I have been proactively practicing nervous system regulation in one form or another since 2013. 

For the first 7 years, managing how my nervous system responded to stress was summed up in one practice—meditation. At the time, I knew nothing about the nervous system and how it worked, I just knew that I struggled with anxiety and meditation helped. 

Then in 2020, a month before lock down kicked off, I started working with a therapist, Kate, who changed my life. 

I had tried therapy before and grown from it, but this was different. Kate introduced me to my nervous system and the different states it could be in, which can be summarized in the following framework, the polyvagal theory:

• Ventral vagal - safe and social - home base

• Sympathetic - fight or flight - my go-to, “home” away from the home base of ventral vagal

• Dorsal vagal - shutdown and collapse

A few weeks ago I was taking a shower detangling my sudsy hair between my fingers, when out of nowhere an old painful memory washed over me, dousing me in a warm bath of sticky shame. Shadow-side thoughts came flooding back:

“Ugh gross, you were so ignorant and unprepared. You thought you were great, but you were pathetic.” 😬

“Your coworkers would never guess. Make sure they never find out.” 😞

(Yikes, my inner critic can be vicious. Yours too?)

I’ve used food as a medicator for as long as I can remember. 

We all have our tools of “choice” for regulating our nervous systems in an increasingly overwhelming and stressful world. For some people it’s alcohol, for some it’s TikTok, for others it’s work. For me it’s always been food.

The problem is that while eating has brought me a lot of comfort when I needed it most, it’s also been a source of a great deal of pain, both emotional and physical.

I have a harmful habit of blaming others when I feel agitated, frustrated or dysregulated.

I think to myself: 

 “Life is hard enough. Why are you making this harder than it needs to be?! If you just listened to me/were more self aware/paid attention/did your work etc, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

I’m really good at identifying what the other person is “doing wrong,” perseverating about it, and telling them what they need to change so I can feel more comfortable in my own skin.

In October of 2020, I was talking to a mentor who said, 

“You’re taking on everyone else’s thoughts and ideas—you need to clear those out so you can find your own voice.”

At the time I was going through multiple BIG life transitions all at once, struggling to make decisions across:

Where to live - I had moved from SF to Boulder in June, 2020 and was trying to decide whether to stay and build a life there, or move home to be near my family in Cleveland.

Whether to have a child on my own - I froze my eggs in my 30s specifically for that moment in time. I had just turned 41 and broken up with my boyfriend 6 months earlier (for the second time). I thought, “I either do it now, or it will never happen for me.”