How to stop playing it safe and get out of protection, hypervigilance and anxiety
“ The social idea that we need to “stay safe” undermines resilience. Trying to stay safe all the time only keeps us locked in a hypervigilant state of protection and anxiety. ”
- Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Episode 157
How to stop playing it safe and get out of protection, hypervigilance and anxiety
We are working our way through 5 categories of health with our Cat 5 challenge and today we’re diving into category 4 the nervous system. Last week we discussed the overlap of the nervous system and sleep and how we’re looking for ways to help the body feel safe enough to be able to relax into that parasympathetic so we can rest and be close to other people. Today I want to discuss how playing it safe ALL the time can actually keep you in a state of protection, hypervigilance and anxiety.
The body is constantly on some level of alert even when you’re feeling completely calm. If we’re conscious our nervous system is activated. Now it might be in very positive engaged ways like excitement, joy or fun competition. Or maybe it’s negative like a conflict at work, a looming deadline or an acute injury. Everything along the spectrum of human experience activates the nervous system in some way. It’s how we interpret those experiences that have the most influence. That is one of the ways we build resilience. By doing things that activate and challenge our nervous system, recovering from that activation and learning that we can do hard things. It’s in the recovery and returning to our baseline where that resilience lives physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
The next time we’re exposed to something that challenges us it's easier to respond.
So if the cultural and societal interpretation of an experience is that it is somehow unsafe now our own personal security system has to decide the truth of that. Uncertainty is always threatening.
That’s why we’re still dealing with the stress and trauma of Covid. Throughout the pandemic we were asked to isolate, mask and social distance. Lock down, shut down and retreat. We were being asked to look at everyone else as threatening to our health and safety and convinced that we ourselves were a threat to others. Government, was passing laws to reinforce those ideas all in the name of “staying safe” and every single one of them was rooted in uncertainty because no one, even the scientists and medical community knew what was going on at the time.
At the same time there was an idea that showed up on college campuses called “safe spaces” where supposedly you could go to never be offended or something like that. As if anyone who thinks or acts or lives or looks or speaks different from you is a threat that you need to protect yourself from so here is a little bubble for you to live in.
Can we all agree how crazy that sounds?
In pain care and trauma informed spaces, when we work with people whose nervous systems are constantly under assault from chronic pain, illness, PTSD, anxiety or depression, we try to give the body more evidence of safety in order to allow the NS to shift out of that hypervigilant state long enough to feel something new. To replace that automatic, faster than lightning stress response. Everytime we are able to do that, the brain and body learns that maybe it isn’t under threat. Maybe it CAN come down for a bit. In the process we get to give the brain new meanings for the sensations we're experiencing and replace protection with presence.
The social idea that we need to “stay safe” undermines resilience. Trying to stay safe all the time only keeps us locked in a hypervigilant state of protection and anxiety.
What we should be striving for is to teach ourselves and our children how to handle the physical, mental and emotional sensations that come up in normal day to day life. So when big bad capital T traumatic things do happen we can meet them with true resilience.
I’m talking about self regulation. Most of us have never been taught this with any intentionality. We do learn it though. It shows up in how we eat, how we treat ourselves and others, how we arrange our work life, the kinds of hobbies we have, whether we use drugs or alcohol, the choices we make.
Anxiety and depression are a leading cause of self harm among our teenagers these days. People are blaming social media. And yes, social media is a problem. But it’s just another thing that makes us feel things. It has an influence. When I was a teenager it was magazines and music lyrics. But those were not as intrusive as social media is today because of how we live in this virtual world. That isn’t going to change any time soon.
But what can change is how we learn to self regulate or that we do at all.
So if we want to build resilience we can’t play safe all the time. We need to push and stretch our comfort zones a little bit and actually practice self regulation in the wild. To play a little with the butterflies in our stomach. I heard someone once say that we need to get those butterflies flying in formation.
Here’s how we can start that process using the ABC’s of resilience. Awareness, Boundaries, and Connection.
Step out of your box. (Awareness) Try something that you’re not sure you can do and be ok with being bad at it. This hits on a lot of things. Our fear of failure. Our fear of being wrong. Our perfectionist defense mechanisms. Our fear of being embarrassed. All of those things look threatening to the nervous system and feel unsafe in the body.
Leverage expectations. (Boundaries) The beauty of this exercise is that when you do something scary that you choose you can let yourself have some expectations about it. If I decide I’m going to step out of my comfort zone and learn how to belly dance, I can be pretty sure that I’m going to feel foolish for the first few weeks or maybe months. Maybe. Maybe it will test my patience. Maybe I’ll have to meet new people. Maybe it will be physically hard. Now If I have all those expectations, some are going to be right and some will be wrong.
Correct the hypothesis (Connection) So the resilience happens when the brain and nervous system make those adjustments. They make new connections and unlearn old ones ( not in real time, that part happens when you sleep) Because the brain is an incredible meaning maker it will let those new meanings in and replace some old ones have some influence going forward.
But NOT stepping out of that comfort zone only reinforces the meanings we already have ingrained in our thought patterns, physical behaviors and emotional reactions. It doesn't keep us any safer, it only makes us less resilient. Less able to handle the tough stuff that life throws at us.
Gabor Mate said
“Safety isn’t the absence of threat. It’s the presence of connection.”
That connection starts within ourselves.
So give it a go. What do you have to lose except all that hypervigilance and anxiety?
Next week we’ll wrap up our 5 Category series with an expanded discussion on Connection beyond our own body.
Thanks for listening! If you like what you heard and you want to learn more you can find all the show notes as well as links to our Cat 5 challenge tracker and other free resilience resources at Savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin.
Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
Savage Grace Coaching is all about bringing resilience and burnout recovery. Especially for overwhelmed entrepreneurs, creators and coaches in the fitness industry.
Schedule a free consultation call to see if my brand of actionable accountability is right for you and your business.