I once read a story about a woman who adopted a stray dog that she found wandering the highway. He
was a sweet mutt. He was good with kids, he was well behaved, and he didn't make messes in the
house. The only downside was that every time they got into the car he would get worked up
into a tizzy, he would run back and forth across the back seat frantically panting with anxiety,
and if that wasn't bad enough he would then throw up all over the back seat. This happened
every time they got into the car. Now you can imagine the dog owner was about at her wit's end.
In desperation she decided to take the dog to a trainer and ask for help.
The trainer taught the woman to teach the dog to be calm by having the dog lay down in the car. She
explained that when the dog's body is in a calm position it sends messages to the brain that he's
safe and triggers him to relax. The woman started working with the dog every day putting him in the
car, gently making him lay down, and before long he stopped throwing up in her car. Problem solved.
In previous videos in this course we learned that our emotional reactions are much deeper
than our thoughts, they show up in the body and are powered by the fight-flight-freeze response in our
limbic system. Now we're going to talk about how to soothe anxiety in your nervous system
through the skill of self-regulation. Basically this means calming down your nervous system
and creating the physiological response of feeling safe when we are actually safe.
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activities today. Is it possible to have an anxiety disorder or ptsd if your body is calm? I've worked
with many professional trauma educators who say that you cannot have ptsd or anxiety disorders
in a relaxed body. Anxiety and ptsd are the outward symptoms of having your nervous system
stuck in high alert, when when your amygdala is sending the message that you're in danger and
it's triggering that fight-flight-freeze response. So this is why anxiety is something that you feel
in your stomach, or ptsd locks you into hyper vigilance, you know, jumping at the slightest
threat. This is because your nervous system gets stuck in that sympathetic response. People often
feel helpless to change their stress response and it can feel impossible because this
fight-flight-freeze response is an autonomic reaction, but we have more influence than we
realize. So for example, when stressed, our muscles get tense without us consciously thinking about it,
however, we can control our muscles when we think about it, or when we feel nervous, our breathing
gets shorter and shallower, but if we consciously take a deep breath, we can slow down our breathing.
These are two autonomic reactions that we can influence. We can change how stressed our body
feels by doing simple techniques. The coolest thing about this is not only does your brain
send a message to your body about whether to be stressed or calm, but your body sends a message
to your brain about whether to be stressed or whether to be calm. So when we choose to breathe
deeply or slowly, we choose to turn on that parasympathetic response, which fosters calm.
So in this video I'm going to teach you a half dozen ways to regulate your nervous system
and turn on that parasympathetic response. When you practice this, you can transform your nervous
system from being dominated by the stress response to being dominated by the rest and digest response.
Now a quick side note, many people are familiar with relaxation skills. With relaxation skills
we stop doing a task, we step away, and we engage in an activity that takes a lot of our attention.
So for example, watching tv right? Relaxation skills really are important, but again they are hard to
practice daily, I mean the healthy ones are hard to practice daily, obviously watching tv is really
easy, but um they can be a form of avoidance that leads to problems in the future. So we sometimes
have this idea that if we're working, we also have to be stressed right? If we're working- we have to
be stressed- these are fused, and that the only way to be relaxed is to be away from work.
Seeing a situation this way creates a dependence on avoidance and if you remember back in section
4, avoidance makes us anxious. When we think of situations as the cause of our stress, we create
helplessness around our stress levels. So if you have the belief that 'I'm stressed because of my
job', then you may feel like the only way to escape that stress is to quit your job or just grate your
way through it. Now there's another way to think and act, we can train our minds and our bodies
to separate the situation from the response. So let me give you an example, if instead you recognize-
'I'm stressed because I constantly believe that I'm in danger when I get feedback at my job', this can
help you reduce that stress response at work. Now we're going to talk a lot more about this, this way
we think about danger, in the sections on Perceived Danger and Creating Safety, but when we acknowledge
that it's the belief that we're in danger, when we're actually safe, that's making us anxious, then
that opens up a little space to change how you see your job. So if you have a massive stress response
in the face of your job evaluation, you could change your thinking by reminding yourself-
'this is not a threat to my physical safety, I don't need to fight off a tiger right now,
I'm safe.' So in this way, relaxation skills can sometimes backfire, they're helpful and important,
but self-regulation skills are things we can do while we're still at work and while we're
changing our thinking right? Unlike relaxation skills, self-regulation skills are things we do
while performing a task to keep our nervous system balanced. We can practice them throughout the day
and while doing almost any activity. They keep our nervous system calm while active, and they decrease
stress and exhaustion. So basically the goal of self-regulation is to pair the type of thinking
that says 'I am safe right now', with a relaxed body which keeps us calm, clear-headed, and focused.
So when we're calm, we're better able to make value-based decisions instead of being reactive,
and practicing this creates relaxed vigilance. Let me tell you a story about how I learned this right.
I used to work at a treatment center for teenage girls. I really liked the job, it was very rewarding,
but for me it was also really stressful. Each of these girls faced many challenges and I cared a
lot about them. I always wanted to do my very best to help them. One of the most stressful parts of my
job was parent weekends, when the parents of these girls would fly out and visit for three days and
we would cram as many individual family and group therapy sessions into the weekend as was humanly
possible. For my first two years working there these weekends were times where at work I felt
like I was sprinting right, I didn't sleep well, I was high strung, I was stressed out, I was trying to
almost frantically cram as much intensity into my day as possible. I didn't know any other
way. I thought that in order to perform under pressure, I had to be worked up and wound tight.
That if I cared about my work it was natural that I was going to be stressed and that the only
alternative was to choose a job that was boring or not important. I really didn't know any other way.
So I just kept going through this like stress and exhaustion cycle. Then one January, I attended
a conference on treating trauma that changed my perspective. Using many of the activities that I'm
going to teach you in this chapter, the facilitator trained us to foster a calm body while engaging
in an intense activity. As I practiced these skills, I developed the ability to facilitate
a parent weekend without having to be completely stressed out. I still cared, I still brought my
A-game, and I was excited to be there, and we still did a million sessions in a weekend,
but by monitoring and relaxing my body's stress response, I was able to stay more regulated in
my body, I was able to think more clearly, and I was able to go home at the end of the day feeling more
energetic and less exhausted. It was still hard work, but it became enjoyable and sustainable again.
The ability to be busy, engaged, even vigilant, without our nervous system freaking out, is a
skill that can be learned. Eric Gentry, who trained me in this, he trains ER doctors and Policemen and
Special Ops and Soldiers with ptsd, and he teaches them how to be active, how to actually create
safety, this experience, this felt sense of safety, even in genuinely life-threatening experiences.
How to do it without being dominated by the stress response?
We create this state by pairing the belief that we're safe- 'okay, I know that no one is killing me
right now', with mindful awareness and physical self-regulation, and when we do this we perform
the same tasks that we previously found to be you know, exhausting and stressful, we do this instead
while keeping a calm body. Now in a previous video I taught you four skills that send a message from
your body to your brain to calm down. They are deep belly breathing, the valsalva maneuver, peripheral
vision, softening your gaze, and the yawn. And in my last video I taught you the shake it off skill.
Many of these are simple things you can do throughout your day to regulate your stress
even when you're facing stressful tasks. I think it's pretty cool that your phone or your smart
watch can also remind you throughout the day to take a deep breath or to pause or to go for a walk.
Now all these skills can help your nervous system calm down, and it's like they're strengthening your
calm muscle. The more you practice, the better you'll get at getting calm. Now there are
lots of other activities that help stimulate the vagus nerve and its calming effects,
so I'm gonna teach you four more right now. So go ahead and write down your anxiety level
right now on a scale from zero to ten. This first skill is an interesting one, it's called
the emotional freedom technique or tapping. So go ahead and just gently tap on your forehead
seven times, and now do that again right here next to your eye,
and then right here under your eye,
right here above your lip,
below your lip- one two three four five six seven, your collarbone,
right here under your arm,
and then right here on the karate chop area- one two three four five six seven.
Okay, now that the activity is over, write down your anxiety level again on a scale from zero to ten.
Now for most people, their anxiety goes down a little bit.
Now here's the thing about this technique, there is no scientific evidence to back this up.
Proponents of tapping say that you're doing work with your energy or your meridians or your chi,
but there's really no research to back this up. What we do know is that it tends to take the
anxiety level down a notch for most people. In my opinion, almost anything we can do to get grounded
in the body can help the body remind the brain that you are safe right now, so that's why I think
this works for some people. Just look around your room right now, open your eyes, look beyond to the
screen you're looking at right now and just notice you're safe in this room. You're okay right now.
This is how we calm the brain and the body. Okay, number two is a lot more fun. Laughter
triggers that parasympathetic response. Have you ever noticed how when someone has a near miss,
like they nearly get hit by a car or something, they have this instinctive laugh? That's the
body's way of relieving that pressure, that built up fear response. So when you can, take the time to
laugh throughout your day. Another way to do this is getting upside down, getting inverted right?
So you could do a headstand or you could use an inversion table. What this does is this sends
blood to the heart, it slows down its beats, and that can trigger a relaxation response. Another
way to trigger that parasympathetic response is washing your face in cold water. This triggers the
dive response which slows heart rate and breathing. There's a couple of other really good ways to um
foster that balanced nervous system, one of them is monotasking right? I mean just do one thing
at a time. The reason this is important is because your brain perceives multitasking as a threat,
so whenever possible just do one thing at a time. Another thing that's helpful is mindfulness, this
is a big word for saying- be where you're at, be present doing what you're doing, and that's
because 99.9% of the time, we're actually safe, we're physically safe. We're going to talk more about
this in the next video, but we have the perception of danger when we don't notice where we're at.
Something else that's helpful in triggering that parasympathetic response is just doing one
slow thing a day, so stop to pet a dog, sit and drink cold water without doing anything else, just
one slow thing a day. You know what else is good for the parasympathetic response
sex. Sex takes you through these natural cycles of the parasympathetic response, and then the
sympathetic response for orgasm, and then the parasympathetic system rebounds afterwards.
So sex can take you through these healthy cycles of nervous system activation and relaxation.
If you want to foster a healthy nervous system it's also important to pay attention to your
biorhythms. That means eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, you know exercise when you feel
that need inside of your body. Here's another really great way to trigger that parasympathetic
response- hug someone you care about. So hugs send a sense of safety to the brain, which
then releases oxytocin, which lowers blood pressure and heart rate, and turns down that stress response.
And stretching can also turn down that stress response, so when we release muscle tension it
sends a message to our brain to calm down. So go ahead and try one of these right now.
I'm gonna just do a quick stretch, my shoulders get really tight, and if I do this little (exhale)..
let's do the other arm (slow breaths)- ahh. Now, I hope you're feeling a little bit better. Please remember
from skill number five that if we try to force, control, suppress, or avoid our emotions,
these attempts tend to backfire. If you're feeling anxious and you try to force yourself to calm down,
it can make you feel more anxious. So instead, practice willingness, allow yourself to feel your
emotions and then expand your awareness to the calm and content areas that are already in your
body. Gently lean into these sensations of calmness instead of trying to force your anxiety to go away.
You should have plenty of opportunities throughout your day to feel a little tense,
notice it, and actively work to soften while still doing your activity, your work or whatever it is.
Practice this act of self-regulation every day, it takes almost no extra time, just a little bit of
awareness. We should be doing self-regulation every couple of minutes throughout the day.
So this practice of checking in, regulating your muscles and your response, it just takes
a second or two to do, but if you can if you do it consistently throughout
your day, this can completely change your nervous system to be dominated by calm.
In the next video you're going to learn how to soothe your mind and create that felt sense of
safety. You're going to learn about perceived danger and actual safety. Thank you for watching
and take care. This video is one skill from my 30 skill course- How To Process Your Emotions,
where I teach 30 of the most essential skills for resolving depression, anxiety, and improving mental
health. Emotion processing is an essential skill for working through intense emotions, but most
people have never been taught how to do it. I'm putting every single main video lesson on youtube
for the world to access for free. You watching these videos, sharing them, contributing to my
Patreon, and my sponsors make this possible. If you would like to access the entire course in
one place, ad free, with its workbook, exercises, downloads, extra videos, live Q&A's, additional short
readings, and links to extended resources, the link to buy the course is in the description below.