Our personal protector is our fight/ flight/ freeze system. It evolved over thousands of years to keep us safe from physical threats and it is lightning fast. Our protector has one job – your safety.

This is problematic in modern life. Our culture has shifted dramatically in the past hundred years. Our internal protector does not recognize the severity of emotional and social threats, and tries to keep up us safe during times when we may not need it to, resulting in accumulated stress and anxiety patterns. We’re stuck with a tool inside of us that is outdated and no longer appropriate for the job.

Our internal protector uses evidence from the past and assesses risk in the present moment. This system can cause us many concerns in our day-to-day life in the form persistent symptoms of anxiety, stress and overwhelm.

When we are children, we feel safe when we are in connected environments at home, with friends or at school. We gradually develop the internal resources to be self-reliant. When we miss out on this sense of internal nervous system connection as children, we don’t develop these internal resources and, as adults, we rely more on our primitive safety system of fight/ flight/ freeze.

We can get stuck in chronic nervous system overload – feeling chronically anxious, stressed or overwhelmed.

This is important because it identifies the underlying mechanism of disconnect and the pathway to healing. Body-focused somatic inquiry can allow us to stay present with what arises that feels uncomfortable and to notice the actual process of disconnecting from our internal sense of ourselves.

As we become more familiar with our experience of feeling threatened, we can update our internal program to use our whole body, not just the unconscious programming from childhood. We notice when we are triggered into fight/ flight/ freeze. This is how we increase our capacity for being connected. This is how our internal protector becomes more skillful. This is how we heal and show up fully in our lives.

The Somatic Experiencing process emphasizes the importance of not getting drawn into the trauma vortex. It is not usually useful to dredge up old trauma scenes and get lost in re-living them. This can reinforce old neural patterns, increasing our tendency to re-visit and identify with trauma states. What is generally more helpful in resolving and integrating old trauma is to orient primarily to our sense of support, safety and resource in present time and from this place, mindfully touch in on the trauma memories.

In this more resourced state, we can recognize the trauma as something that happened in our past and negotiate its current effects on our nervous system, psyche and behaviour. Remembering what we can feel grateful for in this moment and remind us that in this moment, we are safe.

If you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed, chronically anxious or stressed, or struggling in your relationships with your partner, family, mother or father – get in touch.  As the new year approaches, it may be time to be uncover unconscious themes – to begin a practice of body-focused somatic awareness, and a path of healing family system imprints and chronic stress patterns.

Because of your willingness to stay with, breathe into, and explore the uncomfortable places in your body and psyche, a new light emerges. Out of chaos, clarity is born.

Everything is waiting for you.