We live in a world that values/celebrates a culture of stress. A society where reacting with too much emotion, where standing up and defending yourself, voicing a different opinion or rocking the boat in anyway is risky behavior. A society that insists we shrink ourselves to fit in it’s boxes instead of finding bigger boxes.

This has led to a systemic detraining of our natural responses to both real and perceived threat. That detraining becomes the foundation of dysfunctional patterned responses to all forms of stress.

The result of the 24/7 news cycle is that we can be constantly bombarded by negative, violent and abusive content. Even if that content isn’t directed at us. The unintended consequences of consuming too much of that content can result in the equivalent of an assault on our nervous system that could range from subtle, chronic worry to outright trauma.

Perhaps you’ve felt it? Debilitating fear, anxiety, panic that comes out of nowhere and knocks you sideways. The people around you can’t understand it and you can’t explain it or rationalize it. Once you’re in the middle of it you can’t talk yourself out of it. You live in fear of the feeling of fear because you’re not exactly sure where it’s coming from.

That’s where Sarah was before she discovered trauma release exercise and the power of the tremor mechanism. I sat down with her to find out more about how TRE changed her life. This is Sarah’s story.

In this episode we go beyond habit change and explore what it takes to disrupt the patterns (samskaras) that we hold to keep us safe. We develop patterns of movement, thought and emotion to keep ourselves safe. It's those patterns that run beneath all our behaviors and habits. If we want to change anything we need to start by disrupting those patterns.

I want to share my Insider's Guide to How the Body Perceives Stress to help you understand how your emotional response and stress response are connected through the body. Because chronic, toxic levels of stress can affect not only our mental and emotional health but our physical health as well.

You’re the special order, life is the delivery truck and resilience is the bubble wrap. It’s there to cushion the blow, not to prevent the blow. The stronger your resilience, the thicker that buffer around you, the easier it is for you to recover from being kicked around the back of a truck or tossed on the front porch.

If this year has taught us one thing it’s that we need to learn to handle stress better. And we could all use a thicker layer of that bubble wrap.