I love sharing my stories and insights with you. I especially love it when something resonates enough for you to respond back. I read every single one.
While telling stories lets you know me, I don’t think I’ve done the best job communicating exactly how I work or what I do. I don’t want to leave you assuming as that sells us both short.
At the most basic level, I work with clients (mostly women) and their nervous systems so they feel safe to make the changes in their lives.
Your body telling your brain it’s not safe to do something different is the reason it keeps engaging in behaviors that are keeping you stuck. There are times, for example, when I shrink back from making a request (of my horse or a person) because I’m afraid they’ll say NO. The story I tell myself is that if they say NO, then I’m not loveable/not worth listening to/not valuable. (Fill in your own blank, here.)
There are 4 categories of protective responses your nervous system makes to real or perceived threats. They are based on past experiences AND they can be changed.
The need to be right is related to the fight response.
Anxiety can be a version of a flight response.
Being afraid to make a request can be a subtle version of a freeze response.
People-pleasing is a subtle version of a fawn response.
We do such a disservice to ourselves when we take these nervous system responses and turn them into character defects–or even identities and mistakenly believe, “That’s just who I am.”
In working with clients (and myself!!), safety must come first for lasting change to occur. We must speak the language of the nervous system–which, by the way, does not include words. 🙂
Seems I’ve got more to say on this than I thought, so I’ll save it for tomorrow where you’ll learn the basics of how to start communicating directly with your own unique nervous system.
