Day 130 of 365 - Mind, Body, Emotions - Recap
This last post on this topic, for now anyway, is a recap of this mini-series, as much for me as for you, the reader. Thank you for hanging in there, on what can be a confusing or even distressing subject.
Here is my attempt to summarize.
Feelings are experienced as sensations in the body. We 'move away' from unpleasant feelings as a form of protection. This can occur physically, more of a brainstem response, or emotionally, more of a mid-brain level response. We can learn from these sensations if we can explore them. Staying present to the feelings is a higher level brain activity of integration.
If we have experienced significant trauma, the vagal response stores that as a safety threat (dorsal vagus) and the midbrain/limbic area stores the emotion of the occurrence. In the case of severe trauma, associations we make can activate a shutting down response in connection with an old subconscious memory. For other less traumatic, yet uncomfortable experiences, the ventral vagus responses are more related to reactions of fight or flight - the moving against or moving away from the feeling.
Some current life events may trigger a feeling or response, such that we react in an automatic, subconscious way, with defensive social responses. Prolonged or repetitive reactions like this perpetuate stressful internal responses. Physically, these can manifest as development of illnesses related to stress. Emotionally, due to limitations in the way we interpret social cues and then interact with others, they manifest as difficulty in relationships.
Learning to pay attention to the involuntary physical and emotional responses to an experience (which were adaptive at the time of trauma) by going into the body sensation, rather than staying in a loop with the old memory response, is helpful. When we can better understand the association at a mental level, in a more 'mature brain' way, we can develop better self-regulation and integration between the subconscious and conscious mind.
This is where using techniques to access the body's wisdom, and following our intuition are helpful. Those techniques can create subtle shifts in our body, which tones down that stress response, reduces our fight/flight reactivity and uncomfortable feelings, and ultimately allows our higher brain to function better, so we can enjoy our human/social experience more. I shared with you just one technique in the form of focusing, but there are many other ways as well.
Please know, I realize that 'getting this' on a cognitive level does not immediately fix all our problems. Our bodily and social reactions to stress have developed over time, and can take time to shift. But, I do want to emphasize how our inherent design of our body and brain creates potential for us to be resilient and able to evolve. By providing ourselves supports or accessing them from others, we can start to deconstruct walls of excessive protection, brick by brick.
Here is my attempt to summarize.
Feelings are experienced as sensations in the body. We 'move away' from unpleasant feelings as a form of protection. This can occur physically, more of a brainstem response, or emotionally, more of a mid-brain level response. We can learn from these sensations if we can explore them. Staying present to the feelings is a higher level brain activity of integration.
If we have experienced significant trauma, the vagal response stores that as a safety threat (dorsal vagus) and the midbrain/limbic area stores the emotion of the occurrence. In the case of severe trauma, associations we make can activate a shutting down response in connection with an old subconscious memory. For other less traumatic, yet uncomfortable experiences, the ventral vagus responses are more related to reactions of fight or flight - the moving against or moving away from the feeling.
Some current life events may trigger a feeling or response, such that we react in an automatic, subconscious way, with defensive social responses. Prolonged or repetitive reactions like this perpetuate stressful internal responses. Physically, these can manifest as development of illnesses related to stress. Emotionally, due to limitations in the way we interpret social cues and then interact with others, they manifest as difficulty in relationships.
Learning to pay attention to the involuntary physical and emotional responses to an experience (which were adaptive at the time of trauma) by going into the body sensation, rather than staying in a loop with the old memory response, is helpful. When we can better understand the association at a mental level, in a more 'mature brain' way, we can develop better self-regulation and integration between the subconscious and conscious mind.
This is where using techniques to access the body's wisdom, and following our intuition are helpful. Those techniques can create subtle shifts in our body, which tones down that stress response, reduces our fight/flight reactivity and uncomfortable feelings, and ultimately allows our higher brain to function better, so we can enjoy our human/social experience more. I shared with you just one technique in the form of focusing, but there are many other ways as well.
Please know, I realize that 'getting this' on a cognitive level does not immediately fix all our problems. Our bodily and social reactions to stress have developed over time, and can take time to shift. But, I do want to emphasize how our inherent design of our body and brain creates potential for us to be resilient and able to evolve. By providing ourselves supports or accessing them from others, we can start to deconstruct walls of excessive protection, brick by brick.
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