Seeking self, dropping anchor

I taught a teenage client this morning the very simple practice of box breathing. I find this so helpful when I catch myself feeling the telltale signs of a dysregulated nervous system! It can be a simple way of adding a pause in before we continue on with whatever task we’re working through or before responding to someone in a reactive way. You can trace the box on your hand, doodle it on some paper or even find a window/door to follow with your eyes. It’s helpful to repeat it until you’re able to extend the breath for at least 5 seconds & you can observe your body starting to calm down. Question for you: Do you have helpful little strategies you can use in the day to day to manage stress in the moment?

I’ve been working with quite a few couples at the moment around the challenges of co-parenting. It’s caused me to reflect on the concept of triangles & how this pattern can be so complex in scenarios where parental separation has occurred. A triangle is when a third party is pulled into a strained dyad in an attempt to manage & calm the stress within the dyad. So in co-parenting situations this is often a strained parent relationship, pulling a third (a child) in. Two examples I often see are: a child witnessing parent conflict/tension & responding with symptoms of illness or big behaviours which can unite the parents temporarily as they focus on supporting the child. a parent criticising the other parent to the child or pulling them into choosing a side, again temporarily relieving the parents stress as they feel validation or a sense of an ‘inside position’ with the child, putting the other parent on the ‘outer’. What can happen for the child over time is a hyper sensitiv...

The fourth factor impacting our capacity to regulate is relationships. This is the last one of this little series & potentially the most important! Most would say that this one is all about feeling understood, accepted & valued by those we care about & that this calms us down… which is not untrue! However this type of thinking can lead to dependency on others for our ability to remain calm. I have a slightly different focus on this one which comes from a Bowen family systems concept called ‘differentiation of self’. This concept refers to our ability to stay connected but autonomous in the face of relationship stress. A well differentiated person “can stay calm and clear headed enough in the face of conflict, criticism, & rejection to distinguish thinking rooted in a careful assessment of the facts from thinking clouded by emotionality.” In contrast “people with a poorly differentiated self depend so heavily on the acceptance and approval of others that they either quic...

The third factor impacting our capacity to regulate is our environment. I find this one really interesting because we can’t always change our environment & we can’t control what happens throughout the day! And nor should we… unfamiliar environments (e.g. a new school, new job etc) & unpredictability (e.g. changes to routine, cancellations etc) can reduce our capacity to regulate (stay calm) but this is not to say they should be avoided! It’s healthy to place ourselves in new spaces with new people & learn how to tolerate the discomfort. It’s also important for us to be equipped to cope with unpredictable changes without falling apart. I think there are two helpful ways to look at this one:  If there are new & unfamiliar places/people occurring throughout our week (inevitable!) then how can we increase familiarity & predictability in other areas of our (or our child’s) day/week to provide some space for grounding ourselves and/or recovering/resting. Becoming more...

The second factor I mentioned impacting our capacity to regulate are emotions. Each person has their own unique relationship with emotions & it can be really helpful to give yourself the space to become more aware of yours. Self-awareness is calming! Most of us develop a baseline understanding of emotions during childhood, often by observing significant adults around us & their reactions to our different expressions of emotions. For example, a lot of clients tell me that for them growing up any expression of anger was responded to with automatic punishment leaving them to this day confused about how best to express anger in relationships & also leaving them highly anxious when faced with another’s anger (eg. Their partner or child). A helpful way to identify which emotions raise anxiety for you is to observe yourself in relational interactions & see what triggers those anxious body responses.  Question for you: Are there any emotions you avoid experiencing? Are you ...

In my last post I talked about how our bodies play a big part in our ability to regulate. A really helpful way to increase our ability to regulate is to become more in tune with what our body is feeling & then being able to use strategies to help counteract that.  For example, when some people begin to feel anxious their bodies are aware of this even before they are! It can start causing us to feel hot & sweaty, or need frequent trips to the toilet, or get an awful headache, or pins & needles in our hands, or tight sore neck muscles… these are all really helpful alerts to tell us that we need to pause before it spirals out of control & we find ourselves in deep panic. I am a big fan of practising very simple mindfulness to help with this - especially body scans, deep breathing exercises & progressive muscle relaxation. If that’s not your thing then something as simple as pausing to take a sip of water, changing your body position, taking a shower, laying on...

I talk a lot about being able to stay calm in the face of distress. That’s good and all… but how do we practically do this? A good place to start is to understand ‘regulation’ - this simply refers to the ability to remain in a calm & alert state without flipping into hyperarousal (e.g. fight/flight) or hypoarousal (e.g. freeze). I’m going to offer some more info on this & ways we can more effectively regulate ourselves over the next few weeks. When we are well regulated we feel ‘within our window of tolerance’ - in other words we can cope with whatever stressful situation pops up in that moment, without throwing us off balance or in a state of disarray. There are many factors that contribute towards our window becoming smaller & therefore more likely for us to respond to stress with overwhelm, including something as simple as the time of day the stress occurs! Some core areas impacting our ability to regulate are: how our body feels, our emotions, our environment & of c...