further: ‘Shame strangulates the self, strangulates the spirit and holds it hostage’. We need to become our own empathetic other to loosen shames grip on our throat and free our spirit, something I’m working hard on and will write further about over the next few weeks. Moving towards ‘creating a concept of myself as a thing from which I can derive safety’ and ‘learning to generate my own internal self of wellbeing’ and following my truth wherever it takes me.