Next time you’re overwhelmed, ask: “What does my nervous system need right now?” ( Hint: It’s probably safety, rest, or connection.) #SelfRegulation #TraumaTools
"So someone who experiences the too much too fast or not enough for too long, their nervous system is likely to be more reactive to their environment. We'll stick with my example of something hitting the window and startling me. A traumatized nervous system will experience something like that. Oh, I hear this loud sound. And the nervous system is gonna become, like the sympathetic nervous system is going to, and I'm simplifying this a little bit. It's gonna be different in everybody's system, but in a traumatized nervous system, what we're likely to see is that sympathetic dominance come on. People often refer to this as your fight-flight response. You know, we also see freeze as a function of that. That often gets left out of the equation when we're talking about activation, but freeze is part of activation as well, that we'll see that the person becomes highly activated and even once the stimuli has ended, so there's no longer a sound at the window, I can look and see there's no one out there, even after the threat or the perceived threat has been alleviated, the system does not settle."
💬 Discussion
Next time you’re overwhelmed, ask: “What does my nervous system need right now?” ( Hint: It’s probably safety, rest, or connection.) #SelfRegulation #TraumaTools