Hello friend,
It’s February and I’m so happy to connect with you again. With the state of our current affairs, we need connected relationships more than ever. We need to weave a strong web to hold us. We need to cultivate both new and old relationships.
I had the joy of reconnecting with an old friend today - a friend I danced with in college, a friend who danced at my first wedding, a friend I shared early motherhood with when we each had three children exactly the same ages, a friend I last touched base with maybe 20 years ago. We have woven in and out of each other’s lives over the years like a tapestry and now as grandmothers we weave back in…
and we find ourselves sharing common ground again. This time it is ground that feels settled and stable, (the result of so much personal work and life lived) in bodies that feel grounded and hearts that continue to learn love and self-compassion. We have both been learning to self-regulate our stress-sensitive (vulnerable) nervous systems. We are better at now.
I am coming to accept my vulnerable nervous system more and more. And with it, myself. In the process I feel less shame about who I am, rather than thinking I should be someone else.
The other day I wrote this after a recent “trigger.” (They happen much less often these days and are more quickly regulated than they used to be and yet... I will always be sensitive.)
I don’t like roller coasters! Yet it seems emotional roller coasters have been all too familiar in my life.
My nervous system is wired to plunge into free fall without warning. And when that happens and I am suddenly and deeply dysregulated, I can’t stop the fall. At least not in the moment.
I have what is called a vulnerable nervous system. That makes me stress-sensitive.
When the fall takes me, I can’t un-fall. I need time to level out again. It can take a minute (actually a few minutes.) But I come back much faster these days.
I still fight against the fall with the shoulds of self-criticism and the analyzing of my not-enough-ness spinning in my head, but I can be with uncomfortable (and scary) feelings more easily and bring in self- compassion more quickly.
So even though the fall still happens sometimes, I’ve learned that the more I can allow myself to just FEEL the uncomfortable feelings and use my regulation strategies to know I’m OK (when in that moment, my nervous system still thinks it’s 3 years old) the more I become resilient and less vulnerable to those roller coasters.
This is the practice of self-regulation - the ability to respond rather than react when your buttons are pushed. My skills continue to get better with practice! And they can for you and for your child too.
This skill and the resulting loving connection to myself and those I care about, is so much of why I do my work with parents, like you, who have stress-sensitive kids.
Here’s a little excerpt from my new book (in process.)
If you had to pick one essential parenting skill to be your super-power, it would be the skill of self-regulation. It is the skill that empowers you to influence your child’s behavior more than anything else!
Below are links to three posts about building your skill of self-regulation. Enjoy! And Practice!
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