Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome back to the women's mental health podcast.
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I'm randy.
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I'm And I'm Jess.
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And we are two licensed psychotherapists, and this is a safe space where we talk about mental health, well being, and strategies for coping with life's challenges.
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And how all of this is normal, and you are not alone.
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Today we're diving into a topic that's at the core of mental health and your physical well being.
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How to heal your nervous system.
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This concept has gained a lot of attention in the wellness and mental health world lately, but what does it actually mean?
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Find us and more
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at womensmentalhealthpodcast.
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com.
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We're going to do our Have You Ever Had These Thoughts.
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What does nervous
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system healing mean?
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Can emotional trauma impact the nervous system?
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What are signs that can show you that your nervous system is unbalanced?
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How can I support my nervous system's healing?
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What is the role of nutrition and food in healing your nervous system?
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What
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can I physically do or what physical activity can I do to help my, ah,
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hold on.
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Just needs some, she needs some help.
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Some physical healing.
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I'm so going to put that in there.
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Can physical activity help that
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nervous system heal?
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What are some good relaxation techniques that can help you heal your nervous system?
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And how does sleep affect your nervous system and healing it?
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Can talking therapies aid in healing the nervous system?
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And how long does it take for the nervous system
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to
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heal?
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Okay.
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So what exactly is the nervous system healing and why are we talking about it?
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It is very, very important and I've seen so much more going on about People looking at their nervous system.
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Mm-hmm Trying to get balanced and get grounded.
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So what it does refer to is restoring balance in our body's autonomic nervous system.
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And so what that does at that controls, how we respond to stress.
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And when we say autonomic system, what that means is that's our involuntary or just
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behind the scenes, everything that's going on exactly in your body, in your body without thinking about it.
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So
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with that, there's two things.
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Two main parts of this, and I know we're going to get a little into the weeds here, but we're going to try to like, pull ourselves back out.
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Okay.
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So the two main parts is the, what we call the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
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So the sympathetic nervous system is also known as your fight or flight mode.
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So when you feel like anxious or you need to move or you're in trouble and that your body is sending off like these signals.
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And then parasympathetic is often called the rest and digest mode.
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So that's like when you're like, low key, just chilling.
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I'm just going with the flow.
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Exactly.
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But what happens is when our nervous system is overwhelmed by chronic stress or trauma, it gets stuck in that survival fight or flight mode.
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And what that does is that leads to anxiety and burnout and even physical health problems.
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And so most of us are always stuck in that fight or
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flight, traumatic place.
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So your sympathetic nervous system is like just firing off on all cylinders 24 seven.
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And then There's no balance there.
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It's like driving your car and like hitting the gas and flooring it all the time.
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Even that when you're at resting.
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Or writing it on empty and
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hoping that you're going to make it somewhere.
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Exactly.
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You're like, I got 50
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miles to go.
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Can I make it?
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Can I make it?
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Yeah.
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So we're talking about healing the nervous system.
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And that means returning to this state of balance between your sympathetic and parasympathetic Sympathetic systems so that you have an equal balance between them and you're not in this fight or flight mode 24 7 exactly so we don't get completely
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stuck all the time in that stress mode where most of us live We live in that high
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stress mode and we get addicted to it.
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We don't know how else to function with Out being in that constant straight state of anxiety or stress exactly.
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And that's when we also shut down.
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If you're ADHD, we do
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that whole, like we get frozen paralyzed.
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And that happens with depression and anxiety too.
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You just get paralyzed and you have all these things to do or you feel anxious or you're feeling worried, but then you're just sitting there stuck, like worried, still filing, just scrolling on your phone because you can't figure it out.
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So.
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when we talk about the term healing, we really want to talk about more than just managing our symptoms because that's like sticking a bandaid on our stress.
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We really want to talk about repairing and retaining the nervous system.
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And what that means is if we have a physical injury, it requires care and rehab.
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We can't just stick a brace on it and call it good.
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We have to do more than that.
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We have to.
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actually take the time and tools and the consistency to heal from all of the effects of stress and trauma
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and burnout.
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Yup.
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And as we always say, healing isn't linear.
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This can look like corkscrews, it can look like back flips, the journey.
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Is going to be yours and yours alone.
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And it's a journey of learning how to respond to this stress and healthier ways and how to reconnect with your body and your mind and thus helping yourself build resilience over time.
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So you're not constantly going back into this fight or flight mode and stressing yourself out and burning yourself out.
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Exactly.
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And as women, we are constantly doing so much more than we should.
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We are so connected to this state of anxiety in our nervous system because things like caregiving work life balance, It's trauma, the pressures that we have at work in society to do all of these amazing things.
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We're constantly in these fight, flight or freeze modes.
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Even when we're like trying to
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relax, we're not there.
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And this shows up as like we mentioned anxiety, depression, irritability, like snapping at people at work or at home, sleep issues like insomnia.
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Physical conditions, like you have tension and like your shoulders, your back, your neck chronic fatigue.
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It can trigger autoimmune disorders.
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You might have something like in your genetics or background and then this stress brings it up to the forefront.
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And so when we decide to focus on healing our nervous system, we can help ourselves reduce anxiety, reduce those feelings of being overwhelmed.
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We can improve our ability to regulate our emotions.
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We can enhance our focus, our productivity, and we can feel more present and connected with ourselves and in our relationships at work
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When we talk about healing, it's really important because women are often expected to keep it together.
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We're supposed to keep it together.
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We, especially after coming through like holiday seasons, we do it all and we keep it together, emotionally, keep it together while we're juggling all of these different roles.
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And so it makes
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it, we're faking emotionally keeping it together while we're breaking on the inside.
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And we're not showing people because we don't want to be weak or we don't want to, look like we
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don't have it together.
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Yeah.
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And so we're shoving our emotions into it.
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down.
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We're shoving our physical reactions down.
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We're putting this stuff on the back burner.
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And when we are constantly doing that, we're in a cycle of that and ignoring what our body is telling us, ignoring what our mind is telling us.
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It makes it harder and harder to recognize when you are in this fight or flight or freeze mode and that your system is totally out of balance.
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You think it's normal.
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But it's not really not.
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It's not normal.
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Living in the Bay Area.
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It was always that.
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How are you busy?
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We're busy.
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We're busy.
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And having a two hour commute is normal.
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That is not normal.
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That is normal for the Bay Area.
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But it is not normal to have a two hour commute.
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It is not normal to say, How are you?
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I'm busy.
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Yeah, we've talked about this hustle culture.
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Yeah, just going Go, go, go, go, go.
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And that it's good to be busy.
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Like people that sign their kids up for 20 different sports.
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Like I want them to be busy, busy, busy.
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We don't understand the importance in our society in the United States about how to rest, how to relax, how to take breaks, how to take vacations.
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That's blatantly obvious and how our workforce is we don't, we don't like people to take time off.
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We don't like them to take sick days.
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We don't like them to take vacation days where in other countries like they have a siesta in the middle of the day where you can nap like stores closed down.
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Like what is this?
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I need a mid nap day.
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When I was like early 20s.
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I went to Spain and that was the best thing.
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It was so fun.
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Flippin hot but there's a siesta you literally went and took a nap and hung out and did nothing in the afternoon And then you stayed up late at night again, and it was just so fun It was like wait, everything is shutting.
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Yep.
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All the stores shutting down three to six.
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Everything shuts down you go home you do whatever you take your siesta your rest And we literally went home and took a nap
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and same thing with our paternity leave and, maternity leave And other countries, they get so much more time to be with their child to rest, to heal, to relax.
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And we're just like, Nope, back to work, like two weeks, like you're good to go.
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Same thing, and European cultures, it's normal to take a month off for vacation.
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And I'm like, the month of August, right?
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I'm like, what's.
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What's that?
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We're like trying to figure out like one week, maybe that we can relax.
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And it's that's more work than anything else, especially when you're a woman trying to make all the plans and juggle everything.
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So how do we learn to embrace and normalize healing our nervous system?
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We have to practice self compassion and realize that one, we're out of balance.
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That's the first one.
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But two, is that this is going to take time and that the progress isn't always obvious.
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It's like when you're losing weight.
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It isn't always obvious.
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You can't always
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see it, but other people can sometimes see it.
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Or all of a sudden you're like, these pants are way too big.
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What happened?
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And so it isn't, Is an instant and that's what we struggle with is that it isn't an instant
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thing.
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Well, we live in a very
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Like instant gratification society, like we watch 30 second videos We want everything right now Two day shipping or like overnight shipping and all these things like we want now we want now two days I want it like by 4 in the morning.
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What are you talking about?
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I want it for a and by the time I wake up at 9 that makes makes no sense But I also like the thing about like You were saying if you break something and you, we can't just put a brace on it we need to cast it, we need to heal it, and I think that that's the same thing a broken bone sometimes can take six to nine months to heal or longer, plus rehab afterwards.
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But the thing with
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a broken bone, though, is that you have a cast.
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Yeah.
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And when you have something You're immobilized.
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Well, not only do you immobilize, but people see it and they recognize, Oh, you have a cast.
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Let me open the door for you.
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Oh, you, you broke something or you're on crutches.
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So it's physical.
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But when you.
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Invisible people don't recognize it or others don't recognize it and
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they talk about that too A lot of people that have invisible chronic illnesses and stuff like that Like people are like you're not handicapped like you're not disabled You're not and it's like you don't know what's going on inside of that person's body And this is the same thing with this with any mental health struggle You do not know what's going on in somebody's mind or their body and so So half the time we don't know what's going on in our
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own bodies, let alone somebody else's.
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I
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mean, that's why we're talking about that.
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But we should still go out in the world and think maybe this person is having a hard day.
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So we should open the door for them or we should compliment them or we should
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just do it for
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fun.
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Yeah, we should just be nice people.
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It's really hard to be nice these days, but
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yeah, okay, so learn your triggers.
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Right there.
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It's really hard to be nice.
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We need to learn what our triggers are Yeah, because if we can learn our triggers then we can respond appropriately to them Well same
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thing like i'm just like it's too peoply outside I don't really love going out when it's busy so like i'll shop on like off hours or try to go and it's Not traffic y and things aren't gonna make me road rage those things are triggers for me or because i'm very sensitive to like light things and sounds and that that makes people overwhelmed, especially if it's during, like we just passed like this holiday rush season where you're out and there's people everywhere, shopping like last minute for things.
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It's okay, I'm just gonna shop online,
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I know I went to Costco and I thought, okay, this will be okay.
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I can do this.
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I can do this.
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And I go to Costco and I saw, I don't know how many people stepped in front of me, ran into me.
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Oh my, it's the worst.
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And I was like, is it me?
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And I was laughing and I was like, okay, it must be me.
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And the lady next to me said, it's just that time of the year.
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My daughter is
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I hate old people.
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And I'm like, I'm an old people because same thing when we go to Costco, they're like, ramming their cards like nobody pays attention.
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Nobody is people are not very self aware.
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So like when you go out into actual space, they literally have zero self awareness.
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So
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if they can't be aware of themselves, they're not going to be aware of you.
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that's what we're saying is know your triggers.
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Yeah.
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And yeah, maybe.
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And same thing if talking to your family, makes you go into fight or flight or talking to your boss after hours silence those notifications, decline that call, delete that email, all those things.
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You have a right to learn your triggers and set your boundaries.
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Exactly.
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And so that goes to the next piece is to set your boundaries.
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We need to set our boundaries and be able to say that doesn't work
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for me.
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Yeah.
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Or
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create your own safe space, your own safe place.
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Bubble and that includes like we talked about practicing self compassion, learning your triggers and building your routines around those things that help you be the best version of you.
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Because when you are in your safe environment and you feel at peace and you feel centered.
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That promotes relaxation.
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I used to tell my spouse way back when we first got married in our very first house is that when I come home from the work I do, this is my safety place.
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This is my environment where I feel safe and I need this set up because I worked out in the field and I would come home.
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And there would be days where I'd like, I have to walk in and know that, okay, this is safe for me.
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And that was setting a boundary of how I needed my peace.
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I was keeping my
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peace.
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Yeah.
