On why we do nervous system health

A word on holidays when you have a high ACE score :: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHING ON OCTOBER 10th 2022

I don’t know exactly why each of you are on this newsletter, but there must be some tie to the fact that you too, have had developmental trauma because that is the main thing I specialize in as a practitioner - developmental trauma resolution and recovery.

Developmental trauma in literature is often described as something people who have had chronic abuse, neglect or other harsh adversity in their own homes have. Harvard did that ACE study and you can find your ‘score’ here.

Canada just had their thanksgiving weekend this weekend and I again found the identity of being ‘the fucked up friend’, also known as the one who has an out of real life movie like family system because it’s so ridiculous and awful while everyone in comparison has a lovely warm time.

I truly can’t remember a holiday, whether that was thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, etc, in which I had a peaceful/ restful/ nice time. There’s one Christmas I remember as a child, before my parent’s divorce, that was really nice. My brother had gone to sleep and he didn’t know about Santa being parents yet, and my mom and I had made tracks in the snow as though Santa’s sleigh had landed right in our front yard and we munched half of carrots as though we were the reindeer and we left them scattered like that in the driveway, and in the path up to the door. We drank the milk inside and left crumbs of oatmeal cookies in the living room as old saint Nick would (soy milk probably). My birthday despite my best attempts has always been plagued with do I talk to them or not? If I don’t, it gives me this result. If I do, it gives me this result. Both results ruin my day, really. One Christmas not too long ago, a family member of mine tried to jump off the roof of my apartment building to end their life. There’s been police involved, injuries, physical violence, scary life threatening intoxication, abandonment, loneliness, shock, so much. Over time, since I’ve been an adult, I have found myself pretty isolated and removed from many of my immediate family members and pretty much the large of my extended family because of the negative impacts it has on my health to stay close. Yet, as I always say, and like I said in CYTTLO in the chapter Loyalty, staying far away sometimes makes things bigger. The grief becomes larger.

There is no ideal solution when you have a high ACE score. I will never have a magic wand to make that happen for you or for me.

So, what do we do?

Well, we can turn to Nervous System Health to meet the dysregulation - to meet the activation.

Nervous system health is not about being constantly regulated. It’s about being able to find your way back to regulation after being dysregulated.

It’s about creating access points back to health when you find yourself away from it.

I would never suggest trying to get immune to the antics around the holidays. I actually want to feel the deep cuts of betrayal, the scared feeling, the stress response of a certain family member and how it affects me.

Because if I am not feeling them, I am in freeze and in immobilization and I can’t discharge or mobilize toward parasympathetic ventral vagal (otherwise known as our window of tolerance). So although it takes a lot out of me to still be able to feel the activation and the dysregulation, I suggest working yourself out of numbness whenever it’s present.

The goal is not to be able to witness insanity and feel nothing eventually. The goal is to witness it, feel it and meet it with appropriate tools to get yourself back to health.

Nowadays, a big shock leaves me bed ridden and dizzy for two or three days. Whereas, before, it could leave me there for weeks, maybe months.

That’s because my tools take me from dysregulation to regulation quicker and my resource bank has grown in between shocks so I am stronger and more agile in finding safety in my body and in the world when a trigger or stressor occurs in my world.

I say this to clients all the time, so you may have heard this before: a trigger or a stressor only takes us out if we don’t have capacity to MEET it.

If the trigger or stressor is bigger than our capacity, it wins. It takes us out like a tsunami. If our capacity is bigger than the trigger and stressor, or at least somewhat equal, then we can stand still, meet it and discharge it.

This is why those with a history of dealing with difficult people who are still alive and still being difficult, meaning causing stressors or triggers in your life, it’s in our best interest to invest in creating a large capacity for ourselves, so that these people aren’t owning our lives with the way they affect us from time to time (in presence or absence, because both are triggering and stressful, any one who says no contact is not stressful or triggering in its own right in my opinion has never actually been forced to go no contact). (I also say forced to go no contact, because no one wants to go no contact. You do it when it’s necessary for your safety.)

It is scary to feel like we won’t be able to meet and face challenges in our lives. Nervous system health allows us to build the capacity to meet the challenges in our lives, big or small and come back to feeling safe each time we leave that feeling. It is possible for us to discharge and bounce back quicker and faster too. I find nervous system health gives us self-esteem and confidence. Feeling like we can handle our lives in the future, makes us relax.

Yesterday, I made a feast…

This feast had turkey, leek/ celery homemade stuffing, pie made from scratch too, green bean casserole, homemade cranberry sauce and gravy, stuffed butternut squash, maple glazed yams and carrots, fruit, chocolate, olives, coconut milk mashed potatoes. It was delicious. I was glad I could be in my window of tolerance to enjoy it. We listened to Christmas music (never too early) and Folklore and Evermore by T swift all afternoon. Shout out to nervous system health for sponsoring these moments. It’s hard work to be engaged with our healing in this way when it can feel pointless when we get triggered and stressed out by sources that are out of our control. It can feel like we have to start over all over again. Again and again and again. It can feel very unfair and it’s normal that feelings of being misunderstood by others, jealously or envy creep up during times like this. And yet, it’s worth it. Without this engagement and devotion to healing, there would be no presence and no enjoyment at all. No glimmers. So I want to declare; I see you, I hear you, you make sense, and I think your glimmers are worth all the work you’re putting in.