Episode 269: Nervous System Regulation: How to Respond to Stress

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Don’t you just want to throw a lemon at someone when they say that? Or maybe you don’t. I know that when you’re in the midst of chaos, sometimes hearing a proverb or whatever that thing is, a saying, an inspirational quote, you’re like, Let me make you some lemonade. Anyways, I’m joking. Sometimes when we’re stressed out, we can make lemonade, but our nervous systems can’t actually handle the stress. And so instead of making lemonade or forcing yourself to make lemonade, you have to actually assess what’s going on and how you’re actually responding to stress. And I’ve had a really great opportunity to notice how I’m responding to stress during the storm named Fern. Nashville, Tennessee got hit bad, really, really bad. And if you were hit bad in the United States with this storm, I’m sending you lots of love. I hope your family is safe. You are safe, your house, your home, your apartment, your condo, wherever it is that you’re living. I hope you are safe and you are warm and you are fed and you are loved. We did not fare well in this storm. We did fare well.

I’m very grateful a tree didn’t fall on our house. I’m very grateful that we have a warm place to stay right now. I’m recording in my studio, and because I’m recording in my studio, we We got to stay here overnight because we don’t have power or electricity at my house, and I don’t honestly know when it is going to be turned back on because a tree fell on our power line, and then it ripped the electrical riser out of our house. And there’s all these things that have to happen before we get power. I’m not going to bore you with the details, but it’s a lot of moving parts, and they all flow into one another, and it’s frustrating. And I don’t want to make lemonade right now, but I’m going to because the spiritual side of this is I get to pause. I get to evaluate how my nervous system is reacting. Am I fighting? Am I taking flight? Or am I freezing? We’re going to do one of those things or we’re going to be regulated. If I’m not regulated, am I fighting? Am I taking flight? Or am I freezing? And it’s also very interesting to see how people around me respond to this.

Freezing looks like a deer in headlights. They’re about to be hit by a car, but they freeze. They can’t move. They don’t know how to move. They physically can’t make themselves move. And then fight. They want to fight. They want to posture. And then flight. Just want to run away from the problem. Numb out. And these are very normal stress responses. And I want to tell you, because they’re normal, you have the opportunity to recognize, this is how I am in this current moment. How can I bring myself back to regulation? Massive regulation. Regulation is key. We do it with the breath. We do it by putting a hand on our heart and our belly, and we just breathe, and we take nice deep breaths in and out, in and out, in and out. And we allow the nervous system, we allow the cortisol. We allow the stress hormone to go down and down and down. We use mantras like, I am safe. Use the gratitude to raise your frequency. And let me tell you, I’m super grateful. We’ve had all sorts of many things to be grateful for, even though these circumstances are happening.

I’m not going to go down the list of all of those things because there’s one more thing I want to share, and I don’t have actually much time to talk on this podcast today because my daughter is home, and I just wanted to have this podcast episode as a dear diary to help me process because this is helping me regulate my nervous system as well because I love sharing things like this with you guys. And I will tell you the spiritual thing about this entire Their experience is the pattern interrupt. This is a massive opportunity to recognize any patterns that you are experiencing because there’s a pattern interrupt in your daily routine. You might go, Amy, I’m not experiencing no power or anything like that, we can invite pattern interrupts into our life. And why do we want a pattern interrupt? Patty interrupt allows the neuropathways in the brain to break the pattern. For example, if you typically eat your food with your right-hand, try eating it with your left hand. It creates a new pathway in the brain that connects it to your new normal. It might feel weird, it might feel uncomfortable, but there’s a pattern interrupt.

And when we have a pattern interrupt in our daily schedule, you get to recognize where you’re numbing out, where you’re taking flight, where you’re freezing, where you’re posturing, because all of that plays into your frequency and the reality that you create. And when When you are in a reality that you are not wanting to be in, there has to be a pattern interrupt in order to change the frequency patterns that you hold. And so anytime, and I’ve lost power many, many, many, many times throughout our lifetime As an adult. Actually, I don’t ever remember losing power as a kid in my house. It’s actually strange. We’ve been through many hurricanes, many fires, snowstorms, and we’ve lived in different places that have those types of things. And so we’ve lost power for days. And any time we lose power, there’s this underlying tension of when does the normal pattern get to come back? But if you allow the normal pattern to come back, you are just going to be in the same frequency. So this is like the universe saying, Here is the opportunity to change your frequency. I sat and meditated for about an hour this morning, and I enjoyed it because I didn’t have to get up to take my daughter to school.

I didn’t have to go rush to get on my computer right away. I didn’t have to do any of that. And I got a bunch of clarity on some things that I’ve been sitting with, debating, and I’ve been wanting signs. And I made this space because I could meditate for an hour, and it felt wonderful. I loved it. And come to find out, my heater was broken at the cabin we’re staying at in our studio while we’re waiting for our electricity to be turned on at my house. Then that caused a whole another ripple effect in a pattern. Interruption. I’m laughing because you can only laugh when stuff like this happens. I am grateful because my husband networks with the HVAC person, and they were here in 90 minutes, and they fixed our heater. So we had heat again. We had heat upstairs, but we didn’t have heat downstairs. And it was fixed. And I’m grateful because I have heat. So anyways, what patterns are you wanting to interrupt? Can you invite a pattern interrupt into your life? If you’re wanting to start something new, pattern interrupt to allow that thing to come into your life because you have to give up something in order to have something else.

It involves a pattern interrupt. It involves being uncomfortable. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Sending you all lots of love. I hope you all warm and safe. And please share this with a friend. Let me know in the comments what pattern you are interrupting. I would love to hear from you. All right, take care. Bye.