Are You Stuck in Survival Mode? Look Out for These 8 Warning Signs
There are two main branches of your autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. Ideally there is a healthy balance between the two.
There are two main branches of your autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. Ideally there is a healthy balance between the two.
The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for the rest and digest response.
It tells your body to:
slow down
breathe and relax
the danger is over
cortisol levels falls back to normal
your body conserves energy
your heart rate slows
your digestion increases
In this state, we feel calm, relaxed, safe and able to focus and think clearly.
However, most people chronically lean more towards the sympathetic response, which is responsible for the stress response.
We commonly know the stress response as fight and flight. Fight, flight and freeze are a survival mechanisms. (more about Freeze below.)
When you experience a threat—whether it’s real or perceived—your body tells you to take action in one of these ways:
Quickened breath and heart rate
Tensing muscles
Sweat
High blood pressure and more blood flow to your organs
Expanding blood vessels to allow you to get more blood flow and oxygen
Heightened senses
Release of blood sugar and fats from the body’s stores to be used for energy
Increased Cortisol levels (stress hormone)
If we remain in this sympathetic state longterm, we’re then in a chronic stress state, and this has longterm effects that we definitely want to avoid.
We’ve probably all experienced fight and flight states. We feel this when we’re afraid, angry, stressed, anxious and so on. We want to run and hide or we get confrontational.
Freeze is an interesting state. When we feel overwhelmed and can’t move forward, we feel stuck, we can’t get out of bed in the morning, we want to avoid people — these can all be freeze responses, which is also a stress response state of the nervous system.
The fawn response, another sympathetic nervous system response, is when we unconsciously behave in a way where we please, appease, and pacify a person we feel threatened by in order to keep safe from further harm. Often we abandon our own needs and have a lack of boundaries. It can be confused with people pleasing, but it is actually a trauma response.
Those of us who behave in this way likely began during childhood in order to feel safe, and continue it in adulthood.
Somatic Experiencing® and Havening Technique® are robust methods designed to help identify and calm of these sympathetic nervous system states and bring a person into a more balanced and regulated state.
In other words, when you learn how to regulate nervous system physiology, you automatically regulate your emotional state.
The Feldenkrais Method® is another tool designed to calm your nervous system so that you can think more clearly and rationally during a stress response. It also helps relax the muscles in your body caused by chronic stress.
Dealing with Chronic Stress? Use This Technique to Soothe Your Amygdala
On a daily basis, we’re triggered by other people and situations, and often, this reaction is based on our amygdala innately and vigorously attempting to protect us from what it perceives as danger.
On a daily basis, we’re triggered by other people and situations numerous times. Often, the intensity of our reaction is based on our amygdala innately vigorously attempting to protect us from what it perceives as danger.
The amygdala is the oldest part of the human brain concerned with survival. It’s part of the limbic system, and it stores traumatic encoding in its cells.
From the time you were a child, when you first had an experience that your brain determined as unsafe or scary, little antenae-like structures called AMPA receptors formed on the surface of the brain cells of your amygdala.
The job of the amygdala is to constantly scan for threatening stimuli and alert you when it perceives danger. So it makes sense that you might have found that the same types of experiences throughout your life have evoked the same types of feelings and reactions throughout your life.
The past influences your present
We tend to believe the past is the past, and we should be able to move past these things now that we’re grown up.
With this mindset, it’s likely that you’ve never really connected the dots from a reaction you have in adulthood to something that happened in childhood.
You might have found that you repeatedly react to certain stimuli (people and experiences) without thinking or consulting the rational part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex. Maybe you feel anger or fear without understanding why your reaction seems bigger than what the situation calls for.
It’s not that you’re weak or bad or can’t control yourself. You, like everyone, are literally wired to perceive “trauma” (and I mean that in the most biological sort of way)!!!
These little AMPA receptors’ only job is to alert you to danger. They don’t reason or rationalize or differentiate circumstances. They alert you to fight, flight, freeze or fawn.
Once the amygdala is activated, it’s usually very hard to calm it enough to think clearly and engage the prefrontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain that responds to situations with clear judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences.
Because traumatic encoding is held in the cells of your amygdala for ever, and these subconscious triggers are always present, it often feels like it’s hopeless to let go of old patterns of reacting and behaving.
I personally have been in therapy for much of my adult life and what I’ve found is that endlessly talking about those past situations that caused the trauma sometimes seems to make me feel worse. Now I know that talking about the traumatic situation and feeling those familiar “bad” feelings, actually triggers the AMPA receptors on the cells of my amygdala to go on alert. Each time this happens, I’m reinforcing these old neural pathways of these brain cells.
HOW TO Stop old subconscious patterns
I’ve found that using a method called Havening Technique® bridges the gap between feeling triggered and in fight, flight or freeze, to feeling calm and being able to think rationally and problem solve.
Havening is a tool that helps de-traumatize the nervous system by removing or altering the emotional memory of traumatic or stressful life events and their negative effects.
By diffusing or eliminating the intense “charge,” it’s helped me overcome some of my lifelong habitual reactions like feeling unsafe, the need to lash out, and sudden feelings of intense anger — all caused by traumatic or stressful encoding. When the unexpected triggering in mitigated, I can move on to relating to myself and others in a more rational, empathetic way.
The method is equally effective both virtually and in person.
If this is something you’d like to learn more about, email me for more information or feel free to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation to get a clearer sense whether this is something that might help you.
Use This 5 Minute Self Care Practice to Ground Yourself
Havening is a psychosensory technique that calms the nervous system and help you feel grounded, calm and peaceful.
Havening Technique® is a psychosensory technique that calms the nervous system and help you feel grounded, calm and peaceful.
Havening® is a technique facilitated by a certified practitioner, and can also be practiced at home as a self care practice to build resilience and soothe your nervous system. To learn more about self care practices, click here.
By slowly rubbing your hands together while either distracting yourself (I’ll explain this below) or imagining yourself in a peaceful setting, Delta waves, the slowest brain waves, are created. These Delta waves release oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin and GABA, the “happiness hormones,” and actually soothe and calm you emotionally, mentally and physically, in just 5-7 minutes.
Please note: if the feelings you’re experiencing are intense (above 3 on a scale of 1-10, 10 being highly triggered), I recommend you check with a qualified psychotherapist before trying this method or find a certified Havening Technique® practitioner, like myself, to assist you.
Time investment
5-7 minutes
Do this when
You feel stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, sad, grief, angry, need support
You want to expand and embody the feeling of calm, peace and love within yourself
You’d like to try Havening® as part of your regular self care practice
Benefits
Release of “happy hormones” (oxytocin, seratonin, dopamine and GABA) to calm and soothe
Regulate your nervous system (To learn more about your nervous system, click here.)
Feel more embodied
Sense of well-being
To set up you’ll need
A private space with a comfortable place to sit. Optional: a pillow on which you can rest your elbows.
Instructions
Begin to rub the palms of your hands together slowly, as if you were gently washing your hands
Breathe freely and naturally
If you’re feeling any distress (worried, sad, angry, fearful, etc.), begin to distract yourself as follows:
Count backwards slowly from 30-0 by 3s
Hum “Row Row Row Your Boat” 3X
Spell your first and last name backwards
List zoo animals for each letter of the alphabet. (Note: skip any letters if you can’t think of an animal. The answer isn’t important; you are engaging your brain in a certain way.)
Imagine yourself in your favorite place in nature. Based on what makes sense, observe what you see, hear, smell, feel, taste. (For example, imagine the sun on your face, the feeling of your feet in the sand, or the sounds of the waves lapping on the shore, the smell of seaweed.)
If you have trouble holding the visual image of yourself in nature, or find yourself feeling any emotional distress, then go back to steps #1-3.
Continue to haven continuously through all 4 steps. When you feel a sense of peace and calm, say the words out loud: “I am peace.” (or fill in the blank with a word that fits any good feeling you are able to authentically feel now).
Here's the Technique You Need to Calm Your Mind and Transform Your Emotional State
Havening is a psychosensory technique that calms the nervous system and can help you feel grounded, calm and peaceful.
Havening is NOT psychotherapy or talk therapy, and it is always recommended that you are working with a health care provider, especially if you are on medication. This is a form of somatic therapy and helps give relief on a subconscious level as well as providing you with tools for self soothing as a self care practice.
Havening is a psychosensory technique that calms the nervous system and can help you feel grounded, calm and peaceful. Psychosensory techniques are a form of therapeutic technique that use sensory stimuli to affect psychological and emotional health.
Dr. Ronald Ruden, a Harvard trained medical doctor who specializes in emotional trauma, neuroscience, and addictions, is the creator of Havening.
Over 30 years ago, he observed how, in most cases, a distressed infant is soothed quickly by gentle stroking on his back. Ruden researched the benefits of intentional touch on different areas of the body, concluding that when the upper arms, palms of the hands, and face are stroked gently and repeatedly, Delta waves are created in the body.
Delta brainwaves are the slowest brain waves, and they release oxytocin, dopamine, seratonin and GABA, also known as the “happiness hormones,” into the blood stream. These hormones are responsible for a neurochemical reaction that releases traumatically encoded memories that are stored in the amygdala, which leave a person feeling calmer, centered and resilient.
Havening uses sensory input in order to alter a thought, mood, or behavior. It’s believed that when you perceive an event or experience as traumatic or stressful, it becomes immutably encoded in your brain and body, often with life-changing consequences. Havening is designed to de-traumatize your nervous system by removing, altering, or diffusing the intensity of the emotional memory of your traumatic or stressful life event and its negative effects.
Havening is a somatic modality that is designed to help overcome problems caused by traumatic or stressful encoding, and it uses touch and the senses as its main tools.
In a session, a client has the opportunity to release the intense feelings around a traumatic event like an automobile accident or even a relationship or work-related situation — anything that has been disruptive and you feel its influence on your life in some uncomfortable way.
It also helps release familiar long standing emotions or behaviors such as constant fear, guilt, shame, worry or, for example, a familiar feeling like “waiting for the other shoe to drop” that have been with you ever since you can remember. Havening Technique® is designed to ease symptoms of chronic stress and anxiety. To learn more about what survival nervous system responses feel like, click here.
If you’d like to try self-havening at home, and feel the self-soothing effects of the “happiness hormones” for yourself, check out this blog post “Havening self care practice.”
Havening can benefit emotional stress in connection with:
Nervousness
Persistent worrying
Everyday stress
Feeling overwhelmed
Test anxiety
Fear about illness
Fear of heights
Afraid of the dark
Fear of flying
Fear of animals
Fear of abandonment
Fear of being out of control
Grieving
Caregiver support
Death of a loved one or pet
Letting go of past relationships
Abandonment
Physical or verbal assault
Childhood memories
Bullying
Traumatic accidents
Witnessing disturbing events
Relationships with parents, partners, bosses or colleagues, children
Anger, frustration
Guilt
Sadness
Shame, humiliation
Body image issues
Physical discomfort associated with stress
Sports performance enhancement
Emotional resilience and wellbeing