Let's be honest. We all know stress is a problem, but being told to manage your stress or just try not to worry about it when you've got real big things going on in your life, it's honestly kind of infuriating. If you're juggling work and kids and relationship or health issues or anything that may be going on in the world right now, it's just not that helpful to be told, have you tried meditating or maybe just don't stress so much. You just need to relax. Well, we need to have a better conversation about this. Yes, chronic stress has real consequences for our hormones, our gut, our immune system, our brain. It matters, but we also need to acknowledge that you're not failing just because your life feels stressful. You're a human being with a lot on your plate. And so today we're not talking about how to eliminate stress. We're really focusing on how to recover from it. We're shifting the focus from stress reduction and stress management to Nervous System Recovery. How do you recognize when your body is stuck in fight or flight. What happens when that stress state becomes your new normal? And most importantly, how do you bring your body back to safety again and again every day in simple, doable ways that don't require 20 or 30 or 60 minutes outside of your regular routine? As a busy working mom myself, I don't have the time to have an entire wellness routine that is its very own thing that takes two hours a day. It's just not going to happen, even though I think it's great. I am sharing with you my favorite tips and tricks. These are the ones that I have honestly and legitimately used in my own life and continue to use so that I can cope with the stresses that I have with having little children and marriage and running a business and doing all of these things that really do pile up and become stressful, and this is how I get my stress back under control. It has made a tremendous difference in my health. I will say it's made the biggest difference in my health having learned these tools and applied these tools again and again, we are talking about becoming resilient, not just how to relax or how not to be so stressed about things. It's not about being calm all the time. It's about being able to bring yourself back to center, even when your life is still full of stressful things. So I think it's going to be a great episode. If you love this episode, please leave us a comment, let us know, so we can be sure to do more like this, and if you will leave us a review or share, it really helps us to get the word out so we can continue to offer this type of content for free. Now, let's get started.
We are diving into something that I really love talking about is the nervous system. But I want to offer a different perspective on it. A lot of times when we start talking about the nervous system, people, if they know what we're talking about, instantly think, Oh, she's going to tell me not to stress. And what we're not talking about today is how to decrease your stress levels, per se, because I think that's problematic. You know, when we say, like, you shouldn't be so stressed, it's causing problems. A lot of what comes up for most of us is like, Well, what do you want me to do about that? You know, like, my kids are stressing me out, my spouse is stressing me out, my parents, my job, my, you know, life, you know, culture and politics is stressing me out. And I can't just get rid of that, right? So that's not what we're going to talk about today. What I want to talk about is how to lessen the impact of stress on your body, and what we can do from an empowered place, if we are stressed now, if you're somewhere out there and you feel like I'm not a stressed out person, then you can still listen to this to learn some ways to keep yourself from getting stressed, but a lot of what I'm talking about is the impact and the downstream effects that stress and staying in a state of chronic stress can have on our bodies. So stay with me. I want this to be a really positive episode. I want you to feel empowered. I want you to leave with a to do list of like, three things that you say, Okay, I could start doing this today really easily and get some really good effects from this. So one of the things we talk about with stress now, most of us know that stress is is not good for us, right? We know that stress can cause problems with our health. We all have been in a situation, presumably, where we're stressed and get a symptom because of it, maybe you're going to perform somewhere and you get flutters in your stomach, or you get palpitations, or feel like you have to breathe really quick, or you get a tight constriction feeling in your chest. Or maybe after you've gotten in a fight with someone, afterwards, you start shaking, or you feel like you can't think clearly because your brain is just continuing to replay that event in your life, or maybe you've gotten lost as a child that you remember, or maybe you've thought you've lost a child and that feeling of like, Oh, what, what bad thing is going to happen? Those are all examples of stress, and those are not bad examples of stress. Those are probably appropriate.
Responses to stress, to have that reaction. But if our brains stay in that state, then our bodies also will stay in that state. So we are going to talk about how we recover from stress, how we recover from that activated nervous system. So let me back up and talk first just about what is the nervous system. So our a lot of you have heard about this. Now, our nervous system is the part of our brain and our operating system that controls things, and the autonomic nervous system is what controls a lot of our automated reactions in our body, things like heart rate and respiratory rate. And there's part of that autonomic nervous system that is directly related to fight or flight. So we call it the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. That's our fight or flight, and then the parasympathetic branch is the rest, digest, heal, reproduce. So you have these two branches, and they're not directly opposed to each other, but for the purpose of this conversation, we'll kind of keep it that way. One of the ways that I like to think about the nervous system is by thinking about cave people. And if you know me, you know you have heard me talk about this, but if we think about a cave woman, we understand that she's very simple. She really just has two goals in life, to not die at the hands of a predator and to make babies. Like that's the idea of a cave woman, to eat and to sleep, yes, but really so that she survives and that she can make babies, and that is really what our bodies were built around. Now we have lots more going on in our lives that are not related to that, but still, at its very core, that's what the body wants. The body wants to make sure that we can survive the hands of a predator and make babies. And when we think about it that way, then we can really start to understand why this is such a big deal if we are stressed chronically, when we are in chronic fight or flight, I think of it like fighting saber tooth tigers all the time. If you are fighting a saber toothed Tiger, you're cave woman. You're fighting a saber toothed Tiger, there's lots of things that go on in your body. Most of those things happen to promote the chances of you winning against that predator. So those are things like, our pupils will dilate so that we can see as well as possible in the dark, or see as well as possible that predator. Fine. No one cares about that one, right? Another thing that happens is our heart rate starts to race, so that it can increase the oxygen to our muscles so we can sprint. Our respiratory rate will increase so that we can get oxygen to our muscles to sprint. Our blood pressure will increase so we get that blood flowing more quickly, so that we can sprint more effectively. Our blood sugar will go up so we get glucose to muscles to sprint. There's a theme here, and it all makes sense, and it's all fine. None of that is a bad thing. Our brains also shift gear into really just survival mode. So what our brains are not doing are things like solving math or thinking through deep, ponderous questions or wondering about things and being curious. It's really just survive. How can I survive this moment? So it really shuts down a lot of those higher level thinking patterns in order to just focus on staying alive.
Now, on the flip side of that, we say, well, what else is happening in the body? When the body is running from a saber toothed Tiger, it sort of rations its energy and its programming to just focus on survival, which means it turns down some of our body systems, it turns down, or I use the word deprioritizes, it turns down support for digestion. Because why would I need to be pooping when I'm running from saber tooth tigers? Right? It doesn't make any sense. So the body says, maybe let's not focus on digestion, right? Now, it turns down the attention paid to sleep. Because why would I care about deep restorative sleep? If I'm running from tigers? That would be dumb. So it says, Let's not be in a deep restorative sleep. Let's be in a very light sleep, or no sleep at all. Let's wake at the drop of a hat and think about things, right? Think about survival. So it turns down our effective sleep patterns. It also turns down reproduction. Because again, why would I want to think about babies or make babies or have babies when I'm running from saber toothed tigers? We wouldn't that was that's not an opportune time to think about babies. And then it also turns down our attention to mental health, things like making dopamine and making serotonin and making oxytocin. Why would we care about bonding and, you know, being close to each other when we're running from tigers, it's not saying that those functions are bad. It's just saying, Let's push pause there, so that we can borrow our resources and our brain space and our blood flow and our attention and shift everything over into survival, and then once we win, then we'll shift all those resources back and put everything back online, and everything will be hunky dory, but what can happen is, if we are chronically running from saber tooth tigers, we're never stopping,
then the body will start to adapt and say, okay, so I still don't have the attention to put on digestion, I still don't have the attention to put on deep, restorative sleep. I still need to focus on survival. So.
Just going to rev higher and higher and higher. Raise that heart rate higher, raise that blood pressure higher, do all of those things to really promote survival, but the longer we stay in that mode, the more we will start to have negative effects from the body revving in that sympathetic overdrive and then over time in these parasympathetic functions. Remember, rest, digest, heal, reproduce. That means wound healing, and that means, like I said, sleep and digestion and hormones. The longer that we spend in chronic fight or flight, the more that those systems are functioning on bare bones. So they do enough to kind of keep going. Lots of people can say, Well, I had lots of stress, and my periods didn't do anything, and some people's bodies will, but many times, we'll start to see that things are kind of falling into disrepair. Maybe you have a little more constipation or a little more heartburn or a little more loose stools, or maybe you're starting to have a difficult time falling asleep or waking up more often in the nighttime. Or maybe your periods are getting a little more painful. Or maybe they're getting a little bit spaced apart. Maybe you have trouble getting pregnant. So all of these things can show up differently in different people, a lot by luck, honestly, and probably by some genetic predisposition we don't completely understand, but it can definitely manifest in different ways in different people. But many times, when I'm seeing patients, they'll come and they'll say, Hey, by the way, I have trouble with my digestion, trouble with my reproduction or my hormones, trouble sleeping, trouble with my mood. And for me, when you have all four of those, I'm starting to think, uh, there's something going on with the nervous system. So we know that chronic activation of our fight or flight system can disrupt our digestion, our hormones, our sleep, our immune function, and even our mental clarity and emotional stability in really ways that can be quite detrimental to our health. Now let me just go into this a little bit deeper, if you'll humor me for one more minute, because this is not just me making things up this. There really is good data to support this. The American Institute of Stress reported that up to 90% of doctor visits are stress related in some way. So we know that a lot of times that Stress can worsen our health and cause us to seek out help, even if the doctor doesn't say that's because of stress or that's because of, you know, they find exactly what's going on, but they found that 90% of doctor visits are stress related in some way. We also know that chronic stress has been linked to a 43 increase in all cause mortality in adults with high perceived stress. So that's a big deal to say, that 40% increase in all cause mortality, that means, of all the things people, if you group everything that someone dies of, they're just that much more likely to die if
you were in a chronic high stress environment. And then people under chronic stress also have two to three times the risk of developing heart disease, diabetes and autoimmune disease. So we don't need to dwell there, because this shouldn't be fear provoking. But it is important to recognize this isn't just like hippie nonsense of like, oh, we should all just relax, like, this is actually having a physiologic impact on your body at a cellular level, at an organ level, at a system level. And when we go back and think about the cave woman, it makes sense, why? Right? The body isn't trying to harm you. It's not trying to give you a heart attack or trying to give you high blood pressure. It's just doing what it thinks it should do based on the information you're giving it or the information that it's picking up from the environment. So if it's picking up information from the environment that says, oh, not very safe. Lots of saber toothed Tigers around here, then it will adjust our inner workings, our inner mechanics, to help us survive. That it's actually a wonderful mechanism. If we didn't have that, we would die. But the problem comes when we're not actually being chased by saber toothed tigers. So we don't actually need our bodies optimized to sprint or to stay awake and watch for predators. That really starts to become a problem after a while. Now, we also have data looking at the benefits of stress recovery or or lifestyle changes that help us to to decrease our stress levels or manage our stress levels. If you think of a chronic disease and you wonder if there's a study that shows that some sort of meditation or breath work or mindfulness or stress reduction practice, if you think of a chronic disease, there is a good chance that there's a study showing that a mindfulness practice decreases the risk of that disease, that includes dementia, that includes heart attack and stroke, that includes cancer, that includes diabetes, high blood pressure. There really is good data that we need this for our health.
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oftentimes this conversation can be really stressful, because then the more we're talking about stress and the bad effects, then you're like, Oh, I'm stressed. Oh shoot, I'm stressed about being stressed. Oh no, I'm stressed about being dressed, and it can kind of snowball. Now, the point is not to avoid stress. Think about that cave woman, right? If she locked herself in a cave and said, I'm never coming out, and then I'll be safe, what would happen to her? She would not get eaten by a predator, that's true, but she would also atrophy, right? She wouldn't have any sunlight, she wouldn't have any social exposure, her muscles wouldn't be engaged. She'd run out of food. She would atrophy, she would shrink and become weaker.
So we know that completely avoiding stress is not the problem. In fact, we also know as part of this that some amount of stress is actually what helps us to grow and be our strongest selves. If you think about stress on different body parts, stress on our nervous system, stress on our muscles, stress on our bones, things like fasting, a little bit of stress, not knowing if you have enough food. Now, a little bit right? We can overdo this, but small amounts of stress are really what cause us to grow. You could say that emotionally, right, if you were in a relationship that never had any stress. Chances are that relationship would not have the opportunity to grow if you have a little bit of stress and strain on the relationship, going through hard things together, if you survive it, then, then oftentimes, you'll be stronger on the other side. So the goal is not to have zero stress. The goal is to say, What do I do in the face of stress, and how do I give my body equal time, or not necessarily equal time, but equal weight? Over here on this parasympathetic side, this side that speaks safety to our body, this side that promotes healing and longevity and repair and sleep and all of these good things that are really what we want to help our bodies function well.
So we're talking about recovery and resilience. The next step I want to talk about is, how do we know where we're at and how is my stress level? Many people I talk to will either say, Oh no, I'm super stressed. Stress is definitely affecting my health. But some people I talk to say, No, I don't think I'm not stressed. I think I'm doing pretty well. And then as you get into it, you're like, Oh, so you're having more stress than we realized. So how do you know if this is like, like, how you doing? How well are you doing recovering from your stress? One of the things you can see is, how well do you do slowing down? Now, this is all going to be nuanced. So this is not something that you say. I totally disagree with her. This is, you know, garbage. It's more a matter of saying, Does that apply to me? Does Is that true for me? So for example, the inability to slow down, if you are one of those people that says, like, Oh, I'm a doer, I can't sit still. I get really fidgety if I sit still, there's a decent chance that's because sitting still feels unsafe to you be if the nervous system is very up regulated, meaning you're looking for danger. Frequently. You've been exposed to a lot of saber toothed tigers, you're up and ready to fight. You're looking for danger. You're going to keep everyone safe around you. One of the ways that manifests is by not being able to sit still.
Now some will argue that.
Just my personality, and that could be true. That could be true. Maybe you are just a high energy go get them, and that's fine, but it's worth the question of, can you meditate? Can you do deep breathing? Can you just sit in stillness without a podcast, or without having to do something? Can you just be for one minute, five minutes? If you absolutely cannot do that, there's a decent chance that you are a little bit up regulated. That nervous system is sort of revved up. Another sign that you may be kind of up regulated is inability to take a deep breath. If it feels uncomfortable for you. Some people will say like, Oh, I hate deep breathing or doing breath work, because it feels really uncomfortable for me, almost too tight. That can be a physical indicator that your body is like, Ooh, I don't, I don't like to be in safety because the world is too dangerous, feeling wired at nighttime. That that idea of, sort of the curve of our day, where as the sun sets, we should start to calm down, and our brains should start to calm down, and we should be able to kind of slow down at night and then drift off to sleep, instead of solving all of our life's problems, or instead of rehashing the day. If our brain gets really up regulated at nighttime, that can be an indicator that your brain is like looking for danger. It's gonna it doesn't want you to calm down and go to sleep. It wants to solve problems and keep you safe, digestive issues without a clear cause, trouble with focus or memory, brain fog, all of these things can really lean more towards that dysregulation. Remember what I said at the beginning. If you are out trying to fight saber toothed tigers, the brain will keep up with you. It'll be like, great. I will only think about everything that needs to happen for me to survive, which means it's not going to be focusing on curiosity. It's not going to focus on this moment and seeing what's going on around me. It's going to be thinking about what could be happening in the next moment and how to prepare for it. It's going to be really difficult to stay focused and finish the task you're doing, because your fight or flight brain is like, who cares about that task? What about the Tigers outside? So it's going to be harder for you to get your brain to kind of slow down and pay attention to what you're doing. Sometimes it can cause physical symptoms, aches, pains, fatigue, certainly I mentioned digestive stuff, like loose stools or constipation, heartburn, all of those things can definitely go along with this. There are also some other tools that you can use to get a better idea of where your nervous system is. I mentioned before heart rate variability, and this is really popular right now with the aura ring or with some of the other wearable devices that that track different things. Even the Apple Watch, will track Heart Rate Variability a little bit. The idea with heart rate variability is very similar to if you've had a baby or you've been to the hospital when someone was having a baby. You know how we put those monitors on your pregnant belly, and then they monitor the baby's heart rate. And we'll say, we want the heart rate to be really wiggly. We don't like a totally flat line. We want to have it have ups and downs and changes constantly. We like especially accelerations. We like to see that occasionally, good things happen, that the heart rate will kind of speed up and then slow back down. As adults, we have the same heart rate variability goals. We want to have a difference in our beat to beat. Now this is not our heart rate. So if my heart rate is sitting at 70 beats a minute, that's not heart rate variability. That's just heart rate. Now what I want to see is that my heart rate is 70 beats a minute, and then 71 and then 72 and then 69 and then 70 and 7175 7872 and and kind of all over the place. So you can imagine that heart rate just kind of bouncing around in small ways. It should still be quite consistent, but having that variability in it is what we're really trying to track. And just like in a fetus and in an unborn baby, we're looking for that in a in ourselves as well. If our heart rate is exactly the same, 70, 7070, beats per minute, then that's a sign that would be lower heart rate variability. You want higher heart rate variability. And this is not something that I find very helpful to track from moment to moment. So if you say, like, gosh, I just got in a fight with someone, and I look at my heart rate variability, you might notice that that it goes down, but you may not notice it goes down until 12 or 24 hours later. So it's not super reactive. It more adjusts to chronic input. So if your heart rate variability every day is low, then that would be an indicator that you are in chronic fight or flight, if your heart rate variability is fine most days, and then you have a weird dip, and then it goes back up, you can certainly look at your circumstances to say, Oh, that was probably because I didn't sleep well that night, and I didn't eat well, and I, you know, had a time change. I went on a trip, and that really threw me off. You can look for data like that to help adjust it, but I find it more helpful, especially if you're just starting out, to just get an overall feeling of where your heart rate variability is, and if it's low, then just focus on the next things we're going to talk about, which is what to do about it. So that's a really great way to understand.
Where your stress levels actually are. Another way is to be really honest about the other symptoms that I just mentioned, if you can't meditate, if you can't sit still, if you can't be in the moment, if your brain feels really distracted all the time. Now, could you just have ADD ADHD, sure, but especially if this is new for you, and you've gone through a stressful couple years, you know, that's a good indicator that that brain is just trying to focus only on survival and doesn't want you to focus on that recipe you're trying to make, or that problem you're trying to solve, that budgeting you're trying to do.
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off of a loom box. You can also find it on our favorite products page at uplift for her.com now back to the show. So what do we actually do? Now, let's focus on this, because this is what actually matters. The rest of it is all interesting, and it helps to understand where you might be at. But what we really care about is, how, how do we what do I do about this?
So there are many, many, many different things you can do, and I don't really care which one you do. But here are some of the limitations that I see come up with patients. This is true for me too. A lot of people will say, Oh, I already meditate, you know, I pray, I go for walks like I'm good. And to that, I would say, is it enough for you? And are you getting deep enough into your recovery to really balance out the amount of stress that you're having, and this is where we really get to utilize this as a very empowering tool. For example, if my stress levels overall are quite low right now, then I can probably get away with doing a little bit of walking and doing a little bit of meditation. If I am in a state where the stress levels have gone way up. You know, maybe you have an illness in your family, or maybe you have a teenage child who's really struggling, or maybe your parents are ailing and you're having to really take care of them. Regardless of what you feel your stress levels are, your logic should tell you that there is going to be some increased need, some increased strain on your nervous system, if that's what you're going through. So that's the right time to ramp up your nervous system regulation exercises, instead of waiting until you have chronic fatigue or chronic joint pain or pelvic pain, or instead of waiting until you have symptoms of it. Just understand that if you're going through hard things, your nervous system needs more from you. That's just a fact. If you're revving up all the time, even if it hasn't yet had a negative effect, you're going to do better if you can counter that. So the first thing is, if you need recovery tools, and knowing what tools or knowing how much you need to incorporate into that lifestyle to really balance out the amount of stress, I often think about it like a bank account, right? If you have a bunch of money in your bank account and you spend very little, then you're going to be great. You're going to have a surplus. If you have very little in your bank and you spend a bunch, then you're going to be in debt. And the same thing is true for our stress system. If we are quote, unquote, spending a bunch of stress, expending a bunch of stress, managing a bunch of high intensity things, then we better be putting more money in the bank. We better be filling up that bank account, or it will get depleted, and then you will start having those problems. So don't wait until it's depleted. If it's already depleted, then fine, we will fix it, but recognizing what you can do to put money in the bank, so to speak, how to make yourself more resilient, so that you can spend more when you need more. Now, obviously, if you can spend less, that's cool, that would be great, but that's where you have to think through like, if you have children that are stressing you out, like you can't ditch them, if you have ailing parents, you can't ditch them. So sometimes there are ways that we can decrease that stress and decrease the perception of stress, and decrease the amount of money we're spending, so to speak. And that's where, honestly, things like therapy or mind work, thought work can be really helpful, because it helps us change our perspective. It changes our perception.
In of what's going on in that event, in that circumstance. And sometimes that really can be very helpful. If we get too tied up in the situation, then it's going to feel very crisis, very critical. But sometimes, if we can remove ourselves from the situation and really look at it with a new set of eyes, sometimes that will change our perception of stress and then decrease the amount of body energy we're spending on that circumstance. So that step is very important, and we're not going to focus much on that today, but, but it can be important. What I will say is that this is where some of the supplements we use really come in handy. Those are very frequently, we think about adaptogens in this way. You might have heard of supplements that are called adaptogens. These are natural substances that can really modulate the stress perception. So they say that if, if you are in a high stress, It'll calm you down. If you're in a low sort of fatigue state, it will kind of boost you and I have found some success with those with my patients, there's several different ones, and you can see these on our fullscript store. We'll put that in the show notes, and then it's also linked on our website and our Instagram. But one of my favorites through there is cortisol manager. And cortisol manager includes some ashwagandha and Rhodiola and some extra sleep support that can really help down regulate that revving that nervous system that says, let's find all the things that that are trying to attack us and kill us and and let's find those and respond to them differently. Those adaptogens are very frequently changing our perception of stress, thereby decreasing what we're quote, spending, right? So that can be a really great way to spend less. Therapy can help. Journaling can help anything that gets it out of you can help, whether that's talking to a friend or venting or yelling, you know, hopefully not to someone, but yelling it out into nature or, you know, whatever it is to get it out of you that can really help keep your body from expending too much energy on that stressor. Now I'm going to shift gears and talk about, how do we put more money in the bank? How do we bring in more stress? One of my favorite things is being present. And I know we talk about this all the time, and I think a lot of us don't actually know even what that means or how I would do that. Like, it sounds good, but like, what do we actually mean? I want you to understand why being present can be so beneficial. Fight or Flight is usually built on what happened in the past, what dangerous thing happened or what could happen in the future. So if you were chased by a saber toothed Tiger, that will inform your nervous system to be on the lookout for saber toothed tigers, there is a principle called hyper vigilance that you may have heard of. The idea of hyper vigilance is, if you're running from saber tooth tigers, right? You're running, running, running. You dive down into the bushes. Tiger runs past, and you think you're okay, take a deep breath. I think I'm safe here. And then you hear a twig snap in the bush. Your brain is going to not look at that twig and be like, Hmm, maybe it was a squirrel. It's not going to do that. It's going to say, what was that? I think that was a tiger. And then you're going to bolt, you're going to be out of there, right? Hyper vigilance is a safety mechanism. It's a perfectly normal safety mechanism to say, if I just escaped a saber toothed Tiger, I'm going to up regulate all of my signs of detection, all of my tools, rather, of detection, so that if there's any sort of sign at all of a saber toothed Tiger, I can get out of there in rapid speed. So it's a great tool that our body uses. Now, if we bring that into today's time, you can think, if you've ever been walking and there's sort of maybe someone a little bit suspicious walking kind of close to you, Imagine you're walking on a dark street by yourself, and you're thinking, like, do I trust that guy? Do I not trust that guy? You're going to start walking a little more quickly. You're going to get to your car, you're going to get in, close the doors, lock the doors, really quick, right? And then take a deep breath. But if you hear something in your back seat, you are going to freak out, right? That's your nervous system saying, oh my gosh, he got in behind me. And that's called hyper vigilance. It's a perfectly normal coping mechanism. But if we stay in fight or flight, our brains will continue to keep on hyper vigilance, and so we will be in that heightened state of what was that? Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? So going back now, what I'm talking about is where our nervous system gets its information is very frequently from the past. When we experience something dangerous in the past, it up regulates our system to keep us safe. Does that make sense? So it's just because we legitimately just got out of a scary episode. Of course, we want to be on the lookout now, over time, if you take some time to come out of that scary episode, and you prove over and over that you're safe now you go home, there's you might be a little hyper vigilant at home, right? Is there anyone in my house? And then slowly, the next day and the next day, you'll start kind of forgetting about it, and it may not trigger you as much over time, then our nervous system will recover from that threat and that hyper vigilance will go away. But if we stay, how.
Ing danger after danger after danger, then our body will stay in that state of hyper vigilance. It doesn't matter what's happening this moment, because my nervous system is relying on what happened in the past. So nervous system dysregulation is informed by the past. It's also informed by the future. So a lot of our nervous system regulation or dysregulation, is informed by what might happen. What if this happens? Right? We think about this with our kids. We think about this with ourselves. Like, what if I send this email and hurt someone's feelings, and then they say something back to me, and it hurts my feelings, and then I'll never send an email again, right? Like, we have these really catastrophizing thoughts sometimes. Or what if I go to that party and no one talks to me, and then I don't want to be there, and then I'm going to feel bad about myself, and then, you know, like our brains will spiral thinking about these things in the future that have not happened. This is the key to remember, is we think that they're legitimate, and there could be some legitimacy to them, but we're not stressed because they are happening in this moment. We're stressed because they might happen. And that brings us back to this tool of living in the moment and being present. Most of our nervous system programming is because of what happened in the past or what happened in the future, but what's happening in this moment right now. Most of the time we are actually safe, right? I'm sitting here recording this podcast. I see no tigers. There are no tigers in the room with me. There are no creepy dudes in the room with me. It is just me. Could something bad happen right now? Maybe an earthquake, maybe, you know, something of a fire. But overall, I if I focus right now on this moment, my nervous system will get feelings of safety, because, legitimately, I am safe right now. Now there will be some of you and and my heart goes out to you. There will be some of you that do not feel safe right now. And so you'll, you'll put this one aside and say that one doesn't work for me, and stay with me, because there's other things that can but for for most people, the idea of being present in this moment is a great way to down regulate our nervous system, and one of the ways to do that is not to be necessarily super Zen and gratitude and all of that. It's to be really, really simple minded, to say the table that I'm looking at is a light colored wood. The carpet is gray, the walls are white. There's a picture that's yellow, like you the simplest things you can go through. My shirt is black, like what are the simplest facts that you can list in your mind? And this is a really great tool if you just come from a stressful situation. You know, you're sitting in your car trying to stop perseverating on this, this conversation that you had, or that car that cut you off, and you're just like, why are people so dumb? Like, why do they do stuff like that? And you can't stop thinking about it. That's keeping you in a dysregulated state. One of the things you can do is just start listing the simplest things you can think of. The sky is blue, there are clouds, there are cars, there are trees, you know, whatever it is. And that idea of being present in the moment, it can't help but calm your nervous system down. Because your nervous system it can't think about the future things that could happen, and it can't think about the past things that happened. It's just with you when you're being so deliberate about that. So that's one of my favorite tools for calming down. Focusing on your breath is another really great tool. I'm not talking about breath work right now. I'm just talking about this idea of being present. I am now breathing in, I'm now breathing out, I'm now breathing in, I'm now breathing out. And what does it feel like? I feel the air going through my nose. I feel it coming out of my nose, or I feel it going in my mouth. I feel my shoulders expand. I feel my chest expand, whatever it is, just that noticing. The last one along this line is called a body scan. And a body scan is one of my favorite things to do if I'm having trouble sleeping because my brain won't turn off. If you've been there, you know what I mean? And a body scan is so simple. The thing I like about all of these is they're very fact based. If your nervous system can argue with you and be like, that's not true, and this is where gratitude sometimes can be problematic for people, or, you know, being thinking positive and being Pollyanna. If your brain is like, I am safe right now, and you're like, No, you're not. Your nervous system is like, Are you kidding? Do you know how how many dangerous things you've encountered and how many bad things could happen, then it won't work. So, so being so simple about you know, the sky is blue, the clouds are white. I am breathing, I'm breathing, and I'm breathing out. Really, staying simple, your nervous system can't argue with you, so it won't fight you. It'll just be like, yeah, it is. Obviously it will stop worrying about the past and the future. So along this line is the body scan. And the body scan is also very, very simple. You're not trying to say anything that your body could argue with. So you start with focusing presence, or focusing on the sensation in different body parts. So when I'm getting ready to sleep, I'll do this, and I'll focus on my toes. Can I actually feel.
Feel my big toe right now. I can feel my big toe is touching my shoe, right? I can feel a little sensation in both big toes, okay. Can I go to my other toes? Can I go to the ball of my foot? What does it feel like in the ball of my foot? Sometimes you can say, can I relax that body part? But otherwise, just noticing it and saying, there is the ball my foot, almost like I'm closing my eyes and just visualizing what that looks like. And then you slowly go up all of your body parts, the arch of your foot, your heel, the top of your foot, the ankle, the shin, the calf, just so slowly going up the body parts. And I rarely make it to my head, because it's so boring that your nervous system will get tired and fall asleep, but the nervous system also can't really argue with it, because you're like, No, I really feel my big toe right now. And it's like, okay, cool, instead of like, but what about that thing that's going to happen? And what about what happened yesterday? Or should I be worried about that? Should I send them an email? Should I apologize? Like, if we can distract our nervous system with facts, then very frequently it will calm down. Keep in mind, none of these are going to work all the time, and none of them will work for everyone, and you won't like some of them, and that's okay. So take what you want to take from this and dismiss the rest. The reason we're talking about this is so we can feel better. So let's move on to the next one, another one that's really helpful is these, these micro habits, these tiny little things we can do multiple times a day. When you see people who are talking about the nervous system on Instagram very frequently, they have these routines that look so dreamy, but become really difficult, honestly, to incorporate if you're busy and if you're stressed, and if you have a lot going on in your life, you'll see people who will say, like, I wake up and I do a 30 minute meditation, and then I drink my lemon water, and then I go spend time in nature for an hour, and then I go do my workout. And if you're anything like me,
that's too much time. I just don't have that kind of time in the morning to really do that, and if, if you do then those things are great, but if you're busy, I don't want you to think that that's the only way you can do very brief exercises that will help you, but you do have to do them then more frequently, if you're not doing them in a bulk time frame. Now here is one of my favorite secrets. It's not very secret, because I talk about all the time, but here's one of my favorite tips, is use the bathroom. So when we go to the bathroom, it's one of the only times in our busy lives that we truly have to stop. Right? You can multitask through a lot of things. You could be making dinner and listening to podcasts and parenting and sweeping the floor and doing 18 different things at a time when you go to the bathroom, you should just do that. Now that being said, I'm going to tell you how to multitask while you're going to the bathroom. But the reason I like using going to the bathroom is because we do it multiple times a day, and you you can't really skip it. There are some of you who do skip it, but you shouldn't skip it. You should go. So if you're going to the bathroom two every two to three hours, that's a really great opportunity for you to reset your nervous system. So what you're going to do is not take your phone with you. I know it happens. Don't do it. Don't open your phone while you're going to the bathroom. And then you can do breath work. You could say a little prayer. You could do a mindfulness exercise. It doesn't matter, but it's only going to take you about 10 to 30 seconds, maybe 60 seconds, if you want to, and you're just going to take that opportunity to recenter. Who do you want to be? What do you want out of life? You know, I'm not talking about big picture. I'm talking about I am calm and safe, I am patient, I am goal oriented. I can get this done. I don't need to rush, like, whatever that statement is, that's your statement. This is a great time just to recenter and be like, Oh yeah, I don't need to rush. I don't need to, you know, feel like it's the end of whatever. Like, I can be here right now. I really like to do a couple deep breaths. It's really good for digestion and helps with your bathroom practices, but also it's really helpful just to take that pause and to breathe in for five counts, hold for seven counts, breathe out for eight counts. That only takes 22 seconds. If I did that math right, that might be wrong, but it only takes a very short time to do this breath. You could do it two times and reset. And if you're doing that a couple times, every time you go to the bathroom, it is slowly going to shift your system to say, let's chill out. Let's calm down. And it's going to start being effective at training your body to get out of chronic sympathetic overdrive and into parasympathetic another thing that I like to recommend when you are using this breath work is to consider adding a mantra. Mantras can help and they're not necessary. There's a couple that I like now, if you are super, super revved up, then to use this first one will not work for you. But if you are just using a little check in, you feel like you're overall in a good state, but just.
Want kind of a leveling out feeling then, then I like the mantra, I am safe. There are no tigers. We do have water bottle stickers that say the same thing that are really fun with a little tiger on them. But that idea of really just to check in with reality, like, I see you nervous system, you're getting real revved up. You think that all these bad things are happening, but like, nothing bad is actually happening right now? That can be a nice mantra. While you're doing your breath work, you're breathing in for five seconds, holding it for seven and then you're saying, in your mind, I am safe. There are no Tigers now. Again, if you are revved up where you don't feel like you're safe, like you literally feel like you might get eaten by a tiger, then that mantra is a lie, and it will not work. So the next kind of level up is Rev down body. And I kind of picture this little meter, kind of right in your chest that's kind of revving, like an RPM meter. And if you feel like you're starting to rev sometimes, just closing your eyes while you're doing the breath work and saying, rev down body, we're okay, let's rev down sometimes. That is something that I really enjoy as well. Again, if your body is saying, No, I'm not going to rev down. Things are too wound up right now, then that will be a lie and it will not be effective. So the mantra that I use if I'm feeling super revved up is I exist. And you can go back through that idea of being present and saying, I exist. I am breathing. I see my hands, I've got 10 fingers, you know, just that fact of I exist in this moment. That can be not a lie. If you say I'm safe, but you don't feel safe. If you say rev down, and your body is like, no way. But if you say I exist, then the nervous system is like, yeah, okay, cool. And it will kind of just stop it in its tracks for a second. So that can be a really nice sort of practice. And like I said, I do it while I'm on the toilet, because it's just a time that you're by yourself, that you're forced to stop and do nothing else. And that time is gold. So using that little mantra, using a little bit of breath work can be really helpful. Another time that I really like to do nervous system exercises is in the shower again, because typically you're by yourself, and that's a really great time to just pause and breathe. And I do an exercise sometimes called checking in with my cave woman, where you say you just have this script that you follow almost exactly in your brain. And you say, what are you so afraid of? And then you listen to what internally comes up, and what we find is that internally, it's bringing up big things, like, I'm afraid I'm a failure, I'm afraid I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy of love. You know, these big, big things come up, and we follow the script and we say, thank you for sharing that with me. That is scary. Thank you so much. What else are you afraid of? And oftentimes, when our nervous system is really revved. We've been fighting Tigers for a long time. Oftentimes that's the last thing we want to do. We've gotten really good at suppressing our fears and suppressing our emotions and suppressing that idea of stress and what we're really afraid of, that it can feel scary to be like, I'm not opening that Pandora's box. I don't want to know what I'm afraid of. But what do we find is, actually, if you can just in that moment, be prepared for it. You know exactly what you're going to say when you open that Pandora's Box, when she lets out that truth of, I'm afraid I'm not worthy of love. I'm afraid I might be a failure. We're not trying to judge it. We're just saying that is legitimately scary. Thank you so much for sharing that with me and just the act of releasing it from that box and showing gratitude for the expression of it can stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. Can balance it out with that relaxation or rest, digest, heal part of the nervous system. So that's another one of my favorite exercises that I do, especially when it feels like, Oh, what is going on? I'm just yelling at my kids, and I'm feeling irritable and I'm feeling revved up, like, what is going on with me? And that's a really great check in to be like, Oh, I feel like I'm gonna make a mistake, and then the Wiser part of me is like, Well, you probably will. Like, that's, that's a reasonable fear. But instead of being like, Oh, come on, you won't make a mistake, that's that doesn't feel true to us, and it's not helpful advice to ourselves to say, like, Oh, nonsense, you are worthy of love, if that's what you're afraid of, and you don't feel like you are, now's not the right time to counter that. Now's the right time to listen and to validate and to show compassion, and just by having that script ready, what are you so afraid of? Your brain tells you thank you so much for sharing that with me. That is scary. I appreciate it. That little script can be really powerful.
Now I am going to wrap up here, but I'll share quickly just some other tools. There is a tool that I really enjoy. This is not sponsored, but the neurofit app. The neurofit app is nice because it is a little subscription, but you just it sends you exercises every day that help exercise this parasympathetic branch of your nervous system. So it's short, it's not complicated. Many of them don't require a lot of brain work, which can be some of the the frustration with this is you're like, I don't want to think so hard. I.
Want to be so deep into this. A lot of this is more body work, things like tapping. You can YouTube that. But the idea of tapping is you tap pressure points, so you tap your head, and then you tap your cheekbone, and then you tap your chin, and it goes through acupressure points. And that can be a really healthy re centering of the body's energy into the parasympathetic zone. Shaking can be another thing where you literally just shake all your body parts that can really get rid of that pent up energy that feels like it's ready to go fight a tiger. There's no tiger to fight, so you just get this internal revving and the shaking sometimes can be really helpful. Certainly going for walks or stretching can be really beneficial. I really like nature for this. People call it forest bathing, which is, you know, being immersed in nature. And I love that. And do think it's hugely beneficial, especially if you can go without a device and really just be in the moment, listening to the sounds of nature, or looking at the sights of nature and really being there. But I also don't think we need to make it that involved if we don't have that in us, right then I think standing on your porch, standing on your grass, sitting outside, I think all of that can be beneficial. And then other things that help our bodies to recover, things like adequate sleep. If you are not sleeping, well, your nervous system is going to assume you're not sleeping, because there's dangers. That's just sort of the body's mechanism is, if you're not sleeping, well, the body's like, Hmm, must be tigers. Why else wouldn't she be sleeping? And so it will rev our nervous system. So the better sleep we get, it's just going to keep our nervous system a little bit lower, which is where we want it to be. And then there are other programs, if you're feeling very dysregulated and feeling like you have physical concerns that are being brought about by this dysregulation. There are some companies who do limbic retraining, which is retraining the brains side of it's sort of the memory of trauma. So so it's the memory of something bad that happened that is keeping you fighting tigers, because it has decided to cement in the fact that there are tigers out there. So limbic retraining is usually meditation based, but there's a couple different companies. Primal trust is the one that I recommend most, but DNRs is another one, and the Gupta method is another one that can be really beneficial. In closing, the thing that I would say is choose something and just do something every day. The other thing that I would recommend is keep a note in your phone, or a sticky note on your mirror, or something that you can access when you need it that says, This is my toolbox. This is what I do when I start to get dysregulated. The fact is, most of us aren't going to do all of this stuff all the time. Most of us, if we feel pretty good, are going to forget to do these things. And I know that because I've gone through that cycle myself where it's like I was so on it, and I did so well. And because I was doing so well, then I didn't do the nervous system work anymore. And then I was like, Why is life so hard all of a sudden, why am I feeling irritable? Why am I feeling reactive? Why am I feeling revved up? And then I find I stop doing the exercises. So that's when you want to pull out that card or that sticky note and say, so what were my things again? Oh, yeah, I like to ground in the morning. I like to have one minute of breath work every time I'm sitting on the toilet. I like to make sure that I drive home from work without podcasts on that I just have silence driving home from work so I can take some deep breaths and refocus my brain and kind of process the day that I just finished and get ready for the day that I'm coming home to. Right for me, those are my tools that are massively beneficial, and all of them are very minimal and very short. But for you, you may have different exercises, and I don't care what it is if it feels to you that it is revving down your nervous system and it's promoting that feeling of safety. Then you want to have that in your back pocket. You want to know exactly what you do when your stress levels go up, when you start spending more money or spending more stress, like we talked about, you want to be ready to turn the knob to say, Okay, I know I have more stress going on right now. I'm not going to wait until I feel super revved. I'm just going to go ahead and start diving in and doing the exercises that keep me regulated. And there are lots and lots, probably an infinite number, really, of other exercises that you can do to calm your nervous system. And I think people get a little overly fancy about it, like, take a break, find silence. That's really all you need. And then going back, one of the things that I see people struggle with the most is when they say, Oh, I already do that. Well, are you doing it enough? Not doing it enough in terms of the amount of time or the number of things you're doing, but is it going deep enough? Is it really getting into your we call it the heart space, right or the heart center, is it really getting down into your the center of your programming, to to the point where you believe, for that moment, that it's safe enough to stop fighting tigers? A lot of people who are Type A like myself, and I have done this exactly, is when I first started doing this work. I.
Started doing a little bit of nervous system work, and saw really good gains from it. And was like, Oh, I get it. I am going to relax the heck out of my nervous system. I am going to really just dive in and do it. And so I made checklists and made goals and did all of these things that were going to be so good, and what did it do? It revved up my nervous system. It just made me more stressed. And I realized I was doing so much worse, because I was doing all of the things that I was supposed to be doing, but not in a way that was actually winning. And so I don't care what the people on Instagram are doing. I don't care what other people tell you, if you're not getting deep into that space where it feels like you can breathe and where you can have that moment of stillness, then do something different. Don't just keep meditating because someone told you meditation was the way to go. If it doesn't work for you, then do something else and try it again in the future. But it has to get into your programming, or it's not going to have the same effect just going through the motions of mindfulness, or going through the motions of tapping and things like that, if they're not working for you, then do something else, either find ways to get deeper, or find something else that really resonates with you, and that's where you will see the really good benefits. So I'm not saying that in a chastising way, but in a productivity way, like if you want it to work, you've really got to get into that space, otherwise you're just moving through the motions, and that can be helpful on the surface, but if you have tons and tons of stress and a long history of stress in your life, then just going through the motions probably isn't going to reprogram your systems enough to really take you out of fight or flight. So there are lots of resources. This is a big part of what we cover in our clinic. And I have other episodes on here. I have blog posts available that talk more about this, that share some of these resources. So I hope this is helpful to you. If it is, I would love to hear the exercises that you're using for your nervous system. Leave a comment on the podcast or send me a DM on Instagram. Tag me on Instagram if you share a story. I would love to hear what you're doing to support your nervous system, to get out of fight or flight, to really recover your stress response, so you can thrive really right? So you can feel good, so you can feel like you can show up how you want to show up, and not be irritable and not be tired and not have headaches, or any of these other things that we've talked about. So keep me posted on how you're doing, and we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. We are grateful for the incredible support from our sponsors and to all of you listening. We couldn't do this without you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on your favorite platform. You can find us on our website, uplift for her calm YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And if you found value here today, please share this episode with someone who would benefit from benefit from it. Leave us a comment or give us a review. It really helps us reach more listeners like you. Thank you for being part of our community. Stay tuned for our next episode. Lastly, this information is for educational purposes only and not intended to be medical advice.
