3 Tips for Recovering Your Body, Mind, and Nervous System
It’s often overwhelming to figure out the next steps to take to recover and restore yourself. Now, over 3 years later, I recommend a triad approach that includes emotional/mental, medical/functional medicine and physical/nervous system repair.
When I emerged from an extremely challenging, traumatic life experience, I was overwhelmed. I wasn’t sure who to turn to for support. I tried a bunch of different practitioners who seemed to help with one aspect of my healing or another, and although their intentions were good, I didn’t feel as though I was improving at all.
There are many different versions of “challenging life experiences” can leave you feeling the effects of a dysregulated nervous system. Whether your challenging life experience is an abusive relationship, like mine was, the devastating loss of a loved one, being a caretaker for someone who’s ill and living in fearful expectation of that next lab test result, going through a contentious divorce where you feel attacked legally, financially and emotionally, a pandemic where you’ve been isolated and fearful for a period of time.
It’s often overwhelming to figure out the next steps to take to recover and restore yourself.
I know that I personally wasted too much time trying to handle things on my own and trying piece together solutions.
Now, over 3 years later, I recommend a triad approach that includes emotional/mental, medical/functional medicine and physical/nervous system repair:
1. Emotional/mental/subconscious healing support:
Find a good therapist who has been educated in trauma AND your specific situation. Whether you experienced narcissistic abuse, death of a loved one, divorce, or being a long-term caretaker—you need to be heard and validated.
The most helpful therapist I went do didn’t have the highest credentials — she had been through and survived what I was going through.
If your practitioner doesn’t understand the specific dynamic of your situation, keep looking. Ask for an initial complimentary interview and get a sense of the person. It might take several paid visits to get a deeper sense of whether it’s a good fit. If it’s not, cut your losses and move on. It’s okay to be discerning and it’s okay to spend some money and time figuring it out.
In addition to more traditional therapy, I currently also work with someone who helps remove subconscious blocks so that I can explore what my own emotional patterns throughout my life have been that would have lead me to an experience like narcissistic abuse. This would also fall under this category of emotional/mental/subconscious healing support.
My advice is to initially seek to feel stability in yourself again. You can add on later if you’d like to continue and deepen your self study.
2. Medical/functional medicine + nutritional support:
Find a good functional medicine doctor. Although I did start with my primary care practitioner, I was told that the extreme exhaustion I was experiencing was in my head and further testing wasn’t ordered.
Two years later, I found a functional medicine doctor who believed me when I told her I could barely move. Once she ordered the proper tests and a realistic baseline was established, I had a plan to improve and I began to feel better. For me, it was important to use holistic methods to heal and this practitioner was a good fit for me. You have to find someone with whom you feel comfortable, and a method that resonates with you.
Healing from a stressful life experience can be a slow process. It took time to get where you are now; it takes a bit of time to get better.
I highly recommend that you find someone who can give you nutritional support as well. If your health care practitioner can’t give you specific support, I would hire an expert who only focuses on eating to support your nervous system, your hormones, your adrenals, or wherever you need support. See my blog post on foods to calm your nervous system.
3. Physical + Nervous System repair:
This is a critical piece of information so if you’re skimming, please back up and read this carefully….
If you’ve recently been through a challenging life event, then you’ve probably not been nurturing yourself for awhile. In fact, the idea of that might make you uncomfortable.
Pushing yourself to run or power walk or “work out” or even practice a vigorous form of yoga is NOT nurturing if you’re exhausted and your body aches.
Find a physical component that nurtures you. I was fortunate to have Feldenkrais as a practice I could rely on. I did some yoga, but at the beginning, it took too much energy that I didn’t have. Even a few sun salutations felt like too much. I craved something more nurturing for my body — something that connected me to myself, and included the physical component. Meditation is good, but it doesn’t move energy in the same way as a physical practice.
Connecting to your physical body is critical — now especially.
The main reason Feldenkrais worked for me is because it involves physical movements and works with the nervous system. I was able to regulate and release any physical tension at the same time. After each session or class I felt as if I’d had a really good massage and felt emotionally calmer and at peace. My mental clarity improved substantially.
I took group classes as well as worked with a practitioner, but looking back it was the group classes that empowered me and gave me on-going tools to calm my nervous system by myself.
To conclude, anyone who has recently moved on from an emotionally and mentally stressful life experience may find themselves continuing to feel unexpectedly depleted. Begin with a triad of support — the right expert who can support you mentally/emotionally, the right expert who can support you medically but in a way that is all-inclusive and resonates with your values, and some sort of gentle physical or somatic method that addresses your body and regulates your nervous system so that you can reconnect with your body and feel stable and safe again.
Here is a beautiful nurturing audio lesson that will give you a taste of what it feels like to calm your nervous system while making small, gentle, slow movements of your body. Lie on the floor or your bed, remove distractions, and enjoy.
How I Restored Myself with The Feldenkrais Method®
In 2015, I had moved from Denver to Washington, DC to be with someone with whom I had fallen in love. But within weeks of arriving, red flags began to appear. I made excuses for each thing because I loved this man and believed he was the person with whom I would spend the rest of my life.
In 2015, I had moved from Denver to Washington, DC to be with someone with whom I had fallen in love. But within weeks of arriving, red flags began to appear. I made excuses for each thing that happened because I really believed he was the person with whom I would spend the rest of my life. I'd jumped through hoops to make this move — I'd sold my home, left my friends, and heartbroken, left my son who had decided last minute to take a gap year before college. I'd started a new business in this new city and I believed we could make it work.
But within a couple of months of relocating, it became clear to me I was in a toxic, abusive relationship. I felt anxious and fearful that anything I might say or do would set off my partner into a rage — putting flatware in the dishwasher facing the wrong direction, hanging pots on the pot hanger in the wrong order, leaving my water bottle on the dining room table.
Essentially, my nervous system was responding as if I was living in a war zone, waiting for the next surprise attack of yelling and name calling or silent treatment.
My attention was not on myself, but on my environment, my partner's facial expressions, constantly scanning for clues of what was to come, being hypervigilant to say and do things "right" — to not cause an outburst. It was as if I was like living in a minefield and existing in the ancient limbic part of my brain — in survival.
On April 13, 2017, while riding on the back of his motorcycle at Joshua Tree National Park— a "vacation" my intuition warned me to avoid, we T-boned a car that was doing a U-turn in the middle of the road.
It was as if I was literally stopped in my tracks.
And although the accident resulted in me breaking my foot, a finger, and a rib, it was this accident that also saved my life.
I spent the next few days at my ex’s friend’s house in Palm Springs on pain meds before flying back to DC. When I returned, I cleared my work schedule. My abusive partner was suddenly attentive, kind and loving and I was all too ready to forget the past and believe he’d had a change of heart. I allowed myself to enjoy his attention and trust him… for two glorious weeks, until the abusive behavior started again.
We were getting ready to go to his country house in Virginia for the weekend and he asked me to pack the cooler while he took care of some business. I did my best with limited use of my arms and foot, and in the hurry to beat rush hour traffic, I forgot to pack the milk. And he was enraged. I forgot to pack the milk and now we’d have to stop on the way. He couldn’t count on me for anything — everything is always on his shoulders. He raged for miles and then refused to talk to me, and I felt myself afraid again. I was confused — was he right about me? Was everything always on his shoulders?
The cognitive dissonance and confusion and brain fog was muddying my ability to see clearly. The anxiety and depression from feeling that I couldn’t trust my own gut was back with a vengeance. Read this article for more symptoms of narcissistic abuse.
My recovery
When we returned to the city, I scheduled two Feldenkrais® sessions each week with a nearby practitioner for the next 3 months. I knew I needed to become physically self-sufficient as quickly as possible, to get solidly back on my feet and not be dependent on him. To learn more about how The Feldenkrais Method® works, click here.
Some sessions were almost magical — I felt such increased mobility and lack of pain that I had to pinch myself to believe the improvement I felt was possible. Each session was different from the one before, and I had varying results. But cumulatively, the improvements steadily continued.
By the end of July I was no longer in pain and had recovered much of my flexibility and function. Gradually, I was able to see my usual client load. I continued with weekly sessons and for another month and I kept improving physically.
the most surprising effect
But the most surprising effect was that I no longer felt I was completely focused outside of myself, scanning the horizon for danger every moment. I had embarked on Feldenkrais® sessions in order to improve my physical function and release pain. How could release of mental and emotional tension be a result of a this method as well?
Regardless of whether I understood mentally what was happening or whether I believed it was possible, the thing I knew for sure was that it was happening. I was feeling physically stronger and better and I was mentally and emotionally clearer, calmer and more grounded.
I felt connected to my own body. I could breath normally. I could sleep, after months of insomnia. I was developing the ability to feel myself, and the clarity to trust my thoughts and to leave a situation that would certainly have killed me.
If you or someone you know have experienced a relentless experience that has left you with physical symptoms of stress, anxiety and overwhelm, please consider The Feldenkrais Method® to help you find relief physical and nervous system relief. To learn more about the physical symptoms of stress and anxiety, click here.
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