Think of communication skills as tools. They’re only accessible when your nervous system feels safe enough to access them. In moments when it feels challenging to access our regulation tools and our mind chooses reactivity instead, our brain is simply prioritizing safety over connection.
Teenagers undergo several life-altering transformations that can make it hard to determine what is a symptom of this transition and what is something that warrants mental health support.
Your nervous system is constantly scanning your environment for cues of safety or danger. Most of the time, this happens automatically or outside of your awareness.
Every couple has logistics to manage, and healthy relationships do require collaboration. But what often gets missed is that problem-solving only works well when both partners feel emotionally safe enough to actually stay engaged in the conversation.
Oftentimes, people believe that memories are stored in the brain exactly the way in which they happened - waiting to be unpacked. But the reality is, our brain reconstructs memories, which allows these experiences to change over time.
Think of communication skills as tools. They’re only accessible when your nervous system feels safe enough to access them. In moments when it feels challenging to access our regulation tools and our mind chooses reactivity instead, our brain is simply prioritizing safety over connection.
Your nervous system is constantly scanning your environment for cues of safety or danger. Most of the time, this happens automatically or outside of your awareness.
Functional freeze describes the experience of shutting down and numbing while staying functional and getting through. Our physiology is essentially revved up but shut down.
Have you ever felt so anxious that you couldn’t “rationalize” your way out of it? Maybe you tried to challenge your thoughts, disidentify with them, or outright dismiss the validity of them… all to no avail?
While utilizing our prefrontal cortex’s astounding ability to reason and problem-solve is a crucial component in managing our response to stressors, we often ignore our physiology in the process!
Here are 5 quick and easy tools to calm the sympathetic nervous system and activate the parasympathetic nervous system when feeling dysregulated.
