How's your relationship to your emotions?

Hey there,

This is from the mini-series “Reset your nervous system” by Alex Howard.

“When we disconnect from our emotions we dysregulate our nervous system to do so.” Alex Howard.

How we disconnect:

• Avoidance and distraction - staying so busy we don’t have time to feel or focus on others needs/feelings.

• State changes - using externals to change how we feel emotionally- sex, drugs, alcohol.

• Analysis - over analyzing and intellectualizing your feelings rather than feeling them.

• Blaming others - blaming the outside world for your feelings.

• Empath - take on other people’s feelings and feel them as their own.

• Somatising - unconsciously expressing your emotions as physical symptoms (when we’re out of touch with our emotions they have to go somewhere).

Here’s what a healthy relationship with your emotions looks like:

• Feel them - but don’t get stuck in them

• Emotions are like waves in the ocean - they flow through us

• All emotions are welcome but we have appropriate boundaries of what is expressed (when and where)

• Feeling emotions - not vomiting emotions

People need to be very safe to feel. Many have been shut down for years. If you find it hard to feel things, your nervous system could be shut down. (It does this to protect you). But it causes issues if it’s shut down too long.

You can’t think your way to a feeling of safety, you have to feel your way.

The sequence of steps to deal with our emotions matters. You can’t process your emotions when your system is dysregulated.

When your stress is heightened it affects many parts: Immune response, sleep, inflammation, gut, hormones, energy, cognition.

Stress doesn’t only affect your energy but it blocks your body’s ability to heal itself.

Your nervous system is the connection between the mind and the body.  

5 steps to RESET the nervous system:

1. Recognise - what state is your system in? Safe, fight or flight, freeze.

2. Examine - how is this state being created?

3. Stop - unhelpful thought patterns and rewire your brain

4. Emotions - connect to, process and heal underlying emotions

5. Transform - your relationship to yourself and your body

Your relationship with yourself affects everything.

What I’ve learned is how important the nervous system is, and when I’m dysregulated I’m not my best self.

The key is to be aware of the state you're in and to take the time to regulate yourself. Tools I use are breathing exercises, meditation, journaling and examining what’s going on inside of me. To step away until I get back to calm before anything else. That’s the hardest part I have found. I know this stuff and it’s really hard to walk away, shut my mouth and tend to my inner feelings. And I am committed to getting better at this!

All my love,

K 💛