Can't Regulate Your Nervous System? Here's the Mistake Most of Us Are Making
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Can't Regulate Your Nervous System?
When we feel anxious, overwhelmed, triggered, or upset, it makes complete sense that we want to feel better. This is one of the reasons nervous system regulation can be so powerful. Sometimes a few minutes of grounding, breathing, Havening, or another regulating practice really can help the body settle and give us the relief we need.
But sometimes, without realizing it, we begin using regulation for a different purpose: to make our feelings go away.
And this can create a frustrating paradox. When something real is happening inside us and our immediate response is I don't want to feel this. How do I make it stop?, we can end up creating even more internal stress around the original feeling. What began as an attempt to care for ourselves can quietly become another way of resisting our own experience.
This matters because our difficult feelings aren't always simply uncomfortable states that need to be calmed. Sometimes they're carrying something that needs our attention.
For example, anxiety may be connected to a protective part of us that learned to stay vigilant. A surprisingly big reaction may be touching an old wound or belief. Anger may be telling us that something important doesn't feel right.
Our emotions can be one of the ways deeper parts of us communicate with us.
And if we only know how to quiet those feelings, we may never get close enough to understand what they're trying to tell us.
In this episode of The How of Healing, I'm exploring this subtle difference between regulating our emotions and trying to regulate them away, and how somatic emotional processing and body-centered parts work can help us develop a very different relationship with what we feel.
Sometimes the next step is learning how to stay with what we're feeling instead of immediately trying to make it go away. When we can turn toward our emotions and listen to what's underneath them, we can begin working with the deeper wounds and patterns that need healing.
Listen to the full episode to learn about the regulation mistake so many of us make, and what can help us go deeper.
Episode timing:
00:00 - Why Nervous System Regulation Isn’t Working
02:23 - When Nervous System Regulation Becomes Emotional Suppression
04:40 - How Resisting Your Emotions Can Keep You Dysregulated
11:13 - When Your Feelings Need to Be Heard
12:57 - Somatic Emotional Processing for Deeper Healing
You're invited to join me for The Secret Wisdom of Your Triggers, a free training on how meeting our triggers with compassion helps us heal our core issues instead of just managing them.
In this powerful 75-minute training, you’ll:
Learn to heal your core issues in a loving and integrated way.
Discover the roots of your triggers in the subconscious mind.
Gain profound insights into the conflicts and repeating patterns in your life.
Massively increase your self-compassion and self-understanding.
Learn the 3 biggest emotional mistakes you’re making that are keeping you stuck and spinning.
Have you ever noticed yourself trying to regulate a difficult feeling away?
What might change if, instead of immediately trying to make that feeling disappear, you became curious about what it might need?
Please let me know in the comments!
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And please join me every Friday on this beautiful journey out of your head and into your more embodied and authentic self. 🩷🩷🩷
Thanks so much for joining me today!
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Enjoy more like this: Somatic Emotional Processing, Parts Work Meditations
About me
Hey, I’m Karena!
I’m a somatic emotional healing coach here to help you quickly identify and heal the subconscious blocks, old emotional wounds and self-sabotaging core beliefs that are holding you back!
Want to go deeper? Join me for The Secret Wisdom of Your Triggers!
Are you ready to understand your emotions, patterns, and struggles in a deep and compassionate way (plus make real change in your life)?