How are You Inhabiting Your Body?

by Sallie Norquist, PhD | Sep 16, 2018

How are You Inhabiting Your Body?

Have you ever noticed that people who feel good about themselves carry themselves such that you instantly know it? This is so true that you can tell by watching someone how they are feeling about themselves in that moment. We all subconsciously notice people’s posture, and it influences how we respond to them.

People who are feeling good about themselves carry themselves with a lifted open chest, a ready smile, and a look in the eyes that lets you know they are present in the moment.

People who do not feel good about themselves tend to chronically carry a posture that includes sunken shoulders and chests, down cast or vacant eyes, and a non-existent smile.

Try to notice what your own habitual posture is. Not only are you unconsciously sending messages to others (through your posture) about how to respond to you, your habitual body posture is influencing as well as reflecting your mood.

By consciously changing your posture, you can have a positive influence on your inner state.

Sitting up straight has been found to reinforce self-confidence, support the recall of positive memories, and serve as a useful coping mechanism for stress. Slouching, on the other hand, appears to encourage the recall of negative memories, and to support feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, fear, dullness and lethargy.

Armed with this knowledge, you can “fake it until you make it” by consciously taking a posture that will improve both your mood and your self-confidence.

Practical Tip: A trick for improving your mood

The next time you want to shift your mood, try shifting your posture. Even if you do not want to smile, you will find that consciously putting a smile on your face, and carrying yourself with an upright open-chested, shoulders back stance will change your mood for the better. Don’t take my work for it. Try it and see for yourself!

Are You Fully Inhabiting Your Body?

Strange as it may seem, many people are living their lives not fully “grounded” and in their bodies. By this I mean that often people have subconsciously learned to live with awareness only in certain parts of their bodies. This is a coping skill generally carried over from an earlier stressful time in life or learned in early relationships.

For example, it is not uncommon for people to operate solely from their heads, having shut out their awareness of the rest of their body. When I ask what is going on in the rest of their body they draw a blank. They have closed themselves off from the wealth of awareness and wisdom that is potentially theirs from being fully present and aware in their whole body.

One common way of coping with life is to (subconsciously) shut out awareness of things that are uncomfortable. This shut out awareness could be a reality or truth that is alarming, people’s feelings (or lack of feelings) towards you, a lack of safety (emotionally, sexually or physically), or feelings of helplessness or inadequacy. Psychologists call this coping mechanism “denial”.

What is not generally noticed however is how denial also shows up somatically, in terms of shutting down any body awareness of potentially disturbing information.

When you “protect” yourself from conscious awareness of information that could be disturbing, it often expresses itself through body symptoms.

How comfortably and thoroughly do you inhabit your body, listen to your body’s wisdom, and feel the inner strength and relief that comes from being able to see and hear that which you may have been avoiding?

PRACTICAL TIP

The next time you have an uncomfortable or unusual body sensation, I encourage you to take some time out to see if this sensation is your body’s way of clueing you in to certain information that you are not aware of or listening to.

Start the process by relaxing your muscles, feeling the weight of your body being held up by your chair, and consciously bringing your awareness into your whole body (see my post on “grounding”).

Now bring your awareness in the form of a gentle curiosity to the body sensation that has caught your attention. Please try to refrain from trying to change this sensation with your mind or your will. This process involves respectful non judgmental listening and paying attention to the body sensation, as if you were sitting down with a friend to listen to her as she shares her deepest thoughts and feelings.

Your body has information that it can only share with you if you take the time to listen attentively. See if you can “see” what the shape of the sensation is. Does it have a movement? a color? a thickness? or a feeling associated with it?

Keep it company, so to speak, and ask it if it has anything it wants you to know. Listen attentively. The answers may come in images, understandings, words, or inner shifts. Or there may be no answer until a later time. This is a listening process, not a doing or fixing process.

Many of my clients find that after engaging in this process, the original sensation shifts and changes and becomes less intense. (see E. Gendlin, Focusing 1982).

With increased awareness of that which you have been avoiding you are empowered to make conscious decisions about how you want to process and respond to it. Ultimately, the releasing of this restricted awareness allows more ease and joy to flow in your life.

“Grounding” a Technique for Calm and Presence

by Sallie Norquist, PhD | Jun 28, 2018

“Grounding” a Technique for Calm and Presence

by Sallie Norquist, PhD | Jun 28, 2018

“Grounding” a Technique for Calm and Presence

The Grounding Exercise is a somatically-oriented audio guided imagery exercise [ Link ] that I teach my clients for those times when a few deep breaths are not enough. It is very effective for many of my clients in learning to bring themselves into a calmer, more centered and more present place.

“Grounding” is a 10 minute recorded exercise that you can learn to do for yourself whenever you are experiencing your own version of fight-flight-freeze. This is an audio version of this exercise:

“Grounding” a Technique for Calm and Presence

by Sallie Norquist, PhD

One of the first things I teach my clients is how to recognize when they are in an over-aroused, fight-flight neurological state, and what they can do to settle their nervous system so they can consider their current dilemma with more clarity and perspective.

You can also learn to do this. When you are clearly in a hyped up, vigilant, angry, anxious, racing or otherwise neurologically over-aroused state, take a moment to notice what physiological symptoms you are experiencing in that moment.

This might be heat that is rising, a racing feeling, tension in particular areas of your body, jumbled thoughts, sweaty palms, or anything else. You might even notice that you are so in your thoughts that you are not even aware of what is going on in your body.

As mentioned in my previous post under this category, the goal is for you to “red flag” these physiological sensations as a sign that you are in a neurologically overactivated state. After becoming aware of this state, put your finger on a mental “pause button” and take a long deep breath.

This long deep breath serves two purposes. It is relaxing to the nervous system, and it gives you a chance to step into a bigger awareness, and consciously decide how you want to respond to whatever is going on in the moment that has you over-activated.

We all have times when a few deep breaths are not enough however, and we need to take a time-out to calm ourselves. This is when the Grounding Exercise can be very helpful.

The trick to this exercise is to focus on and augment the kinesthetic experience of heaviness. In this exercise, it is important to focus on the experience of the weight of your body on the couch, chair or bed and to really allow yourself to feel the waves of relaxation as you let your muscles melt into a heavy, letting-go sensation.

Eventually the sensations of heaviness you experience in this exercise create a biofeedback loop triggering a release from the fight-flight mode. Heavy relaxed muscles are not neurologically associated with danger, hence the somatic shift towards relaxation. A spontaneous deep breath is the body’s sign that it has physiologically recognized that you are no longer in danger.

This short mindfulness exercise can be done while lying down, and even when standing and walking. Grounding yourself while walking involves bringing awareness to the sensation of being supported and held up by the Earth; the left side of your body as you step forward with the left foot, and the right side of your body as you step forward with the right foot.

You can even bring this awareness into your day when you are standing, just by shifting your awareness to the sensation of your legs, and your whole body being held up and supported by the Earth.

At night, when you are lying in your bed, try shifting your awareness to your body being held up by the bed, moving slowly and mindfully from your feet to your calves, to your buttocks, your back, and the back of your skull.

The key is to slow down, and concentrate your awareness on the sensations you are experiencing in the body part you are focusing on.

This exercise helps you to experience a palpable sensation of heaviness and relaxation that you can deepen with practice. Neurologically, it is a very satisfying and nurturing experience, perhaps akin to how a baby feels being held securely in loving arms.

Be patient with yourself as you are learning to access this deeply relaxed and present state. If you are used to living in a vigilant state of heightened neurological arousal, a 30% reduction in your fight/flight mode is clearly great progress. This is progress you can build on over time.

This Grounding Exercise is a platform for bringing more body awareness, balance, and mindfulness into your life. As such, it has many additional benefits, including:

-You will find that time slows down when you are “grounded”.

-You can enjoy moments with your children more fully and deeply because it is easier to be more deeply present.

-You will develop more of a conscious awareness of and connection with what is going on in your body. This allows you to notice when your fight-flight symptoms are triggered, and to take care of yourself before you are fully engaged in the survival mode.

This “grounded” state is restorative physiologically as well as emotionally. It can become a sweet moment that supports you during your busy day.

The “Grounding Exercise” is for you to use whenever you feel the need for more calm and clarity in the moment. Please feel free to play with the imagery and wording in this exercise, mentally adding to it according to what works best for you.

Anxiety? Neurologically it is all about Survival

by Sallie Norquist, PhD | Apr 8, 2018

Anxiety? Neurologically it is all about Survival

This section of my blog is an educational, and “how to” section on managing anxiety, whether it is about your children, or anything else you encounter in life.

My last post in this category discussed the importance of learning to manage your own anxiety so that you can be clear-headed, present and as calm as possible in attending to your children’s emotional needs. This is particularly difficult to do if you have experienced early and chronic fearful, chaotic, neglectful, or traumatic situations in your own lives.

If your children are experiencing anything that leads you to fear for their emotional or physical safety (illness, abuse, disability, bullying, etc.), it can exacerbate this earlier smoldering anxiety, triggering you neurologically to shift into fight or flight (survival) mode. As you can imagine, this is not the best state for parenting or for living life, unless there is actual danger at hand.

It is common to be living life in survival mode and not even know it. If life has always felt this way, it is easy to assume that this is what life is supposed to feel like.

In this post I’d like to help you to become more aware of your own personal signs that you are operating in survival mode. Having this awareness and being able to “red flag” it will empower you in learning to be more in control of your emotional reactions. Future posts will focus on ways to sooth your nervous system, and bring yourself out of survival mode once you have “red flagged” the signs that you are in it.

Knowing when you are in survival mode is a powerful first step in learning to manage it.

Symptoms of Survival Mode

I’m sure you are familiar with the concept of “Fight or Flight.” It is the mammalian part of your neurological system that is triggered when you perceive that your survival (or your off-spring’s survival) is at stake. This perception of danger can occur subliminally, subconsciously and habitually, without your conscious awareness. In moments of actual danger, this reaction can be lifesaving.

If your prior experiences of a lack of safety (emotionally and environmentally, as well as physically) have been chronic and unpredictable, you can unconsciously be living in this primed-for-action survival mode even when your safety is no longer at stake. If you are accustomed to living life in a vigilant, alert, and quick to run or to fight state, survival mode is a part of the fabric of your everyday life. (As food for thought, please note that for humans, “running and fighting” behaviors are much more varied and complex than our non-human mammal predecessors, and do not necessarily involve physical activity!) .

There is a third, less well known aspect to survival mode. It is the polar opposite of a fight or flight state. Akin to the under-aroused physiological state of the prey that “plays dead” when the predator is upon them, it has been labeled the “freeze” response. This third aspect of survival mode is particularly evident if there is both a lack of safety and a feeling of helplessness to do anything about it. The “freeze” response creates symptoms that are quite different then the fight or flight mode.

So, we have Fight-Flight-Freeze as characteristic over and under-aroused neurological responses to danger (actual or feared, known or unknown). In learning to manage your anxiety it is important to be able to identify when you are experiencing both under and over-aroused neurological activation symptoms.

Knowing your own go-to symptoms is a vital tool in managing your emotional state. It empowers you to consciously choose to do something to bring yourself out of survival mode, empowering you to respond with greater clarity, awareness and perspective to the current situation.

In contrast, in survival mode, you are usually unconsciously reacting to dangers that have long past. Living in survival mode has a negative impact on your health (emotionally and physiologically) as well as your interactions with your children, your loved ones, and the world.

Everyone has some survival mode symptoms from time to time. It is the number of symptoms, the amount of time you are in this state during the day, the severity of the symptoms, and the degree to which these symptoms affect your everyday functioning that is important.

Symptoms of over-arousal (fight or flight) include:

Insomnia, chronic physiological tension, startle reactions, panic, anxiety, quick temperedness, excessive anger or aggressiveness, impulsiveness, being easily overwhelmed, hypervigilance, an urge to escape (physically or mentally), distractedness, chronic worrying or obsessing, and trouble concentrating.

Symptoms of under-arousal (freeze) include:

Numbing out, withdrawing, feeling “not there”, fatigue, helplessness and resignation, depression, slow response time, trouble concentrating, shutting down, dissociating, not seeing the obvious, or an inability to acknowledge current reality.

If you struggle with anxiety, or think you are habitually responding to life from survival mode, my suggestion is to take note of your “go to” symptoms from the above list and practice “red flagging” these symptoms when they are occurring. Please be patient with yourself. Your ability to do this will increase bit by bit over time. The goal here is just to increase your conscious awareness of your habitual responses.

“Red flagging” these symptoms empowers you to make more conscious choices in managing your internal state as we move forward with more “how to” posts. The first step is to notice the moments when you are responding to life in survival mode

For now, nonjudgmentally notice the symptom, then mentally hit the pause button and pair it with a few deep breaths. Future posts in this category will include teaching you various methods for managing your internal neurological and emotional state.

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Anxiety About Our Children’s Well-Being

by Sallie Norquist, PhD | Feb 21, 2018

Anxiety About Our Children’s Well-Being

“There really are places in the heart
you don’t even know exist
until you love a child”
Anne Lamott

There are many troubling conditions or situations our children may experience in life. Sometimes these are passing concerns, such as our child’s hurt feelings when he isn’t invited to a birthday party or doesn’t make the sports team. Other concerns are more alarming and chronic, such as developmental disabilities, physical or mental illness, bullying, sexual or emotional abuse, or addiction.

When our children are suffering, it is instinctual to want to do what we can to relieve them from any painful situation they are in. Their pain is also our pain and we want to get rid of it as soon as possible. We strive to protect them from the inevitable hurts and disappointments in life, and to know they are always safe.

A friend of mine aptly expressed this ubiquitous parental vulnerability as akin to having your heart walking around outside your body, unprotected. This is the plight of being a parent. Loving and vulnerability go hand in hand. The deeper the love, the more vulnerable our hearts are.

Certain conditions or situations may trigger especially heightened anxiety about our children’s well-being. The common parental response in these situations is to try to step in and do what we can to fix the situation. The hope is that this will provide the satisfaction of being able to relieve our children of their discomfort, or provide emotional or physical safety while simultaneously assuaging our own angst that they are suffering.

With very young children, with illness, with abuse, and of course with any life-threatening situation this is the most appropriate response on our part.

In many situations, however, stepping in to fix the problem can backfire, and instead reinforce it. When we try to fix it for them, we may relieve ourselves of some anxiety, but we are not supporting our children in developing the abilities and confidence they need to manage their own lives. In stepping in to fix the situation for them we can unwittingly be supporting a ‘victim’ stance and rob them of the satisfaction of being able to help themselves.

Our children need our support, love, guidance, and confidence in their abilities. This is easier to provide for them when we are not overly concerned or anxious about the situation at hand. However, when the alarming situation or condition is chronic and/or potentially life threatening, it is exceptionally difficult to not respond from a state of overwhelming anxiety.

Anxiety-driven responses (and the resulting compulsion to “fix”) emanate from a brain that is dominated by the fight or flight mode. In this mode, we are biologically prepared to respond to real or perceived danger. This state is especially heightened if we feel our child is in danger and s/he is not appearing to be able to manage this situation adequately.

The fight or flight mode is not a measured, thoughtful state. It prepares us to react quickly to danger. It is an impulsive, survival-dominated state, where our behavior is more instinctually and physiologically driven than carefully thought out.

Our ability to think things through, see from a larger perspective, exercise good judgement, and plan out our responses is diminished when we are in this state. Unless there is urgent immediate danger, we can best respond to our children when we are not in fight or flight mode and have access to our ability to think clearly and with perspective.

The problem is that we can become neurologically primed to easily shift into fight or flight mode. When this happens, anxiety becomes a constant companion. The greater the real or imagined danger our children are in, the more often it has occurred, and the more it triggers our own personal history of fight or flight mode experiences, the more strongly we react. This is especially true for anyone with a history of trauma, abuse, neglect, or any other life situation that resulted in a sense of a lack of safety.

Over time, a state of vigilance can start to dominate our responses to life. This can result in chronic anxiety, tension, over-reactions, jumpiness, and insomnia. Not the best state to be in when we are trying to be helpful to our children!

The reality is, the better we are at managing our own inner state, the more helpful we can be to our children.

This “Managing Anxiety” category of my blog will address many ways of learning to regulate your inner state so that you can respond to your child’s needs (as well as everyday life) in the most helpful way possible.

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