Changing Behavior Patterns (Part Two)
Reading part one of this blog, “Why Do I Keep Dating the Wrong Person”, might’ve left you feeling a bit puzzled. In this last blog we talked about the important role our body plays when it comes to our behavior or patterns. Behaviors that might have us cornered and asking ourselves questions like, why do I keep sabotaging myself? Why do I keep repeating behavior when I know it's bad for me?
Most of us are also aware of an icky or desperate feeling that overcomes us when our brain keeps spewing critiques or insults. When our mind for some reason, won't stop talking. Most of us aren’t surprised when we’re told that our brain thinks in pattern loops. We’ve all heard the saying, neurons that fire together stay together. This can look like catastrophizing, decision paralysis, procrastination, feeling like you don’t belong, feeling unwanted, etc. Most of us are quick to hop on board with the complex ways our brain works but quick to dismiss the immense role our body plays in these situations.
What role does our body play?
A lot of us dream of days of more love, more abundance, more peace or things along that line but the reality is that if our physical body does not feel safe then we will shy away from these states. Why is this? As a surprise to many people our body plays a huge role in actually directing our brain. This means directing it into thought loops similar to the ones mentioned above. As we are in these loops, our body shifts into different states. These states influence and can add momentum to the thoughts produced in our head thus affecting the way we perceive the world. For example, depending on whatever state we may be in it’ll influence whether or not we perceive the world as dangerous or safe.
Since we do live in a world where efficiency and production is highly valued as well as having unresolved trauma most of us live in a state of constant dysregulation or constant feelings of unsafety. For the majority of us our bodies and minds spend more time living in unsafe or dysregulated spaces causing us to be a bit unfamiliar to states of presence, tranquility, and relaxation. All the places where love, abundance, and presence are able to be more easily accessed. When we are in these unsafe or dysregulated spaces within our body it becomes impossible to think or see bigger than the problem at hand since our body believes it's in danger. All of the mechanisms in our body that help us survive when we experience a threat are also on alert and working extra hard to keep us alive even when there is no threat to our livelihood.
What is living in survival mode?
Living in this survival mode state where our body is continuously perceiving a threat keeps our bodies and mind from experiencing safety or relaxation. It’s also important to remember that when we spend a majority of our time in one space it's easy to identify it as our normal and get used to its traits. Experiencing dysregulation or unsafety in our body many times looks like the following symptoms:
Being hypervigilant
Rapid heartbeat
Upset stomach almost nausea like
Difficulty sleeping
Racing thoughts
Shortness of breath
How do you regulate?
So what do we do? How do we start spending more time in regulation or safety? Specifically, how do we do this in this time and age? Where everything and everyone is pulling at our attention and our time. Being in regulation is anything that supports us to feel more present in the here and now. Anything that supports us to feel more grounded, expanded, safe to connect, safe to be seen, secure, curious, and playful among other things. When we are in this state we are in a place where we feel good and allow joy and connection. This is where practices like paying attention to your senses come into play. These practices help us ground ourselves to the moment helping signal to our body that it's safe to relax.
A tool we can use to practice coming into regulation more often is to make a list of all the things that make us feel good. Whether that be by yourself or with another person or animal. See the following examples:
Going outside and taking a walk
Petting a pet or animal
Being with friends
Exercising
Looking out the window
Observing nature
Partaking in a breathing exercise
Listening to music
Gardening
What we want to do is start sprinkling these throughout our day so we can have more moments of regulation. Moments that we dedicate to being present and feeling our surroundings as well as enjoying the moment. As we spend more time in these spaces it will slowly bring our body to be able to more fluidly shift between these states. This means there will be moments when we get dysregulated or feel very unsafe but we will be able to come back to a feeling of safety when the threat has passed. Eventually, we will start spending more time feeling safety instead of feeling antsy or hyper aware of our surroundings.
