Sometimes self-care can take a bit of a dive in the winter freeze. I can feel lazy and disinterested and for me, winter is the perfect time to procrastinate! From earlier conversations, we know that procrastination solves a problem. For example, I'm finding it hard to finish some projects that I want to share, but my inner perfectionist is doubting their value. So procrastination is helping me avoid looking at what's holding me back. And that feels pretty comfortable - at first? But I am definitely feeling an itch to break out of this winter freeze! So I'm grateful for the spring energy trying to wake me from this frozen place. I've talked to many people lately who say they have felt more deeply frozen over these last few stressful and uncertain years, and they don't know how to get out of it. And those that have been able to re-energize and come back into life with connection and creativity have all said that regular self-care was essential to support a shift from frozen to enthusiastically exploring new possibilities. This creates a foundation for renewal.
In times of upheaval and uncertainty, we can get stuck navigating the demands of our daily life. We keep going without dealing with stress as it comes up. Then something happens, even a small thing, and we lose it! How does stress and overwhelm show up for you? Are you binge eating to soothe your nervous system and find some happy brain chemicals? Are you running from one task to the other without finishing anything? Are you sleeping all the time, or are you awake all night? Are you on your last nerve? Our nervous systems are elegant and sophisticated when they function as they are meant to. We have a variety of defensive states that keep us safe. We go into fight/flight when in danger, and this is essential for our survival. But we can't maintain that over-activated state, so when our stress bucket overflows we go into freeze, which protects us from the overwhelm. This is what's called functional freeze. When both of our defensive systems are activated, we have one foot on the fight/flight gas pedal but the other foot is on the brake of our freeze response. and we have no capacity to process the inevitable daily ups and downs of life. And even worse, we have no capacity to be present and engage in life as creative and capable human beings. We are hard wired for connection, creativity and joy, and yet we are so overloaded that this can feel like a distant dream. So what can we do? We can make self care a priority, even if it is only one small thing at a time. In my own journey to find relief, I discovered the obvious: we need to empty that stress bucket regularly and not simply hide from it when it overflows. Which is what many of us learned to do at an early age. My work with Conscious EFT has given me a framework that works along a spectrum: - Emotional First Aid and Symptom Management starts to empty the stress bucket and help us deal with the inevitable daily ups and downs of life. This is called self regulation.
- Working to build capacity in the nervous system to create a place that is grounded, safe and connected creates a space we can return to in moments of stress to shift the energy towards peace and calm. This is our place of renewal and it brings us resilience.
- Once we can self regulate and build a foundation for resilience, we can then explore things that hold us back. We find new perspectives on limiting patterns and beliefs and can take steps to transform our lives in ways that support our deepest longings.
To help support the spring wake up call, I am excited to be offering some new workshops. I'm just organizing this now and will share links my next newsletter for a session on Emotional First Aid and how to come back to centre.
And I'm even more excited to be joining my colleague Candace Fox for a new series of Self-Regulation Reset: AD[H]D and Binge Eating. Info and registration link for this is below. I hope to see you there!
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