Welcome to the Somatic Approaches in Therapy Summit. My name is Linda Thai. I'm a trauma therapist and I'm a somatic therapist and an integrative therapist. I live on the lands of the Dene Athabaskan peoples of the Middle Tanana Valley, also known as Fairbanks, Alaska. And it is my absolute pleasure to be here with you today. In my presentation for you today, we will cover trauma and the nervous system. So the neuroception of danger and threat, our animal survival defenses, the difference between fawning, appeasement, freeze and dorsal shutdown. We'll explore a more holistic conceptualization of traumatic stress. We'll drill a bit deeper into the impact of traumatic on the nervous and I'll offer you a way of understanding trauma triggers that you can very easily explain to your clients. And then we will look at clinical applications, so window of capacity for mapping the autonomic nervous system, how state creates story, and techniques for up regulation, down regulation, and co-regulation. So, before we go on to this first section, I'm gonna invite you to reach your arms in the air and then wiggle your fingertips. And it's invitational, totally invitational. And while you're up here, perhaps you may wish to shake your hands. Notice that moment when the navel came forward and down and notice, like for me, a sound naturally emerged. Just notice what naturally emerges for you. And so as an experienced registered yoga teacher, I also know that when the hands are above the shoulders for an extended period of time or while shaking, that this releases the facial connections between the shoulders and the diaphragm, and the armoring around our shoulders can be where we can tend to hold the armory in our bodies. So this can be a very simple body hack to help the thoracic diaphragm to release. I will be interspersing our presentation today with these little tips and tricks and you're welcome to try them on for yourself. have the experiment with them or take notes and check them out later on for yourself. Now we have our learning brains online, let us have a look at animal survival defenses. So we're gonna look at a chart and then two videos. So when we experience life threat and danger, there are various animal defenses that our survival architecture has built in for us. So within the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, also known as the rest and digest branch of the nervous system, we have a branch known as ventral vagal. The ventral vagal branch is responsible for our deeply mammalian imperative to experience safety in connection, in stillness and in action. And as infants, babies, toddlers, our nervous system has a very narrow window of capacity. And what happens is we move along in the world and there's a spike in autonomic nervous system response, there's an activation in the heart rate. And this sense of fright propels the attachment cry, and the attachment cry is that call to our caregiver to come and reinstate safety for us through reinstating connection. When you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and you look that bottom rung of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, food, warmth, shelter. Nourishment, safety, comfort, water, all of those things come through and from another human being, so the attachment cries our first defense. If someone doesn't come to help reinstate safety, then the nervous system continues to escalate in arousal. And the nervous system crosses a threshold in service of survival. We are in the full-blown branch of the sympathetic nervous system, the flight-flight-freeze branch of the nervous system. And there is a neurocascade of responses that happens in service of survival. The ventral vagal break disengages and our heart rate variability goes down. So, when you breathe in, your heart rate goes up. When you breathe out, your heartbeat goes down, Think of it like brakes on a bicycle. When you breathe in, the brakes release, the heart rate goes up. When you breath out, the breaks engage and the heart rate goes down. When we cross that threshold into survival imperative, you breathe in the heart right goes up and you breathe out and the heart rate stays up in service of survival to pump oxygenated blood all the way through to your extremities so that you can stand your ground. So that you can fight. In the research studies around PTSD, heart rate variability is a diagnostic indicator of PTSD, and it's also an indicator of whether an intervention like yoga or meditation or ballroom dancing is effective for the treatment of PTSD. We have low heart rate variability when there is PTSD. When we have good health, then there is more robustness between the heart rate on the inhale and the heart right on the exhale. So in service of survival, ventral vagal break disengages, our heart rate variability goes down, whether our heart rate is up here, or our heart right is down here. In terms of the sympathetic branch of the nervous system, breathe in, heart rate goes up, breathe out, heart rate stays up. The hypothalamus-pituitary adrenal axis activates, so brain and the body. Well the brain makes the adrenaline and this gets pumped through the body so that we have the energy that we need to stand our ground or to fight. The limbic brain is online, the prefrontal cortex is offline, the limbic brain are the vehement emotions that exist in service of survival. Broca's area and Wernicke's area are both offline. Broca's area is a part of the brain responsible for articulating through speech. Wernicke's area is the part of the brain that's responsible for interpreting and translating speech. So with Broca's areas offline, we talk in short, sharp, commanding sentences. With Wernicke's area offline, we hear people talking to us, and we hear wah, wah,wah, wah unless that person is speaking very, very directly to us. We also enter into a dissociated state in service of survival. So when it is kill or be killed, run away or be killed, we are in survival mode. And adrenaline, as well as endogenous cannabinoids, are pumped through the body so that any assault that happens or any hurt that happens in the process of running or fleeing does not get registered as incapacitating pain. And so we aren't connected to time, place, to the body, to the context of what happening is happening around us. And we're certainly not connected to our capacity for creative problem solving and calculus, yeah? And this is in service of survival that all of our body's metabolism is geared in the one direction. And so if someone isn't there to respond to our attachment cry, there's an escalation in the sense of panic, and this panic fuels a flight response. And if someone doesn't come to reinstate safety and we're not able to run away, the nervous system continues to escalate in activation, propelling rage, which propels the flight response, if someone doesn't come to reinstate safety and we are not able fight our way out of this, or we know that fighting our way out of this is gonna cause for more damage to happen. just like running away may cause for more damage to happen to the ones that we leave behind, then the nervous system continues in service of survival to increase in intensity, propelling a felt sense of terror. I am frozen in my terror, stuck between my needs and my fears, stuck between my needs and your fears, stuck between your needs and my fears. And the body can't hold this for a significant period of time. It will try to, because this frozen terror allows us to be mobilized and immobilized at the same time. I'm very still, very small, very quiet, because being seen, heard, or known makes me a target. And there is an inordinate amount of survival energy right there beneath the surface, so that if the opportunity presents itself, boom, I am out of there. It's a lot of charge, a lot a nervous system charge to hold. And so the nervous system in service of survival then cascades downwards, crosses a threshold into the dorsal vagal branch of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the oldest, most reptilian branch of the nervous system of immobilization in service of survival and this immobilization is blended with the high freeze of terror, and at the flaccid immobility end, there is the shame and despair of imminent death and defeat. The brain then pumps the body full of endogenous opioids. Endogenous opioids makes imminent death less unpleasant. A pause on the word endogenous. Exogenous means I take the substance in from the outside of myself, whether smoking, vaping, inhaling, suppository, injection. Whereas endogenous means I make that neurotransmitter from within my own system. So I'm gonna pause here. I'm going to pause. I know you have a lot of questions. I'm just gonna offer you a moment to write all those questions down knowing that not all of those questions will be answered in our time today. And I'm to orient us towards the watching of two videos. Now the videos are old and not very good quality and there is definitely benefit to that. And the first video that we'll watch is about a possum who is being attacked by coyotes. And you see the possum go into the flaccid immobility response of the dorsal vagal response. Actually I'm going to pause here, I'm gonna offer you some options. I'm going to offer you a few possibilities. You can orient away from the screen and orient towards the screen as feels right for you. You can have your finger on the volume button and turn the volume up and down as feels appropriate for you. You can also choose to not watch this at all in which case you can turn the volume off and orient away from the screen and through your corner of your eyes, when you see me do a big this, the waving of my arms, you'll know that it's time to orient back towards the screen and turn the volume back up. So you have options and you have choice in regards to this. This tactic is of little use, especially since the opossum can't run fast enough to hide very far away. Just as the second coyote senses that a meal is at hand, her mate appears to have lost his appetite. Most predators need the stimulation of resistance to incite them to kill, and the act of killing to induce them to eat. An inert body inspires little interest. But the possum is still breathing and in fact it's only playing dead. Playing possum. Fighting time until the threat of danger is passed. It's not just consciously putting on a good act however it actually goes into a state similar to shock, a condition known as thanatosis. The coyotes are fooled into searching for livelier prey. While gradually, as it senses that the coast is clear, the opossum comes out of its trance and goes about its steady, deliberate way. So if you've looked away from the screen and turned the volume off, then this is your cue to come back if you wish to. And then for those of you who are watching, I invite you to release your jaw and to squeeze your face, and to release. Notice if a breath emerged for you or not. It's OK if it didn't. It's OK if it did. I invite you to turn your head gently and slowly from side to side. Notice when a big deep breath emerges, if it does at all for you. What can happen for many of us as we watch something that may actually mirror some of our own lived experiences is that we become small and still and quiet. It's a peritrauma response and turning the head from side to side activates the phrenic nerve. The phrenic nerve goes through cervical vertebrae three, four, and five and directly innervates the diaphragm that causes the diaphragm to move. Which can be much more helpful than, hey, take a big deep breath, which I also do, right? So if you like, you can reach up, take your breath in and exhale, breathe out, release arms down. Yeah, that works too. And the orienting response, yeah, we don't look around when we're in the peritrauma response. And so I hope that this can be a way of bringing in trauma-informed care into the education space. I've noticed my body has started rocking. So I'm going to allow my body to keep rocking because this too is an indication that my body isn't doing the small, still, quiet, stuck peritrauma thing. This next video is a polar bear discharging survival activation. And so what you see is a biologist from the air, tranquilizing a polar bear that's on the ground. And then they start to interact with the polar bear while it's tranquilized. And then after offering the polar bear an adrenaline shot, the polar bear starts coming too. And what you see is the polar bear completing the actions of survival that have gotten stuck in the nervous system and in the body from that point in time when the polar bear got tranquilized. And my purpose for showing this video is to share the ways in which survival responses can get stuck in the nervous system. And, actually, I'll share the rest of it after I share the video, okay? So I'll just pause that there. And once again, it's an old video, which isn't such a bad thing. You can orient away from the screen, towards the screen. Volume up, volume down. Any combination thereof, including not watching at all and having the volume off and looking out of the very corner of your eye for when I do this motion again. See these pads there, it's sort of like non-skid material. And it's all sort of rough, it's not really smooth. It helps him get better traction on the ice. Comes right up, it is almost like sandpaper. And then of course, big claws for ripping, breaking in the seal layers. But he hasn't started to really chip his teeth. If you watch that animal after he finishes convulsing, you'll see, because he's aware of the fact that we're all around him, and it's a very stressful experience for an animal like the polar bear. After he settles down, and then he'll start doing a couple of deep breaths, and then you'll breathe really nicely, here he goes. See how he's breathing right now? You can see so that even though it looks a little unpleasant, it lets off all that stress, and he then is able to relax and sleep the thing on. Watch the diaphragm. the jaw, the pores. So, if you've oriented away. This is your invitation to rejoin us if you like. And then from here, I invite a scrunching up and in, and then pressing against an imaginary ceiling that's pressing down against you. Oh, and if a sound naturally emerges, let that emerge. Perhaps you may like to scrunch and squish up and in again, and then press outwards at imaginary sidewalls pressing in from either side. Releasing down and if you like one more time squeezing up and in and then pressing against an imaginary wall that's coming from the front of you. Notice what naturally emerges for you. It can be rocking. It could be a little bit of trembling. It may be not much, yeah, and that's okay too. It may subtle, such as breath, a releasing of the jaw, a squeezing and releasing of the face or the eyes. There is an organicity in the body that I deeply trust in that has been informed by my trainings in Somatic Experiencing and in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. So I believe it was Peter Levine in his book, Waking the Tiger. He shares about the neurogenic tremoring that completes the stress response cycle in regards to lions that are tranquilized in Africa. And the wildlife biologist there said that the lions who don't undergo this neurogenic tremoring, their nervous systems don't return to homeostasis and they actually end up becoming rejected by the pride. And so it's worthwhile recognizing that there is an innate wisdom in the tremoring in the body that if we're not educated about it, then we feel shame about or we override it. So I will give you an example. In November of last year, I had a Cesarean style hysterectomy where there was a big slice across my abdomen cut through four layers of abdominal muscle to remove my uterus as well as two incredibly big fibroids. When I was getting wheeled out of the operating room, I was coming to, and my legs, my legs were doing this, yeah. My legs are doing this. And the nurse at my feet said, oh, are you cold? And she started to heap more blankets onto me. And because I'm a somatic therapist, I noticed my legs doing this. And I checked in with my body's core temperature and I looked at her and I said, no, my legs are completing the stress response cycle. My legs are completing the flight response. and the nurse at my head said, "ha." And then I heard her "ha" and I looked up at her and I said, I bet you must see this a lot in the operating room. And she said, yeah. And I said I show this polar bear video in class all the time about a polar bear that gets tranquilized. One of the anesthetics is ketamine and one of the anesthetics for humans is ketamine. Yet we come out of it and the body wants to complete the trauma survival responses that got stuck in the nervous system. After that, I got wheeled to my room. I went to the bathroom and I actually started releasing through my pelvic floor. The raw started to, you know, the flaring of the nostrils, the quivering of the lips, and then the raw started to emerge. And then my diaphragm started to do the pulling thing that we saw in the polar bear's diaphragm. And so this is my way of sharing this with you so that you can have an understanding of what happens for folks when there is an acute stress response. That this is our body's way of metabolizing and moving through the stress hormones, as well as completing the trauma response. From here, we are going to move on to exploring fawning, appeasement, freeze and dorsal vagal shutdown. So fawning, appeasement, freeze, and dorsal vagal shutdown. So dorsal vagal shut down is the flaccid immobility. It's low tone dorsals, where like the mouse in the mouth of the cat, there is no muscle tone in the body whatsoever. it's the ragdoll of flaccid immobility for imminent death to be less unpleasant, yeah. Whereas freeze is tonic immobility, there's high muscle tone in the body, it's a blending of the autonomic nervous system states of, also the autonomal nervous system branches of the sympathetic branch and the dorsal branch. The sympathetic branch being action in service of protection and dorsal being immobilization in service of resource conservation. Blended state. So like the bunny rabbit or the deer in the headlights, very still with a lot of survival energy right beneath the surface. Fawning can look like people pleasing, it can look compliance, identitylessness, whatever you want for you, I want for, you I'll say no when I mean yes, I'll say yes when I mean no. And this is because there is the whiff of the sniff of a relational threat. And so I engage in an adaptive strategy in order to maintain the relationship. I take care of your nervous system so that you will then take care of me. I will take care of your needs so that there is more harmony and less tension or conflict or less potential for any disharmony in the relationship. Appeasement on the other hand is the neuroception of survival threat. This is a reactive strategy to survive by self-snuffing all of our life force energy while conscious. I'll give you an example of this. This would be a Black man in front of a police officer or a Person of Color in front of a judge within systems and structures of societally upheld power dynamics. And in that moment, I need to self-stuff all of my life force energy while conscious, because if you perceive the whiff of the sniff of any aliveness in me, it may cause for my imminent demise. That is appeasement. It's incredibly humiliating and it's incredibly metabolically taxing. Nkem Nedefo is the name of the person from whom I learnt the distinction between fawning and appeasement. Now, here is where I want to frame co-dependence as a superpower, because with appeasement, we think of societally upheld power structures, such as the criminal justice system or the law enforcement system, and yet the very first socially upheld power dynamic is that of the family. And so, if you have ever experienced the humiliating and metabolically taxing experience of appeasement, then fawning becomes a proactive way to try to take care of the nervous system of the other, whom you perceive as having more power and authority and control than you do, or having more proximity to power, authority, or control than do. And this is in order to prevent that nervous system from further escalating towards potentially becoming a threat towards you or towards others. I'm gonna pause and take a breath here. Dr. Colin A. Ross says that PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, creates a series of future-oriented survival strategies that live in the present moment in order to prevent back there, back then, from happening ever again. If you have had a history of appeasement, and it can be just once, then fawning can be a survival strategy, a protective, preventative survival strategy. It's less metabolically taxing and far less humiliating. And here is where it's also important for me to name codependence as a structural phenomenon that exists within the patriarchy, that exists within ableist society, that exists within a white supremacist society, that exists in a transphobic, homophobic, cis-sexist society. And a heterosexist society. And I'm just gonna pause and let that land. There are so many more layers to this that I'm not gonna unpack with you today. However, the expanding of the frame allows us to understand what Resmaa Menakem says is how trauma decontextualized in a peoples can look like culture. And some of us may have learned to fawn or people please because it is part of the culturally ingrained dynamics of hierarchy or social status of proximity to power and control that exists institutionally, structurally, historically over time that continues to exist in the present moment. Culture also shapes the development of personality and behaviors of adaptation. I'm going to take a big deep breath in and take a deep breath out. If you like I invite you to look for your exits and notice the route between you and your exits. I invite to have a look out your window or through your imaginary window towards the horizon. I invite you to have a look behind you all the way in one direction, stretching the psoas and the iliacus. And squeezing the diaphragm as you twist and then twisting all the way in the other direction. Having a look behind you for any threat or danger that your brain says isn't there, but your limbic brain may perhaps need the visual checking to know. Notice the space above you. In front of you. below you and to the sides of you. Notice if a breath emerged, or if rocking emerged, or if a jaw release, or a flapping of the hands emerged. It's all good. Okay, so we will now move on. So a more holistic approach to conceptualizing traumatic stress. So this is where traditional psychology asks, what's wrong with you? And trauma informed psychology asks what happened to you? Culturally informed psychology asks what happened to your peoples? However it is that you define your peoples. Liberation psychology asks, and what continues to happen to you and to your peoples. And when we look at this holistic conceptualization of traumatic stress, it's too sudden, too much, or too little of something for too long, or not enough of something. And this happens within a context, and that context is the inadequacy of time, space, permission, protection, resources, or resourcing for the nervous system to return to homeostasis. And what happens is a trauma survival response gets stuck in the nervous system, and trauma survival adaptations get stuck in a psyche. Now when it comes to this too sudden, too much or too little of something or for too long of something, what is this something? That something is what causes stress that then becomes distress that then become traumatic. So what causes stress? Lack of information, open information loops, lack of transparency or trust, lack a predictability or certainty. Loss of agency, so loss of voice or choice or control. Conflict that a person is unable to handle, which then results in a loss of dignity. Humiliation results in a loss of dignity. And this also results in an isolation from emotionally supportive relationships. And so the overwhelm is larger than our resources and resourcing. And we isolate. And then distress becomes traumatic because of the prolonged isolation. As Gabor Mate says, it's not about what happened to you, it's about who wasn't there for you. And healing is political because politics decides who has access to time, space, permission, protection, resources, and resourcing in order for the nervous system to return to homeostasis. Pause and take a breath here. I want to rock my body, perhaps you may wish to try on rocking the body. Perhaps you may wish to try on softening the eyes by bringing your awareness to the area behind the back of the eyes, the area behind the back of the head. Or perhaps for you it's a releasing of the jaw and it's the making of sounds. And those sounds may be sounds of frustration, irritation, anger. And it's okay. Yeah, this is how we discharge our stress on a moment by moment basis so that the stress doesn't become distress. So now we look at traumatic stress in the nervous system and trauma triggers with a hashtag. So here we look at the two main branches of the nervous system, parasympathetic and sympathetic, and the two main branches of the parasymphathetic nervous system, dorsal and ventral. And the nervous activates and settles throughout the day. And what happens with a traumatic event is that in service of survival of the nervous system goes into hyperarousal or hypoarousal. The signs and symptoms of hyperarousal, hypervigilance, hypersensitivity, avoidance, intrusive thoughts, re-experiencing, re-enacting, and the vehement emotions of anxiety, panic, fear, rage, and terror, all in service of survival. Conversely, the nervous system may head towards hyposensitivity, numbness, shutting down, no energy, hopelessness, futility, impotence, shame, despair, and defeat. And the nervous system can actually ricochet back and forth between the two. What can happen with time is that the nervous can settle, however, when a hashtag trigger emerges, presents itself, the nervous system in service of survival, goes into hyper and/or hypoarousal. Or we go into override, we override, override, override, overwrite what is happening in our bodies. And we continue to override, and that can then express as lateral violence outwards, and it can also express as internalized violence towards ourselves. I'm not going to unpack that any further. I'm just going to pause that there, knowing that there is always more to unpack. And we're going to orient towards the hashtag triggers. So I'll offer an example here. You go to the cinemas on a regular basis. And so when you go to the cinemas, you observe information as stimulus. You observe all that input. You interpret it. You process. You evaluate options. You make a plan and you take action around what movie you're going to see, who you're going to see it with, when you're gonna see it, what time of the schedule works best for everyone. You might get excited about the snacks that you're going to have and that then builds its way into the experience. So every time there's hashtag movie, just like social media hashtags, there can be hashtag popcorn, hashtag candy, hashtag soda, hashtag friends, hashtag fun. However, if something happens that's traumatic within the cinemas, then in service of survival, in that moment, observe, interpret, and we go straight into a survival response, fight-flight-freeze or collapse. You would go straight into action. And then the old map dissolves and all that exists is the new map. And so with this new map, hashtag movies becomes hashtagged in with gun violence, which becomes hashtagged in with popcorn, butter, candy, soda, fun, Marvel movies, friends, the dark, on my hands and knees, gunpowder, gunfire, loud, sudden sounds, screaming, people everywhere, heavy breathing, disoriented, where is the threat? Where is the exit? I can't breathe, I want my mother. And it happens like this [snaps fingers]. And so someone may find themselves at their doctor's office and there's popcorn in the waiting room. Yeah, right, and then there's that pause of silence of what is happening inside of me. I might override it. I might start telling myself, oh, I don't really need to see the doctor. Why am I here? They're not going to help me anyway. Do I really need to be here? I've got other things that I can do. The doctors in the past haven't been that helpful for me. And then you're in the doctor's appointment and you're talking to the doctor, but you're like becoming more and more constricted because there's this sense of frozen terror that's beginning to emerge in the nervous system. And then we convince ourselves out of needing the help that we went there to get. And/or perhaps we may experience the popcorn in the office and then we're out of there. Or perhaps we make it through the entire appointment but we don't remember anything that happened afterwards or remember fragments of it. Yeah, and so this is how traumatic memories become encoded and it happens outside of our conscious awareness. I think social media and armchair psychology has distorted the word trigger, right? That when you have a big emotion or someone causes for a big emotional to arise in you lands upon an old wounding that you got triggered. Yeah, and yes and, right, there's a big response that may be disproportionate, but there are degrees of disproportionate response to the stimulus. And at the far end of being trauma triggered is, you are totally unaware of what has triggered you. You are totally unaware that you've been triggered and you walk through life in a little bit of a dissociative haze. Yeah, where you're more present than at other times and it can be a real struggle. And so here is where I name the trauma is inescapability from overwhelming stress. Therefore, trauma is not mental illness. Trauma is mental injury. Trauma is mental injury. And so we now pivot towards some clinical applications. And in this section, we'll unpack the window of capacity for mapping the autonomic nervous system. And so the window of capacity is also known as the window of tolerance or the window of arousal. I prefer to call it the window of capacity. I prefer to use words such as what is your capacity or what is bandwidth. Tolerance invokes that sense of overriding. And we already do an inordinate amount of overriding of information from the nervous system. I tend not to use the word arousal because I have too many clients who are sexual assault survivors and the word arousal can be hashtagged in with traumatic events and experiences of the past that continue to live into the present moment. So window of capacity. So as you can see, this comes from the diagram that we used earlier around exploring what trauma does to the nervous system. And so here we'll just get rid of the fancy nervous system words, yeah? I really encourage the Befriending the Nervous System courses that are available out there. There are many of them. They will help you to learn the various expressions of the various branches of the autonomic nervous system. However, for now, and perhaps for many of your patients and clients, it may be easier to use words such as too much energy. And how do you know when you're experiencing too much energy? What happens in your body? What thoughts do you start to have? What happens in terms of emotions that arise? What happens to your capacity or your bandwidth? How do you know when you've crossed a threshold into survival mode? How do you know for you? And what would other people say? What feedback would other people offer in regards to noticing when you're in survival energy mode or when you are in too much energy mode? How do you know when you are experiencing too little energy? When the lights are on but no one's home, what are your thoughts that loop? What is happening in your body at the autonomic nervous system level. your heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, appetite. What is happening for you emotionally? And what happens for you when you cross that threshold into survival immobilization for resource conservation? How do you know that you're there? And then how do you when when you're in the middle of the window, when there's optimal energy? When you're experiencing safety, socialness and social engagement, as well as being engaged in this present moment, effortlessly. Where there's the capacity to think and feel simultaneously without overwhelm, the capacity for self-reflection and perspective taking, the capability for patience and empathy and compassion. You're not shoulding yourself into being more patient. You're not shoulding yourself in to being more empathetic or compassionate. There's a capacity for connection with self and connection with others. There's the capacity for curiosity, wonder or an imagination. This is where the state of your nervous system drives your story about the world, your autonomic nervous system story, as well as the thoughts, as well your emotions. And so this is where I invite you to map your own nervous system, to encourage your clients to map their own nervous system. How do they know where they are on their window of capacity? What are the practices that help you to stay in the middle of the window? What are the practices that other people can support you with, so we go beyond self-care and we talk about community care. We perhaps like to talk about non-negotiable self- care that cause for you to have more ventral capacity. What causes for you to move towards the edges of your window, either up or down and then what causes you to leave your window? And here's the other question. When you are at the edges of your window, whether it's too much energy or too little energy, what are the practices or resources that can help you to complete the stress response cycle, that can help you to experience co-regulation perhaps, that can help to resource you, to help you, to bring you back into the window of capacity. And then when you are, outside outside outside the window all together. What is helpful for you there? And this is where all answers are totally okay. Having worked in addiction recovery for 10 years, addiction now makes sense because behaviors of coping are behaviors of trying to manage a nervous system that is pendulating wildly between hyper and/or hypoarousal. And so here's the thing, when there has been action in rage, panic, or terror, it's hard to experience action in safety. And for some of us, when they have been action, in rage panic or terror we try to resource ourselves with action in connection that facilitates relative safety and relative connection. I think about my veterans who ride motorbikes together or go whitewater rafting together. It's meeting the nervous system where it's at before we start to reshape the nervous system slowly over time. When there has been terror in stillness, futility or impotence in stillness, then it's hard to experience safety in stillness. And so we can only rest for so long before we then become propelled into action again. And yet for some of us, stillness is how we survived. And so this can be our home away from home. So the whiff of the sniff of action. We can only do that for so long before in service of survival, we need to remove ourselves from the dinner party that has too many people here now. And that's okay. We can have art groups or poetry readings or sitting around a fire or a heating source at a bookstore with other people so that we can experience relative safety in relative connection, in relative stillness with others. And so here is where I encourage me search and we search and research. There are many, many podcasts, YouTube videos, flip charts, books about befriending the nervous system and about worksheets and maps to help befriend the autonomic nervous system. And so we start to bring things home, right, with state creates story in a bit more detail. When we map the autonomic nervous system, we're mapping where we are and how we know where we are because where we are in our nervous system generates our story about ourselves and about the world around us. So let's unpack this in some detail. Before we go there, here you see a truncated image of the window of capacity. And here you see the branches of the nervous system as I've illustrated them thus far. And here is where I offer some information that can shift things for us. So when I was in graduate school, I learned that the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous system operated impaired antagonism. It's like a teeter-totter, or your foot is on the gas pedal or on the brake pedal. You can only be in rest and digest or fight, flight, freeze. It's one or the other. And learning about polyvagal theory has shifted many things for me and the largest shift intellectually was learning that the nervous system actually operates along a continuum, allowing for blended autonomic nervous system states. So I'll illustrate. So we'll move parasympathetic over to one side. So here we have the blended autonomic nervous system state where there is some ventral tone and some sympathetic tone. And we have the autonomic system state where there some ventral capacity and some dorsal tone. And then if you visualize this as a circle or a loop, then there's also the blended autonomic nervous system state where dorsal and sympathetic also overlap. And I'll give this to you in images. So we have here sympathetic and ventral, with relative safety and relative connection in action. So the heart is beating faster, yeah, when we're playing with friends, when we're engaging with work, and when we start to edge into increased sympathetic activation, unsafety, that's when we begin to feel the manic, frantic overwhelm of distress. And crossing the threshold means that we're now in full sympathetic of fight flight. And when sympathetic and dorsal blend, we have the high freeze, the tonic immobility of the bunny rabbit or the deer in the headlights. And then when we have ventral and dorsal overlapping, we have this stillness in safety and connection that facilitates chest feeding, that facilitates love making. We can just be with each other and not do anything with each other other than breathe. We see here the lion cub in the lion's mouth. And yet, when there is unsafety, we have the overwhelm of collapse and defeat, which then crosses a threshold into immobilization in service of resource conservation, the mouse in the cat's mouth. And so here we pull this forward and I've color coded the branches of the nervous system if that's helpful for you. As we explore state create story. The story of disconnection is that "I am and the world is" dot dot dot fill in the blank. And this may help you with your autonomic nervous system map. The story of protection, I am dot dot, the world is dot dot dot. The story of connection. I am dot dot dot, the world is dot dot. So I'll give you some examples and I'll give you a concrete example. So the story of protection is I'm all alone. I have to do this by myself. Everyone's out to get me. I can't trust anyone and you better get out of my way and you're either on my side or you're not. Can you see how my eyes just dialed in on you? My jaw tensed. My voice came forward, my face came forward my body came forward. I am driven and there is a narrowed field of vision. The story of connection, ah and the voice changes, the story of connection is that I am supported in this world and there are people who will help me and I have the capacity to reach out for that help. Sometimes things go my way and sometimes they don't, but making a mistake doesn't mean that I am a mistake. And I can hold myself in the esteem that other people hold myself in. And those people do exist, whether I actually know them or not. And I can have at it again. And I have choice. I have so many choices available to me. The voice is different, the body language is different. The eyes are different, there is so much that has shifted. The story of disconnection. I don't know why I even bother, I am such a loser. I don't get it. I don't know why I even bother trying to get it, I just should go hide under my rock. I wish that this would all be over really soon. Notice my body language. Notice my voice. Notice the eyes closed. I am totally turning inwards. My voice can't travel very far. I'm a bit meh. So here is a specific scenario. Oh, I'll give you the scenario. The scenario is I went to study for an exam and it was gonna be a four hour exam. It was during the pandemic and I needed to get on a plane to travel to another city to take this exam during the pandemic. The story of protection, the sympathetic branch of the nervous system says kill or be killed. I must nail this or it is the end for me. The story of disconnection says, I can't do this. I can't, it's just too much. I can't do this, I get to the airport, get on a plane, get from the plane to the other, the place, sit a four hour exam, get in a cab, get back to like I did, blah, just no. The story of too much energy says, I'm gonna slice this and dice this and get each part of the journey done. And I'm going to slice and dice every single piece of this journey so that I can get it done. A story of too little energy. This is all too overwhelming. I'm just gonna get COVID and die. I don't know why I bother. I'll just take the hit of losing my exam fee. I'm a failure anyway. These last 10 years of my life have been a waste. The story of connection. How curious. I get to travel during a pandemic to sit a four hour exam that I don't need to pass. I wonder how I can resource myself in order to succeed, and I wonder who can help me. So state creates story. If we shift the state of our nervous system, we can shift our story about ourselves and about the world. The invitation for you, my friends, is to become a nervous system whisperer, to begin to pay attention to yourself, to invite your clients to engage in the me search so that they can begin to get to know. how they know where they are in their nervous system. Because being able to slowly reshape your nervous system over time through befriending your nervous system is how we start to gain a sense of confidence and competence and a sense of mastery over our internal world that has previously not been within our realms of capacity to be curious about or to exert any effective action around. And so here is where I, I want to end by shaking the body, shake, shake shake, making sound. If you like you can do a high five, you do a high five in the other direction, you can do a high 10, you can do a high five. Maybe out to the sides, and perhaps you may like to experiment with the shape of joy. If you like, you can bring the shoulders up, raise the elbows. and forearms out. And notice what emerges for you. Yeah. If you like you can do that again, roll the shoulders open, elbows lift, forearms out. And then from here, I offer you a high five for being here and for committing yourself to this work. I will see you around.