Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Family Calm Flow podcast. I'm your host, Julie Marie, Family Dynamics Coach, and I'm so grateful to have you here. If you're new here for nearly decades, I have been studying family and relationship dynamics And now I coach people to shift from unhealthy dynamics in their family relationships or romantic partnerships that are just totally draining them into healthy, fulfilling relationships where they feel seen, heard, and emotionally safe.
Speaker: And so what might you ask, does this have to do with the nervous system? Well, we are going to get into that today.
Speaker: So nervous system regulation, this term, it's really having its moment on the internet. So many people are talking about it and I know that some would say that it's a trend, but really i think what's going on that As a human species, we are growing
Speaker: and learning and so many of us who have been on a long journey to live more intentionally or consciously and live within our values and healing old traumas or things just kind of in the ether of our world that we don't really want to have power over us.
Speaker: We're all kind of learning that talk therapy has only gotten us so far and there are a lot of things that live in our bodies from the past and I would also argue the present that don't often get addressed in talk therapy.
Speaker: There's many different ways to regulate nervous your nervous system. A lot of people do breath work and different types of body work, certain exercises, meditation, specific types of dances, gentle movements or somatic healings.
Speaker: I actually do think traditional talk therapy can help your nervous system to some degree and all of those different nervous system modalities I talked about. um I think all of them can be so incredibly helpful and useful. i personally endorse all of them. If they help you certain ones don't jive with me personally and others have been totally honestly total lifesavers for my body and I.
Speaker: But overall, I think the consensus of people is that they have found that talk or traditional therapy only gets them so far without those nervous system modalities.
Speaker: Now, a lot of nervous system practitioners go by the framework of polyvagal theory, which is a scientific framework that explains how our neuropathways in our brains and our bodies perceive safeties and what is safety versus danger and how the body and brain cope with these different types of dangers automatically with physical and emotional survival responses.
Speaker: So there's three states of of the nervous system according to polyvagal theory. There's the dorsal vagal, which is the one a lot of people talk about of how to get out of. And this is when our bodies are in freeze and our nervous system is just totally shut down where things just get so overwhelming that your body and brain are just kind of in this frozen state where they can't really make a move. ah This is kind of equivalent to when people talk about animals um doing this in nature of quote unquote playing dead when they're being preyed on.
Speaker: And we as humans tend to kind of do that without realizing we're doing that when things in life get a little too stressful. The next state is sympathetic, in which case you decide fight or freeze in order to deal with what's going on.
Speaker: So in other words, in nature, like the question would be do I fight this predator or do I run away? And depending on not just in nature, but on what is going on in your life, you might feel like fighting is the right call or that running away and just getting out of whatever environment environment you're in also feels like the right call.
Speaker: And then the third state is called ven ventral vagal. And that is when we feel safe enough in our bodies and our minds to relax and be creative.
Speaker: In order to get to this state, there needs to be safety. We talk a lot about the physical types of safety in regards to that. So kind of like essentially Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, are your hunger needs getting met, your safety and shelter,
Speaker: But then right up to the top is self-actualization. and right in the middle is what I would deem as emotional safety where you feel love and connection with the loved ones around you.
Speaker: So in other words, in order to achieve the ventral vagal state, we need emotional safety just as much as physical safety. And I think that conversation is expanding and kind of a lot of people are talking about that more these days. I would say personally that has been true for my own personal nervous system as well.
Speaker: However, one thing that gets unnoticed or isn't talked about much in polyvagal theory is that being surrounded by an emotionally safe person, an emotionally safe community can be very powerful and sometimes even just as powerful as the other types of breath work and body work when it comes to regulating and healing our nervous system.
Speaker: As in your nervous system can be toned through co-regulation with another individual that you feel emotionally safe with.
Speaker: But that when that comes to family dynamics, for me, it goes a lot deeper than when you're trying to go from an unhealthier dynamic into a healthier one and learning new ways to communicate.
Speaker: This can lead to a deeper sense of co-regulation that can help the nervous system overall. So in other words, your body has the potential of getting into a ventral vagal state when you're with another emotionally safe human being.
Speaker: There has been a lot of other great deal, like a great deal of research in how community is so important for our bodies and our nervous systems. In other ways, like I know that, I know that there have been a lot of studies that people actually can even live longer if they are part of an emotionally safe, an emotionally safe community. And so if, and our community kind of really helps form our subconscious brain and our thoughts
Speaker: when we're younger. And also I would argue argue like well into life, like you don't have to be 100% young whenever that occurs. And when we talk about community, i think something that we forget to talk about is that the first community we usually ever have is our families of origin.
Speaker: Now, depending on the dynamics within your family, sometimes the secondary community of that family of origin can be a different group of friends or a church or a neighborhood and or specifically an extended family.
Speaker: I'd argue that most of us walking this earth have some type of relational trauma in our lives. And how beautiful would it be if when you went home to the place that you lived with the individuals you live with, or if even if you live alone, you know, the first people you could call were family members or a partner where that emotional safety that they provide you could be helpful to your ventral or to your nervous system and help put you into that ventral state, vagal state.
Speaker: There are so many people right now in the world being coached and trying to shift out of patterns in their life that come from the household that they grew up in or the dynamics within their original community, within their family of origin.
Speaker: Research says that it is our experience as a young child within our families of origin that form a large part of our subconscious brain and our thoughts, our worldview. And in addition, these also in turn affect the romantic relationships that we have and the families that we potentially create on our own.
Speaker: There's research that even takes it further that our relationships with our family of origin can affect our relationship with money or our relationship with food, our relationship with education our educational opportunities or friendships, our career, et cetera.
Speaker: So if we had healthier family systems around us, In terms, our nervous systems could be in healthier spaces as well, potentially. And we could have these healthier relationships with these external things. Again, in healthier romantic partnerships, relationships with money, relationships with food. Now, you don't need to heal your family relationships in order to heal your relationships with those other things if that's something you're kind of working on right now in your life.
Speaker: But in my work, what I do is I help families who are interested or romantic partnerships who are interested in creating those emotionally safe spaces for one another and shifting out of those unhealthy dynamics together so that these other issues that have occurred can kind of just heal or we could just kind of slowly walk out of them.
Speaker: I mean, truly, could you imagine how much different the world could potentially look if there was enough emotional safety d in our family systems that our nervous systems could be in the ventral vagal state more?
Speaker: Now I see a lot of nervous system practitioners who are just incredible people, and I've worked with some of them myself, that they teach you ways for your body to get into the ventral vagal state in, ah again, a modality of different ways. And when you do that and there is you're creating emotional safety for yourself, there is an automatic sense of openness that comes to our bodies and our brains. And there can be a healthier flow of communication and better communication even. But what I've seen is that the opposite can also be true.
Speaker: As in learning new ways of communicating sometimes actually speaks to our subconscious parts of our nervous system that are chronically dysregulated or clenching and slowly helps us see and our nervous system kind of attach onto, oh wait, I am safe.
Speaker: There's no one right way to get there. I've seen you've seen client clients who are granted more emotional safety realize that they're are able to communicate in healthier ways because they have more options on how to communicate exactly once there's more emotional safety available to them.
Speaker: But I will say, and I will say that that has been true for myself even, But then I've also seen clients where they're just not really sure what move to make or clients who are in specific family or relationships or romantic partnerships not really know kind of what to do. They feel really stuck. And when they start learning new ways of communicating and relating to one another, their nervous systems kind of automatically go into that ah vagal ventral state.
Speaker: where they can see there's actually an abundance of ways that we can have a healthier dynamic in this relationship. And in order to create safety for you as the listener, I've realized as my own self that sometimes i didn't know ways to communicate.
Speaker: And I didn't know that there were different ways of relating to individuals I had maybe relational traumas with or difficult dynamics with. And once I did learn those things, I was able to see and feel much safer.
Speaker: And in turn, I was able to create emotional safety for others and receive ah more emotional safety in these relationships myself. So learning family communication or educating yourself in the family communication field can really empower you to have healthier relationships and in turn feel better in your body.
Speaker: I feel like so many of us are learning for the first time how to regulate our nervous systems despite relational traumas that we've experienced in our family dynamics or relationship ah romantic partnerships. And yet so many of us have the same goal, right?
Speaker: I hear the same stories and goals all of the time from clients, potential clients, even friends, or even just out in the ether in the world. You know, I want to have closer relationships with my kids.
Speaker: I want my estranged family member to come back. I need an apology that feels like we can move on from my parents, a sibling, my spouse, or maybe even my own children.
Speaker: Or i want to start my own family. I want to find the love of my life and I want to have the marriage of my dreams. I want to have a ah healthy relationship with my spouse and I want to have great relationships with my kids.
Speaker: I want to have somewhere to go for the holidays and I actually want to enjoy it. Or I don't want to have to keep explaining myself over and over again to my, room you know, to my partner or to a specific individual in my family.
Speaker: We all want to be seen and heard and feel emotionally safe in our families, the ones we are creating and the ones we come from.
Speaker: Now, it's not always possible for the entire family group to do a shift, although I've seen that too. I have worked with clients who do that, and they are just the bravest souls. I'm i'm always so humbled in working with them. But you can do this as an individual, and you can do this together, maybe even just if it's one other person together.
Speaker: to just create a little pocket of emotional safety amongst maybe an emotionally unsafe family. So if we all want the same things, how come then we don't always have it?
Speaker: How come our romantic partnerships or family relationships feel like they can get so complicated and so complex that they even lower our quality of life?
Speaker: that they're the number one stressors in our life, even though, you know, we're we're told and fed in society that family is everything. Blood is thicker than water It's the people in your life that matter most. And now that one, the latter, i would agree with that one. I do think it's the people that you love that matter the most and what life's all about.
Speaker: However, I do think that any complicated relationship with any type of unhealthy dynamic really can lower your quality of life. How do we shift into healthier dynamics with these individuals so that our bodies and minds can feel safer, where you can accept emotional safety that someone is extending to you and you in turn can create emotional safety for them and really just rest in each other?
Speaker: Just find safe landing spaces in each other. Sometimes it's easy to get there. Sometimes it's a little bit of a journey to get there. But either way, we can learn new ways of communicating where your family relationships and romantic partnerships really can feel more fulfilling and you really can have that spaciousness of emotional safety.
Speaker: I've seen family communication education change so many relationships for the better and seen families or romantic partners who've had sometimes even decades of relating to one ah and one another in really unhealthy dynamics shift into healthier ones.
Speaker: I'll end to- today's show by saying you do deserve to be seen and heard in the relationships that matter the most to you, whether that's certain family members or a partner.
Speaker: And every single person on this planet deserves emotional safety with at least one other person in the world. Yeah.
Speaker: And that's what Family Calm Flow is all about. So we hope you come visit us at www.familycomflow.org. Let's get healthier family and relationship dynamics. And in turn, let's have healthier nervous systems.
Speaker: All right, everybody, take care.
