Coping with Overwhelmed - “What we resist persists”

While working with clients, both in my private practice and in my work as a family visitor, I’ve come to see that overwhelm and emotional worry are an ongoing and considerable problem.

This is important to learn how to calm and sooth overwhelmed and out of control emotions. When you can’t sit with your uncomfortable emotions, sensations and feelings, when we push them down or try shut them off, this chaotic energy often gets trapped and overwhelming.

This energy that we have created and trapped inside of us must be assisted and supported so you can guide it out of your body strategically and most importantly, safety. In a way that will not overwhelm you or your nervous system.

Before this safe guiding out can happen, some simple practices must be put into place and practiced so that you can be with the emotional excess in a healthy way.

What I’ve witnessed is that the often the western mainstream systems, never seem to get to the REAL root cause of these emotional issues. They either want you to talk about the past which causes you to relive the emotions and build more chaotic energy in your body or take a pill to numb it out. Please don’t get me wrong both can be helpful however what about getting that chaotic energy in our nervous system out?

Two Essential Facts That Are Often Left Out

1. Professionals often never address their client’s fight/flight survival instincts, which leaves them stuck “ON” in a heightened sense of alertness and awareness.

These survival instincts, when left unresolved, are often the reason behind the sudden and/or frequent emotional roller coaster rides that so many people suffer from. These instincts are often the root cause of the inability to deal with what life throws at them (ex. feeling overwhelmed).

What happens with many of the common remedies for emotional overwhelm is that a person might get some temporary relief, but then when they’re least expecting it or when the stresses of life are high the roller coaster ride begins again. What you think has been resolved comes right on back.

A person might get over their immediate problem (such as the nervousness, anxiety and overwhelm), but then a few days, months later they start to experience other problems that are brand new (troubled sleep, depression, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, digestive trouble and weakened immunity to name a few).

2. Befriending and learning how to “BE” with the feelings and sensations of overwhelm is often overlooked.

When a person is feeling complete overwhelm, it might seem odd to tell them that in order for this to get better, it’s actually important to welcome it in, feel it, be with it and get to know it. After all, if it feels intense and uncomfortable, why in the world would you want to experience it even more!?

Well, the answer to actually lessening and easing down these intense emotions is to BEFRIEND them and get really comfortable and cozy with them. A common practice that so many people do when they feel intensity, or overwhelm that they don’t like, is to take a deep breath and try to dissolve the yucky qualities, this can often backfire for two reasons:

i) Depending on the type of deep breaths, breath can actually causes the heart rate to increase which makes the overwhelming sensations feel more intense. So, instead of bringing the nervous system down to rest, it actually speeds it up!

ii) What we resist persists. If we are taking deep breaths to push down or avoid the uncomfortable qualities of overwhelm the intensity gets trapped inside. The flow in our body comes to a halt.

When we avoid the discomfort, try to breath it away, or resist it, it’ll get stored away somewhere in our body for a later day. Causing, those sudden bouts of overwhelm and anxiety often seem to appear out of nowhere. Well, that’s the old, stored away intensity and overwhelm that was pushed away, which is now trying desperately to get out.

So many of us are trying to shift, transform and change our ways of living and being for the better. We try so hard to move away from the harmful habits and the old emotional and physical hurts of the past (our traumas), yet if we start out on this journey without the solid ground work (that work that involves the befriending our the uncomfortable stuff and also understanding how our survival instincts work) we get trapped in “ON” mode – and we fall short of our goals.

This is why people don’t get better (even after it seems like they’ve done it all!) Some of the clients that walk through my door have worked with dozens of healers, practitioners and doctors. So, why aren’t all of their protocols, potions and promises helping? After all, they’re the experts right? And… you might be wondering, why does what “I” have to say and teach you fall into a different category? If this curiosity is crossing your mind – I totally get it. I’d be skeptical, too! If the professionals you’ve worked with have NEVER brought to your awareness the two important facts above and supported you to slowing down the process so your body can metabolize this energy and move it out, this is possibly why.

So here they are again.

1 . The fight and flight responses of your survival-based nervous system and how this energy might be caught in your nervous system causing overwhelm and out of control emotions and body sensations.

AND

2. The importance of befriending overwhelm and discovering what it takes to safely process the discomforts.

Before you can fully integrate and process your emotions, you need to make sure you’re grounded and working with another nervous system that you trust and can feel safe with to explore these emotions and sensations in yourself.

Many of my client’s notices that after only a few SRT session they start to gain a better understanding of their nervous system and an ability to notice their emotions, sit with them, and then start to move those sensations out rather than trap the strong chaotic energy with in their bodies and nervous system.

If you want to learn more about this please read “Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma” or “In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness” both books by Peter A. Levine Ph.D.

Click HERE to learn More about your nervous system and Self Regulation Therapy

Some of today’s blog has been taken from https://irenelyon.com/2015/10/22/2-little-known-facts/