Finding new perspectives, when your mind has tunnel vision.

My car was nearly stolen with just a screw driver through the passenger side door’s key hole. After the second time it happened, a mechanic told me that there was nothing I could do. When he saw a look of desperation in my eyes, he explained that many vehicles have quirks that make them especially vulnerable to theft. He continued to tell me that any thief “worth their salt” knows you can steal this vehicle with just a screw driver. When the look of fear grew in my eyes, he tried to comfort me by telling me that most vehicles have something like this. Needless to say, his words did not comfort me. I left the conversation feeling extra vulnerable and questioning how to protect a vehicle that can be so easily stolen. 

I started to use a club on the steering wheel, as an extra precaution. I paid a lot of attention to where I parked it. I started moving it regularly from area to area in hopes no one would target it. I got strategic and it quickly turned into hypervigilance, keeping me on high alert for potential danger and threat. It took a lot of focus, energy and time to helicopter around the vehicle to prevent from all the “what ifs”.

One morning, I was walking to go to an appointment. In my hypervigilance, I thought I would walk by to make sure all was safe and sound around where I parked. As I approached my car, there was a man who appeared to be looking in the passenger side window. He scurried away as soon as I walked up. All of my senses heightened and I looked around for where he went, instantly deducing he must be casing the vehicle to steal it with a screw driver. 

My mind started to race with scenarios, but I continued to walk to my meeting, until I couldn’t take it any longer. I looped back around the block to walk back to where my car was parked, even though I knew it would make me late for my meeting. When I approached again, still more than 50 yards away, the same man was looking in the passenger window of a smaller car just behind mine. I decided to catch him in the act as I watched him move to the passenger window of my car again. I was not totally clear on what I would do when I caught him, but I was headed straight to him with determination to save my car from getting stolen by him.

When I got there, he was using the big side view mirrors to shave. It was obvious that he could see more of the contours of his face because my rearview was larger than the car’s mirror behind mine. I was too close to turn around, so after startling him with my stare, I smiled at him and kept walking. 

I had tunnel vision, causing misperception, assumptions, fears and subsequent hypervigilance. This man was just caring for his basic needs and I was happy to allow him to use my windows as a shared resource. It gave me pause to think about the assumptions I made and how quick I was to assume the worst.

My invitation for myself and all of you…when we have tunnel vision and the accompanied fears, hypervigilance and assumptions. Slow down. Get present. Find more perspectives - new ways of looking at a scenario. Take the actions you can to take exquisite care of yourself and those around you in the moment, instead of draining yourself with the “what ifs”.  

A different type of survival guide for the holidays...

This is the time of year when our bodies remember ALL holidays past, whether we want them to or not. We relive the moments of belonging and the moments of abandonment; both within the families we were born into and the families we have created. The memories live in our cells. Good, bad or in between. This can feel like you are being hijacked by feelings from years ago.

What buoys you through this period of re-feeling and how are you supporting your body? How are you prioritizing care for your nervous system and learning to provide care for your family nervous system (*acknowledging that the group we call family comes in lots of forms and constellations beyond blood relatives)?

You may be asking…what does it mean to tend to the family nervous system?

In my work with families, I talk a lot about the “family nervous system”. This is a concept I started using after working with families that were facing significant trauma, but it quickly evolved to an approach with all families because our nervous systems influence one another even when trauma is not present.  The simple fact is that we are all wired with a nervous system that activates (sometimes called the lizard brain or survival mode) when we feel a real or perceived threat. The tricky part is that, unlike animals, our nervous system can perceive a threat from feelings arising from within us in the moment, about the future or even from a past experience, like a holiday. These past feelings of sadness, anger or fear for example, turns up the volume of our nervous system, activating big emotions and big responses, whether we react or withdraw our nervous system response alerts the nervous systems of everyone around us. Our partners, kids and other loved ones get the stealth message that they need to be on guard too. It’s a little like crying wolf because as one person’s volume turns up, the volume of the whole family turns up, activating the whole family nervous system for a threat that doesn’t actually exist but makes everyone a little more scratchy towards each other. 

For the sake of simplicity, I am going to talk about a conventional nuclear family - two parents and 2 children, but please apply this to the unique constellation of your family or chosen family.  Although we are especially influenced by those groups we invest trust in, we influence one another’s nervous systems in any group we take part in. Yes, this even means at work or school,even if you don’t like the people in the group. We all still function like herd animals when a threat (or perceived threat) arises. Our nervous systems have their own secret language to tell one another about the danger, unfortunately because of the complexity of our minds and undigested feelings, our responses are often not as adaptive as a herd of zebras escaping from hungry lions unscathed. 

So when the volume of our nervous system turns up, we naturally turn up the volume of those around us. As a result, the volume is up in the whole family. What does this mean? It means couples will be quicker to fight, especially over the long standing arguments every couple has. It means kids will act out what is happening in the collective nervous system. Everyone leans on the pattern they have adapted to in the family, so kids that hit, start hitting. Kids that manage and keep everything calm, start managing and  calming everyone. Teenagers will double down on their defiance in whatever way it looks like for them. Parents are stripped of their resources to navigate any of these behaviors in the adaptive ways, not because they don’t know how to but because they no longer have emotional access to the tools they have at a lower volume. High volume requires tools that are simple, foundational or novel.

My first suggestion is to give everyone A PAUSE, a time out. No amount of teaching, disciplining or calming your kids will work when everyone is playing heavy metal music inside their brains, especially if you are trying to pretend it’s playing meditative music. In the pause, acknowledge what is happening. It could be as simple as saying, “let’s take a beat, we are all getting scratchy.” It is important to mention that this is not always about calming. Sometimes it is about meeting the energy where it is at. Maybe you actually need to play heavy metal music on the speaker, especially if you hate it, and have everyone have a dance break right at that moment. This is especially good because this type of pause also moves the feelings that were raising the volume.

After a pause, start GETTING CURIOUS and NOTICE what is happening. It becomes about calling in, and to know what to call in, you first have to look for whatever is being avoided or pushed out. This is where you try to find where there are blindspots. A  family nervous system is only as graceful as all of its parts combined. I find kids to be the best barometer in these situations because they respond to the emotional soup they are immersed in viscerally and without thinking, and are therefore really good at showing us what is in a blindspot for th family.  Maybe you were the kid that masterfully revealed the anger, grief or anxiety in the room by acting it out or maybe you have the kid that does this. Typically what is avoided is a feeling, a fear or sometimes the individual who is embodying the feeling or fear the family doesn’t want to see or face. 

Whether you have discovered the root of the actived family nervous system, the blindspot or what exactly is being avoided is less important than finding a notion or a whiff to follow. The edges of blindspots are blurry and still hard to see, so this is where you can LEAN IN versus leaning out and start PRACTICING  BEING IN A NEW WAY even without clarity. This can be uncomfortable at first. Our state of being is the state of our nervous system. We can do things differently, but our nervous system depends on the quality behind the doing - we do. It is not always what is said or done, it is more what is felt or it has a resonance of truth that can actually be felt, even trusted. It is in essence learning to walk your talk. 

We have all been through a lot. This is not meant to be another way to attack yourself for not having an agile nervous system or not walking your talk. This is about practicing, not perfection. This is about stretching and staying gentle with yourself. Don’t let guilt drive your decisions, guilt is naughty because it is like a tripwire to activate the nervous system, especially if it’s been passed down over generations. It’s about practicing something new, which may be following what is uncomfortable versus what is comfortable. Or maybe it's about slowing down versus reacting and looking for points of connection versus disconnection before, during and after conflict. Each time we slow down, get curious, pay attention, and lean in into novelty, we offer our family nervous system new grace by each practicing being in a new way. This builds and strengthens new neural pathways, changing our brains. This allows more mobility between familial roles, giving each member more options to respond in a variety of ways, as opposed to only maintaining a set role. This gives the whole family the agility and grace to find their way through anything.

Getting a bit more concrete: 

For adults with family visiting or visiting family:  it’s usually after about 72 hours with your family of origin that old childhood patterns resurface. In other words: we all become children and start becoming the role we played in our family of origin as opposed to being the adult we have become. We no longer can as effectively use all the tools we have developed in life and embody our new adult patterns of living, partnering or even parenting as easily.This activates your nervous system. My (playful but honest) advice…plan a trip for 71 hours until you have lots of nervous system practice and can giggle at yourself. 

If a short trip is not possible, no worries, here are a few things to help.1) take lots of pauses: bathroom breaks, long walks by yourself, anything that gives you a break from the expectations of your childhood role, so you can disrupt it and be with your adult self. 2) be gentle with yourself and be as playful as possible. Even if you aren’t the playful type, find a way towards laughter 3) ground in nature - even if it is putting your hands in the dirt of a house plant, but better if you can touch a tree, put your feet in dirt or walk on the beach.  4) this may seem taboo, but orgasms help too. If this is too far of a leap for you, try anything that invites pleasure for your senses.  

For parents and their children: Take space for you. Practice pausing, curiosity, connection and a novel approach. Being is visceral. Kids speak body more than adults. If the way you are being doesn’t match your words, they can’t as easily hear you or learn from you. Find new ways to connect and stretch. Teach less and “be” your lessons.  Play with doing something radically different in the way you usually discipline or connect, creating a disruption, and observe how your kids respond. If you surprised them, you are on the right track. When you are “being” different, they will “be” different…then you can decide if you like the change or not, and the practice is still worth it because it grows new pathways in everyone's brains and therefore encourages resilience for each member and the family nervous system as a whole. 

Building Structures of Belonging and Repair

In 2015, I opened a non-profit called Hatch Community with the mission to disrupt cycles of poverty and nurture parent-child relationships. We wanted to transform generations through economic opportunity, birth and parenting education, and a community of support for and by young parents. It was a big, heart driven mission, with a deep belief in conscious community building and shared resources. Through vocational training and peer support we provided services to all parents under 25 with a specific focus on foster youth, transitional youth, LGBTQAI+ and sexually exploited youth. Our focus was on these populations because they are the most difficult to structure belonging around because they are rightfully cautious with their trust. The typical systems of support the average person leans on fell through for them - biological family, extended family, chosen family, their community and societal systems. My underlying belief and hope was that if we could build structures of belonging and care for the most betrayed populations in our society then by including them we could begin to learn to build togetherness for all of us. By inviting in all the people (and parts of ourselves) that we try to discard so that we can fit into a mold of society that no longer works for any of us we could create a society that works for ALL of us. 

How we built structures of belonging, where the feeling of it lasts to this day in the heart of everyone involved:

• Our training programs taught young people how to care for themselves and be accountable to their actions to care for others. We developed layers of support by providing a peer mentor program on top of a peer support program.

• Our Educators and Staff were walking their talk by actually doing the work they were teaching,  while also learning to care for themselves so they could care for others better. 

• We had consistent weekly meetings where we learned to bridge differences, to broaden perspectives by holding other peoples experiences, and celebrated one another’s successes. 

• We invited and had the hard conversations. We built trust and offered repair when trust was broken. 

• We invited every part of every person and learned to care for the part and the person better every time. 

• We co-created a learning environment that was focused on curiosity and brought in outside experts to better understand challenges the group was facing: including talking about isms, phobias, microaggressions and oppression. Both individuals and the group as a whole showed us where we needed more attention to move forward. 

• We educated the professionals who came in with a culture that questioned everyone, regardless of their status, while also honoring their wisdom. 

The program was wildly successful and wee grew fast with minimal resources. We paved new ways for the populations we served and the birth and parenting communities in the Bay area. The contract we held with Alameda County is now a paid part of Medical. We showed other organizations how to build and grow in community. We made mistakes. We learned from them. We grew from them, together. 

At the start of 2020 the organization closed, breaking down into parts and giving graduates the pieces to carry on in their individual work and hearts.  I am still in awe of what each of them created inside themselves, in their communities and in the world. 

We need more programs, more communities, more spaces that invite all of us and every part of us to the table, creating structure for belonging and repair.

I would love to share with you what I have learned and also learn from you, in supporting you to create these structures in your partnerships, your family, your chosen family, your communities and your organizations or businesses. We need to come together, in a new way, with our whole selves, so that what feels like the end times are actually new beginnings. 

An invitation to whiteness and white women...

We are all impacted by our relationship to whiteness because of the societal soup we all live in, to say it lightly. The most recent election exemplifies this and, to me, exemplifies the blindspots white women, specifically, have. I’ve spoken about this a lot before because I believe in the power of uncovering and facing our blindspots. We all have them and they control our subconscious until we are willing to truly see them. We need help seeing them, because they are literally our blind-spot.  I have been fortunate enough to have some incredible teachers show me my blindspots - coaches and leaders in the field, but also there was a woman with developmental disabilities that I worked with for 10 years, the foster youth who schooled me when I was supposed to be teaching them, the countless innocent wisdom of kids calling me out for my incongruence, the professors of color who took a chance on educating me at a cost to them, the friends of color, the trans friends, and my LGBTQAI+ and POC elders. I am still learning. I still make mistakes. 

To White Women: we have some work to do together and it starts with exposing our blindspots. Whether you voted for trump, are hiding you voted for trump, would never have voted for trump, or didn’t vote at all, white women were the demographic that pulled the support for trump over the finish line into first place. And no matter what group you belong to above, we all have a part in it. It is our shared blindspots that got us here. Our biggest responsibility as white women is to be accountable to what we don’t yet see and understand or learn how to handle it so that the privileges we have doesn’t cause harm to someone else, especially accidentally. 

We need to learn to build structures of belonging. We need to invite everyone and all parts in. We need to stop turning on one another but rather start finding the way back to each other. 

I don’t have all the answers, but I have a good starting point: Curiosity. Talk with white people who have already been taught by marginalized populations to see their blindspots. 

I have been the woman accidentally reinforcing the patriarchy by maintaining the lies of abusers.

I have been the white woman who has participated in microagressions on people of color because of my blindspot to my privilege.

I have been the person who hadn’t fully stepped into who I am and harmed people because they represented a part of me I wasn’t ready to be, specifically around my queerness.

I have no desire to preach or make you feel wrong. We are all always learning. And…what we are not changing we are choosing, consciously and subconsciously. I can help you expose more blindspots.  Reach out.

Pain, as my biggest teacher

I often joke that I am like Benjamin Button. In truth, I don’t know much about the myth of him except he was the man who grew younger as he aged. I feel this way because I can do more with my body now than I could when I was younger and because I still have childlike awe for the world around me. When friends of mine say, “I am too old to do that”, I always smile and think “this is the first time I can do this”.

My magic potion has been changing my relationship to pain to one of repair - listening and turning towards physical and emotional pain as opposed to pushing through, disconnecting or avoiding it. 

For as long as I can remember, I remember being in pain.  I was told I had muscular scoliosis as a kid, which the doctors explained to me as my muscles pulling on my spine in the wrong directions. It didn’t mean anything to me except that I wanted to cry most days just from carrying my backpack. I viscerally remember the feeling of sitting on a curb waiting for my mom to pick me up from school, when I was only 8. I was carrying a book bag with tears in my eyes, looking at the other kids and wondering why their bags didn’t hurt so much.

When I was 12 my mom took me to the doctors, because I had been complaining about my feet. They told my mother I had a rare disease in my feet that 90 year olds typically get. I remember the doctor telling my mother, “she can either be in a wheelchair for a year and it might help or she can learn to deal with the pain”. My mom asked me if I wanted to be in a wheelchair and I said no, so I learned to cope with the pain. It felt like knives driving through the balls of my feet with every step and nothing helped. I was still required to play sports in school. I never was great at sports as a kid, but they helped me learn to manage the constant pain by developing a lot of pain tolerance. 

I thought pain was part of sports. When I was only 20 and had been climbing for a couple years, I had every diagnosis - frozen shoulders, arthritis, and tendonitis. I pushed through them all. Even if I had to wake up multiple times a night in pain or cry myself to sleep, I would still climb. In all fairness it hurt just as much to do nothing, so fighting the pain to do something became another way I survived the pain.

 In part because of all the physical pain, I also learned to feel less emotionally. Feelings are the way our body speaks and I didn’t think I could survive any more pain by listening to it. As a result, I gave my mind the job instead. I learned to think about my feelings, instead of really feeling them. It gave me the illusion of some control over all the pain.  

I was convinced I could keep pushing past the pain and feelings, and eventually I would overcome them. Unfortunately, what happened was a lot of unfelt grief and anger stored up in my body, causing more pain. It started to feel more overwhelming to feel sadness or even frustration. Every time I experienced a loss or disappointment there was a landslide of feelings waiting to erupt. I learned breathing exercises and meditation. I did all types of stretching, mobility, and cross training. I learned and used so many different tools to navigate emotions by training to be a therapist and working with kids. It all helped. But, I still kept getting bigger and bigger lessons to refine how to listen to my body and stop pushing through the pain and past the feelings. 

Breaking my back became a pivotal point of change, because it also coincided with big losses in my family, community and in my work. I remember a friend saying, “what is it going to take for you to take a knee”. With so much pain from so many directions, I didn’t have enough tools or support. And in my reluctant surrender, it revealed I was still leaning mostly on movement, doing or pushing through to survive pain and manage feelings. I had to give in to letting go of everything that felt most important at the time and with it the fight against change. I had to be with and be in it all.

I rebuilt my body like lego pieces. While also building new emotional tools to truly listen and feel. While I did the most excruciatingly small physical exercises that were more painful than anything I have ever experienced, I also surrendered to all the feelings. I learned to scream and ball my eyes out and pound the floor or a pillow until I started feeling instead of thinking about my feelings. I, bit by bit, taught myself to feel the underneath of the underneath, instead of falling into feeling like a victim. I grieved. I raged at my pillow. I surrendered to not knowing and not being able to do it on my own.  

I begin to rebuild the support systems around me and made them more sustainable. I learned to receive, and learned to keep receiving more support from others - more than I ever had or had ever felt comfortable doing. I learned to give in new ways, where I considered what I had to generously give while still holding boundaries of self love. 

 I broke my back over 7 years ago, and today I can do what my 20 year old self never could - box (which I am still in awe of), rock climb, dance and simply live without chronic pain. I also feel more held, trust more and have a greater sense of belonging than ever before. My relationship with myself and with others has transformed and continues too - I am willing to share my feelings; turn towards the tough conversations and repair; celebrate and upride successes; and both give and receive reciprocally. I am still a work in progress. I still experience really tough lessons. I am still learning to listen more and refine how to better care for myself and others. I still make mistakes. I am still paying attention and always looking for novel ways to stretch and shift old outdated patterns into new patterns. 

But, through it all, I also found that pleasure lives alongside my pain and joy lives alongside my grief. And, my willingness to surrender to change, choose vulnerability, and turn towards my grief, my anger and what I most fear, holds in it endless possibilities of love, freedom, integrity, authenticity, community, generosity and new dreams. 

Thank you for reading my journey! I would love to hear from you and learn what pain has taught you?

If you find yourself wanting some support and are curious about what I do in my coaching, reach out! We can set up a 20 minute chat, so I can learn more about what type of support you are looking for and share with you about my approaches and techniques.

How do we navigate uncertain times?

We are in a place of polarity in society and some of these divisions stretch into our communities as well as within ourselves. It seems everywhere we see growing tension, fear, and disillusionment. Many of us are grasping for some sense of certainty, stability, comfort and hope. We are often looking for this sense of safety or stillness outside of ourselves.  And when we don’t find it there, we try to control anything (and everything) we feel like we can in our environments or we simply avoid doing anything at all.

In childhood we are taught to look to authority figures for safety and for children it is age appropriate to do so. They can seek comfort and guidance in caregivers and other trusted adults like teachers or coaches. But for many of us we struggled to find this sense of safety in the world as children.  Sometimes this was because of trauma and sometimes because of the circumstances of our young lives. As a result we continue to look predominately for safety outside of ourselves as adults; either in people or in structures.

The people we look towards are often our romantic partners, trusted friends, family members or authority figures such as bosses, funders, politicians or even religious figures.  The structures beyond relationships we look towards are whatever gives us a sense of stability. This can be anything from our job, owning a house, having adequate savings, maintaining routines, our beliefs and values or even a trust in the dependability of the government. It is important to depend on some things outside of ourselves, but what happens when the outside structures shake or are in a state of change? What do you use as an anchor then? 

This is our opportunity to build more of our own internal stability.  When these outside structures shake we have to create the sense of safety we need, at least in part, on our own. If we are successful then we can find more stillness inside of ourselves and are able to be curious about what actions actually need to be taken. Unfortunately, because we are taught more to depend on outside forces than we are to depend on a strength from within, we tend to get trapped in a victimhood mindset in response to what happens to us.

Whether viscerally or only mentally experienced, feeling like a victim creates helplessness and hopelessness that cause our brains to move into survival mode. Survival mode is contagious to the nervous systems and brains around us. However, when we create stillness inside of ourselves we create something that we can depend on that allows us to reclaim our personal authority and invites others to do the same. In claiming our authority, we develop agency. We can take action towards repair with ourselves, with others and even with the environment instead of reacting primarily from survival mode. 

We are taught throughout our lives to depend on others. We are not taught how to be interdependent. We have to intentionally choose to learn to care for ourselves while we simultaneously care for others. It’s vulnerable. We don’t have control over the results. We only have control over how we choose to participate with ourselves and others. If we abandon ourselves, we will be abandoned! If we abandon others, we are left to reconcile with ourselves. How do we bridge from the pains of abandonment to interdependence?

Repair starts with our relationship with ourselves, and continues in vulnerable acts with others. Building trust is in the little actions. It is in finding some stillness through a pause in survival mode, and moving from there in small steps. The real work of building trust is skipped over in grandiose actions or pledges that are too big for you to follow through on or that just keep you distracted with business. For example: maybe trusting yourself starts with a promise to return to yourself every time you abandon yourself in an emotional moment instead of declaring you’ll never abandon yourself ever again. We won’t be able to snap our fingers and stop abandoning ourselves, so demanding “no self-abandonment” will actually reinforce mistrust in ourselves because we will fail. In contrast, when we learn to commit to building trust with ourselves in committing to the repair when we do leave, we simultaneously create a pathway to build trust with others in similar little steps towards repair.

 Okay, let’s get tangible. We know the world around us is shaking. Systems and people we once thought we could depend on are not as dependable…so what do we do to anchor ourselves? 

Let’s start really small with little actions that anchor us back to ourselves. Pay attention to our bodies as guides for pace and what we need. Ground in the moment with focus on sensations. Use curiosity. Find the tool that is right for the moment. Keep it really simple.

Some ideas…

Habit stacking: stack a habit with something you already do. When you brush your teeth in the morning and the evening, do a body scan right after, notice where you are in your body and where you can be in your body a little more. 

Set alarms throughout the day or carry a rock in your pocket to remind you to pause and turn your attention towards yourself and ask your body and heart “how here am I?“

Get in your body through noticing your sensations versus thinking about your body. Stay out of story but inside sensations.

Schedule a time to intentionally repair with yourself or another person.

Maybe you have been building tools and know how to return to stillness inside yourself, then what? Share it. Our nervous systems respond to one another. Just as fear is contagious, so is your stillness and hope. 

If you want support with more tools or to expand on how to use these or other ideas in new ways…reach out! Sometimes it’s just about finding the right tool for the moment. I would love to help!

Sometimes We Need to Choose the Path of Most Resistance

When can the path of most resistance create the most sustainable change in our lives?

Our brains evolved for self-preservation - to survive. For our oldest ancestors, survival meant avoiding physical danger and death. In current times, the complexity of fears and threats in our environments, attachments to others and generational histories influence our brains perception of threats, its responses and its development.  We build neural pathways from childhood - patterns of how we respond in stressful and threatening situations. And, we have to get curious about what these patterns are, why they served us then, how we benefited from them and what fears they softened. Then, we get even more curious about how we have reinforced and safeguard these patterns into adulthood.

As adults, there comes a time where our childhood strategies and patterns begin to threaten or sabotage the adult life we want to live. We want something different. Willpower alone cannot overpower these pathways. We need NOVELTY to disrupt the established habits, patterns and beliefs that stem from these once successful survival strategies.

The first catch to changing our brain or creating new pathways is that our brain is extremely RESISTANT to a new way of doing something. It favors the familiar, established paths, no matter how harmful or inefficient they may be - especially if it’s been done a particular way since childhood. So we actually have to choose to DISRUPT the old familiar patterns to help our brain grow. At first this can even be fun, maybe feel a little naughty, but when the old ingrained pathways are consistently threatened your mind rebels in resistance and your nervous system activates. Your safety alarm bells go off. Your brain perceives threat to this pattern, habit, or belief - as threat to your survival.

The second catch is your brain is using past fear, stress and threat to make something in the present moment dangerous that may NOT actually be dangerous. Your brain wants to protect its strong neural pathway carved from childhood more than recognize the nuance of what you may need most as an adult in the present moment.  

How do we recognize if resistance is a real warning or your brain is favoring an outdated pattern? Ask yourself some questions…

• Are you out of harms way physically and emotionally in this moment?

• Is there an action you need to take or can take right now to address the urgency your mind is creating?

• Is the way you feel right now familiar in some way? Does it resemble a response you had in your childhood? 

• Are you finding yourself saying tells like “I can’t” or “I’ve always…” or “I never…” or “it’s too much/too hard”?

If you are safe, there are no immediate actions to be taken and this feels somehow familiar - this is where RESISTANCE TRAINING comes in. Similar to teaching your joints to become more mobile or your muscles to get stronger, you get the best results if you are disciplined and you stretch the edge of their capacity bit by bit. If you go too far, you will injure yourself or skip the area that actually needs attention for more mobility or flexibility. For our brains, to build a new neural pathway, you need to stretch your brain out of its comfort zone, intentionally activating and then soothing your nervous system with new habits and beliefs.

For example, maybe you learned to hide, smother your voice, get small or please adults as a child to feel safe, loved, supported or maybe even get your basic needs met. This becomes essential for survival to your brain. Disruptions to these survival strategies could look like…becoming a disrupter by using your voice and speaking out. Naming the elephant in the room or having the 10 minute hard, sweaty conversation instead of avoiding conflict. Trying out being “naughty” as opposed to the “good” kid. Including your needs instead of only meeting the needs of others. Learning and sharing your needs, wants and desires. Feeling your feelings instead of adapting to the feelings or needs of others. Receiving as much as you give. Reparenting your younger self by becoming the supportive adult you needed as a child. Challenging old ways of being can be scary to our system…so we can expect resistance. If your nervous system leaps into fight, flight or freeze response, regulate the flooding first and then return to resistance training. 

Repetition is key. Once you have disrupted an old pattern you have to keep disrupting it. This is where discipline comes in. Your brain is going to come up with every reason and emotional response to return to the old, familiar, childhood pathway. It’s the equivalent of a paved highway in your brain. Where as the new pathway is like a dirt path in the woods that you have to keep walking over and over again for it to truly establish itself. When you are doing something new the resistance or discomfort is actually telling you that your pathway is becoming more defined. But, this is when we often give up. Things feel too hard. Or we don’t even recognize we are being lulled back onto the paved highway.

Resistance is actually the sign you are successfully creating a more established new pathway, a new possibility. Keep choosing the path of most resistance, until it becomes another way!

Using Climbing to Support Nervous System Agility

When I started climbing over 20 years ago, I was more afraid than courageous. I had more fear than everyone I climbed with. Fear of heights. Fear of falling. Fear of something not working right or someone messing up. Fear of everything. 

When friends comment on my climbing now, they often say “I could never do that I am scared of…(fill in the blank).” I quietly think to myself, “I am scared too.” Being scared isn’t what changed…

I never stopped being afraid, instead I used climbing to teach myself how to be afraid and still do it. I learned how to get scared with more grace, by tracking my nervous system, by studying the physical and emotional signs, by testing my limits to know my true limits.  

I have had a very activated nervous system for as long as I can remember. It was a long journey, but I was determined to learn how to tend to my nervous system - allowing me to play, live, work and connect with those around me differently. I still work on it every day.

Climbing was one way I taught myself to dance with fear; to discern what actually needed my attention and what my brain was making up. I learned how to take little risks and then big risks…without being controlled by fear. I learned to trust others, myself and something bigger. I learned when to stop. I learned when to push my edges to reach new heights.

Climbing let me face real fear - fear of injury or death. It allowed me to get curious about my responses and learn to change how I responded. This didn’t make me less fearful, instead it made me more discerning. With new awareness and discipline, I had new ways to respond that consistently disrupted outdated habits, patterns and belief systems. I transformed how I navigated fear in all parts of my life with more nervous system agility. 

Imagine… 

I am 30 feet off the ground. I am exhausted. My elbows and knees are already raw from squeezing inside sandstone cracks. There is a twinge of pain starting to scream at me from between my shoulder blades…the result of dragging 20lbs of gear, while it hangs across my shoulder on a sling that is digging into my neck. I reach the first moment when a tiny rest becomes a possibility, a rock feature where I can curl the curves of my body inside just enough to unweight most of my body..ending up  in a fetal position. I look up from the small bit of safety I have established, and all I can see is the bulge of the cliff sticking out above me. My heart starts to race. My thoughts start to tell me I can’t do this. But I’ve been here before and I know what to do.

I take a breath…

I slide my right arm into the crack past my elbow, and “chicken wing” myself up. I jam my legs deep inside and twist both my feet in opposite directions, pressing my toes and heels on opposite sides of the inside of the crack. I am holding myself up with counter tension. This gives me the ability to move up an inch at a time. I slide my hand to where the roof of the crack wall starts to curve up, quickly matching it with the arm that was chicken winged, to form a butterfly where my hands stacked on top of one another. The gear pulls heavy on my shoulder threatening to pull me off as I lean against the wall. I gently shuffle my feet up just a little more. With one shoulder on one side of the crack and my hand counter balancing on the other, I reach out to place a piece of gear, so I can place it in the wall to give me some protection from a fall. But my gear is wedged behind my hip on the wall, and I just can’t manage to reach it. I grab behind, desperately trying not to disturb the perfect weight balance I have established. I slip. I almost fall. I catch myself. I finally wiggle a piece of gear from between my hip and the wall into my hand. I go to place it in the crack. It doesn’t fit. I am slipping again. I slide another sling quickly over my neck, to catch myself with both hands. I barely catch myself from falling and press my back against the wall. As I move up into a squeeze, I quickly get in another piece of protection, but I am slipping again down an inch for every two I move up. I move above my piece of protection. I sink my shoulder deeper into the crack. 

My mind hyper focuses with each move…

Clink. The two slings crossing opposite sides of my neck, lock together. A carabiner has somehow locked itself. I move up to try and wiggle free and the slings cinch down on my neck…I can’t breathe. I shuffle up to try and release what is caught. But now the gear is caught in the crack too. If I move up it cinches tighter, and I realize if my feet slip and I fall, I risk hanging from my neck.

I freeze. I hold my breath.

My climbing partner yells up. “Whip, you okay?” Only small gasps of air come out in response - I can’t tell him what’s going on. Another friend, squeals “let her down”. My Climbing partner tries to quiet my friend, though I can still hear them. He whispers “if she is caught by her neck and I give her too much slack I could kill her.” 

Silence. Everything pauses. Everyone holds their breath.

Two parts of me began to talk in fractions of seconds. “Just go up, push through. You will be fine.” And then another side says, “back down, at least you will have the bit of safety to rest in. You don’t know what lies up ahead.” I suck in as much air as I can against the restriction. I slide my body down. The slings cinch tighter. I begin to feel light headed. I quickly wiggle my legs, so they kick me out horizontal and I am doing some weird kind of pike, still with no oxygen.  I wiggle my body again to lower into a bit of safety. I slip, but am able to use it to wedge myself back into the fetal position and at last the sling releases.

I finally get a breath. Inhale, exhale. 

I have given myself a bit of safety, and I began to panic. I take another breath and focus, getting really logical and using my hypervigilence to my advantage. I determine I cannot climb down. It is safer to keep climbing to the top and establish anchors. I stare at the crack above me…acknowledging that I just barely escaped from it with my life. I study it. How can it be done? I reset my fear and focused it on what I needed to do. 

With steady breath…

I climbed out of my little nook of safety, through the roof and methodically move, inch by inch, to the end of the climb. With care, I pulled up the drill from my partner on the ground and proceed to hand drill the anchors. I set up the ropes so I can descend and then I lower to the ground.

I hold my breath. 

When my feet hit the ground and I am safe, the hypervigilence and management skills to get through the danger dissolved instantly. My nervous system sky rockets, I can feel my skin start to crawl. The pressure from my clothes suffocates me and I I pull off what I can, moving like a wild animal. I can’t let anyone touch me. I curl up on a rock, start to cry and fall asleep for an hour. When I wake up, I am back to normal, but tender. And, luckily with friends who can hold me.

I took a deep breath. 

(Link to New Climbing Website)