This is the second part to my two part list of things I did for my mental health and nervous system. It’s been powerful to write this list because as I reflect on it, there were so many big changes. Holy whoah.
I’ve heard that our careers, homes, and relationships are the 3 biggest things that impact our sense of safety, regulation, and security. All three of those things took a hit for me over the last year, and because of that, I reevaluated, realigned, shifted, and came into right relationship with many parts of my life. It was hard (excruciating actually), but ultimately it was a process of coming into right relationship with reality, and from there, choosing where and who I wanted to be. This is a continued process.
Here it is:
8.
Somatic and inner child healing: I want to shout this from the rooftops just to spread the word. I wish I could accurately describe how impactful this was for me. I spent my whole life repackaging the same core wounds in various scenarios, and ultimately feeling ashamed that I couldn’t fix it. What’s wrong with me? Why haven’t I resolved that? Why do I keep reacting that way? Why does that feel so sticky? I have core wounds that have played a theme throughout my life– whether it presented in relationships, work environments, or ways I was unknowingly self-sabotaging.
By the time I reached my late thirties I was frustrated with the patterns and not being able to resolve them. I discovered two different systems of somatic therapy: Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems (IFS). Both are body oriented therapies that support resolving trauma in the body, where it’s held. IFS is sometimes referred to as “parts work”, and its approach helps us resolve relationships with younger, internal parts of ourselves.
Working with a skilled practitioner helped me to quickly access some of my own core wounds, but “inner child” work can be done on our own, too, in a less intensive way. It was so healing for me to start exploring and getting to know the little girl inside me, and to recognize that what she needed was to know there was an adult version of me who was safe and capable of taking care of us. She needed to know she didn’t have to drive the car anymore. She needed to know she was heard and seen. She needed to know that somebody (me) was there to hold her, love her, protect her, and validate all the ways she hadn’t felt validated. By giving her that attention and attunement, she began to have corrective experiences that started to reprogram what had been on repeat for many years.
A very simple way to begin to create a relationship with your inner child (without being guided by someone), is to think of it like an invitation to connect. Often our inner parts have felt so unheard or alone for so long that they might not want to connect or trust us enough to connect, and that’s normal and okay. One of my teacher’s compared it to bringing a child from foster care into your home, and trying to create a relationship with them; it will take time for them to warm up and realise that their environment is safe, and that you’re someone they can trust who isn’t going anywhere.
If you feel called, try this: with hands on your belly or chest, say to yourself/your inner part, “I’m here. I’d like to connect if you’re open to it. I’m listening, and I’m not going anywhere. I’ll wait as long as it takes”. I remember when I first connected with my inner child she sat in the corner of the room and turned her back to me, scared, angry and alone. At first you might not notice anything, or you might feel a lot of resistance. Keep trying. The more resistance there is, the more this little part needs connection and attunement.
After doing this work for the last year, the fragmented parts of me have begun integrating back into my whole. What I’ve learned is that shaming ourselves (inner parts) for our patterns doesn’t heal them. Practising compassion, understanding, and presence toward my inner child allowed her to receive the love she’d been needing all along. And wow, it’s been magically reparative.
9.
I deepened into my devotional practices: this feels so vulnerable to share. My daily practices and rituals are sacred. I don’t share them on social media because something in my soul knows to protect that sacredness. Not everything is meant to be shared, and we lose the “container” or the sacredness when we reveal what is meant only for us. (I do share these practices with one-on-one clients, however). What I will say is, everyone has the ability to begin a spiritual practice. All there is to it is simply showing up, staying curious, and creating a practice that intuitively resonates for you. There’s no right way.
We live in a world with so much information that we forget there are parts of us that are wise and ancient. A part of us knows how to perform ritual, create sacred space, and invoke divine connections. The key is to hold the intention of creating a relationship with something, and then stay open to how that wants to unfold over time.
The beauty and magic of devotional practice is the way it connects me with the mystical. When I spend too much time focused on my physical life or living from logic it creates heaviness inside me. Connecting with the etheric and the mysterious reminds me that I’m not alone, that I don’t have to carry it all, it builds resilience and perspective, it expands my heart, it brings back wonder, and it breathes life force and lightness back into my soul and body. It pulls me out of the density of my linear mind and reminds me of the larger intelligence that I’m intricately woven into.
It expands my capacity for love, and I feel fully supported by something so much bigger than my fickle humanness.
In the last few years my practice has been developing a devotional relationship with the Mother (nature), Goddess (the energy of the feminine), and my body. Instead of trying to transcend by connecting to something “up and out”, I’ve been following the feminine path of finding the divinity “down and in”. It’s a path that connects us with the current of life that moves through our embodied experience at any given moment, and it's changed my life.
10.
I started dancing again: I was frozen. My nervous system had completely shut down. And when someone’s in that state, the first things to go are flowy, fluid, sensual, pleasurable, or creative practices. Being in a state of fight/flight/freeze means the survival system is turned on at high volume, and everything else turns off in order to conserve and focus all energy on surviving the “threat”. If we’ve been living with long term stress our survival system doesn’t just shut off and take a breather. It needs to learn slowly that it’s safe to put its armour down. As it learns this, other systems start to come back online and we have more access to play, pleasure, sensuality, and joy.
Over the course of the last year I did a lot of work with my nervous system and my somatic coach to show my system it was safe, and the safer I felt the more willing I was to explore dance again. It took some time at first, like my body had forgotten how to move. I had a lot of resistance. I’d been internally “managing” big emotions for so long that I had to slowly thaw. I danced in small amounts at first to titrate what otherwise would have been too overwhelming. I moved the grief, the anger, the shame, the wounds of abandonment. At first it felt like shards of glass trying to make their way from my fascia to the surface of my skin. Slowly, slowly, I broke up the blocks and I shed layers until it began to feel more fluid, more free.
Now it’s hard not to start dancing all the time!
There’s something about dance that our bodies understand– like I could move emotion through my body without my mind knowing why. I didn’t have to think or figure it out, my body knew what to do and I started trusting it.
Dancing helped me breathe and move through coldness and closure. The more I danced, the more the heaviness lifted. Now, old parts of me are starting to come back online; creativity, playfulness, silliness, sensuality, desire and pleasure. I’m refilling with life. Like, this is my body. My experience. My expression. And I allow all of it.
11.
I cut down on my work: I could have pushed through. I’m reeeeally good at pushing through. I tend towards fortitude and determination. Mix that with some shame and the belief that productivity equals validity, and you’ve got someone who will hang on tooth and nail. To a fault, like, I’ll-make-myself-sick to stick it out or do the “right thing”.
I’ve been de-conditioning this for a couple years, so I had more awareness and willingness to let the unravelling happen. But also, I did get sick. Covid took me out for an entire month and I had no other option but to lay in bed, mostly unable to move, and say to myself, “Okay. I hear you”.
I’d been carrying stress for so many years that I’d finally burnt out. So, I stopped taking clients for awhile and gave in to it.
There were many days I could barely get out of bed. I let go of ‘accomplishing' things, I cried a lot, I went for walks with my dog in the forest, I celebrated myself when I took a shower, or made myself a good meal. I let it be okay that it was hard to take care of myself, and I’m so glad I did.
The dark I experienced in those months felt like a little death. I was leaving behind a version of me I had to leave behind. It was a process I had to move through, and I knew I had to do it alone, but I also knew I was supported by something larger. Sometimes Life (or Spirit, or Love) takes over.
12.
I gave my emotions full permission: Never have I given myself so much permission and space to feel what I was feeling. Truly. I let go of any narratives that “I should be moving on” or pretending I was okay, and I felt what I felt. Sometimes I allowed grief, anxiety, rage, or confusion to swallow me. I resisted distractions like over-exercising or dating new people, and I felt it all.
Feeling what I was feeling so fully was a new experience to me, and it changed me. It alchemized something.
The raw tenderness of it broke me open. My heart deepened. My body softened. My resilience widened. My love broadened. I strengthened. I touched parts of myself I’d never touched before. I held myself through the darkness and learned how to gift myself grace and reverence. I now trust myself more than ever, and somehow, it brought me into deeper integrity with my own soul.
What a freaking gift.
We aren’t taught how to do this. I think for most of us, holding our own emotions is more conceptual than concrete. Holding our emotions means moving in closer to them: instead of turning away we learn to turn in. Instead of distracting ourselves, we slow down. I spent many hours on my meditation cushion in front of my altar, or sitting by a body of water, letting the pain and discomfort have its time and space.
13.
I let my body guide me: This has taken a couple years of practice. We’re not taught to listen to our bodies, we’re a culture that lives almost always in our minds. If we were taught to listen to our bodies, not nearly as much would ‘get done’ (and that’s a threat to a patriarchal, capitalistic culture). If we listened to our bodies we’d have more boundaries, we’d say no, we’d take more rest, we’d nourish ourselves, etc. And that isn’t ‘productivity’.
Our bodies are incredible instruments that can taste, touch, sense, smell, see and hear. They have quick, millisecond responses to stimuli and danger. They signal information through pain, sensation, pleasure, and many times, illness. It took practice for me to learn my body’s language, but after a couple of years it’s becoming more second nature.
What made the biggest difference was learning about something called ‘overriding’. Overriding is our learned tendency to not listen to what our body is signalling to us. When we do this enough we begin to disconnect from our bodies, or dissociate form them if they try to become louder. (No shame whatsoever, culturally this is imbedded into our norm).
When I started paying attention to whether or not I was overriding my body, I realized I was all the time. For example: I said yes to that thing when I really didn’t want to. I was agreeable and now my stomach is in knots. I ignored my thirst all day and now I have a headache. I stayed in that relationship even when it started to make me sick.
I started to recognize that I was overriding my body for the sake of keeping connection, love, security, or because I didn’t know any other way. Listening to my body rather than overriding its voice is the biggest thing that has made me healthier, happier, and feel more aligned and sovereign.
14.
I held boundaries to protect my process: Wow this was huge. One of the most transformative things I’ve done– ever– is to put up boundaries. This past year has been about two things: 1) healing my body, heart, and nervous system (the intense burnout), and 2) reconstructing and remembering who I am. Boundaries have been at the very centre of this process.
Boundaries are hard. They bring us face to face with our survival mechanisms: people pleasing, placating, appeasement, our need for safety, and our fears of not being good enough or worthy enough to hold them. They require clarity of our needs, and holding them takes intention and conviction. I had to get to the very end of my rope before I started learning boundary work, but it’s been a powerful practice of fierce self-love.
What I’ve had to learn is: can I stand here firmly, graciously, by myself, without knowing what will happen on the other side, and choose myself no matter what the consequence might be?
And that’s hard.
It stretched my edges, pushed against all my survival responses, and made me feel very alone sometimes. But eventually some magical happened— I began to feel more whole, like I had choice. I felt more authentic. I felt more empowered. I felt more like I mattered. And I felt like my voice, needs, and desires were worthy and important.
I had to become clear about what my body felt okay with in almost all areas of my life: people, social media, conversation, screen consumption, energies, and even what shows I watched (depending on what affect they had on my nervous system). I took deep, deep care of myself by practising boundaries, and I truly feel healthier, more empowered, and more free because of it.
15.
I started expressing: this past year taught me how important expression is to our health. Expression of our needs, our voice, our art or creativity, the movement through our bodies, the expression of our truth in relationships, or our sexuality. These are all areas where our unique expression wants to occur, and I believe our authentic expression is central to our health and vitality. When we don’t express ourselves, we suppress our energy and our life force. We become contracted and constricted rather than expanded.
As women, we’re in a double bind because we’re up against so many forces that shut down our natural expression: put up a boundary or speak your truth, and you’re a bitch. Express your sexuality, and you’re slut shamed. Step into your power, and you’re persecuted. Love your body, and you’re vain. Share your emotions and you’re overly sensitive. Have needs, and you’re too much.
This kind of suppression has been occurring for thousands of years, and in some cases can be a legitimate threat to survival. But, when we shut down our self expression we internally split and fragment from ourselves and our truth. We need to start overturning the lie that our expression is a threat.
The human desire for liberation and sovereignty requires that we stop seeking the approval of others over the approval of ourselves.
I’m still learning this, and I find it hard. Part of what I’m leaning is, my integrity is a continuous choice to honour myself, rather than abandon myself for safety, validation, security, or love. And I’m learning to stay open and curious about what parts of me need to articulation in order to let my Self feel a little more free and peaceful.
Loving you,
J. xo
One of my favourite quotes:
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
— Martha Graham
My weekly recommendations:
Book: The Way of Integrity, by Martha Beck. A book about finding your way back to your true self. I haven’t read it yet, it’s sitting on my bedside table.
Podcast: One of my dearest women recently sent this podcast to me, and I loved every second of it and will probably listen to it a few times. I love all things Glennon Doyle.
Song: Tulum, by Alex Serra. I just discovered this artist recently and his music is easy to listen to, write to, dance to, stare at the ceiling to, yoga to, etc.
So much gratitude for you being here.