We believe in functional mental wellness, a holistic approach to mental health, we know that there's hope for those of us who have experienced trauma, even profound trauma. And that's why we created the universe is your therapist podcast, we believe whether you call it God, the universe, source, unity or love that there is something much greater than us that conspires for our good, we envision a world of healing and connection. And we teach you simple, but powerful practices that integrate your mind, body and spirit so that you can come home to your highest self and your truest identity, you are not broken, you are loved, and you can heal. My name is Amy Hoyt, and together with my sister, Lena, we will take you on a journey of healing and self discovery. So what is a nervous system? If you had talked to me about calming my nervous system a few years ago, I would have thought it sounded great, but I would have have no idea what you're talking about. So a nervous system is actually our, it's our command center in the body. And it sends out messages to our body, and basically tells us when I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's automated. So it's not like we're consciously aware, but breathing, heart rate, movement, anything that you can think of autonomic or not autonomic, where we're having more of an awareness is going to be conducted through the nervous system. And so it's incredibly important. And then what happens when it's dysregulated is that the messaging center gets a little off, and it starts to create a propensity to stay in our limbic brain. And Elaine is going to talk to us a little bit about our our brain. And what we do know is that the limbic brain is something we don't want to live in, because that's our fight flight, freeze brain. And we don't want to be constantly thinking there's predators out to get us. And so when our nervous system gets dysregulated, we're doing a lot of reacting, and a lot of unconscious reacting. And that's where we find some of the schisms between our nervous system and our business or our professional life. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. So when we feel dysregulated, in the nervous system, what we're talking about is, you'll have like a really big reaction to something that maybe isn't that big of a deal, or have a very under aroused reaction. And under reaction to something really serious. There are other symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system that we'll go over throughout our presentation. But that's kind of just a basic way that you can tell what's going on with your nervous system. And Lena, do you want to talk about the nervous system in the brain?
Yes, thank you. I think anytime we behave in a way that's outside of our acknowledged values, we are acting from our limbic brain. And the limbic system is a part of the autonomic nervous system. So the umbrella system is the autonomic nervous system. And the limbic system is a part of that. And the limbic system is solely in charge of surviving threat. And unfortunately, our brains still think that any kind of threat including including somebody being angry with you, is the equivalent of a tiger or a lion or a bear. And so we can have these experiences, where we have these internal reactions that then become externalized. And then later, we think, Oh, my gosh, why was like so why did I shut down in that moment? Or why was I so why did I have such a large reaction in that moment? And if we understand that, the limbic brain is constantly scanning the environment for threat, and that threat can include any kind of physical, emotional, psychological threat, we can have a better understanding of our reactions and our responses to various things in our lives. When we do this, and we understand what's happening in our limbic brain, then we can start paying more attention to acting out of choice and instead of just reacting because we're having triggers.
You Yeah, so today, we thought what would be most helpful is to kind of ground our presentation, in three ways that dysregulation may show up in your business or professional life, and then give you three tools specifically for those dysregulated scenarios so that you can apply practical and very effective knowledge. In the moment, when you're feeling dysregulated, that's going to allow you to have like Lena said, conscious choice. When you're dealing with a situation that could be upsetting even, you might not even realize you're upset, but you could be having this autonomic response. And this is the power of this work. So the first thing we want to tell you, before we get to the three ways that dysregulation shows up, is that absolutely everything that you have done, and everything that you have used to get to this point so far, has been okay. And we want to we want to put that on the table first, because it's so tempting for me at least to beat myself up and think, Oh, why did i Why did I use this maladaptive behavior for 20 years? Or why I wish I knew that before. And what we want you to understand is that because your nervous system and your limbic brain are trying to keep you alive, it's done a great job, you're here. And so this is the this could be the next step on your journey. We hope it is. It definitely has helped us. But we just want to make sure you understand that there is nothing wrong with you. You're not broken and with a few skills you're going to be able to solve whatever is kind of keeping you stuck. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you want to go deeper on this subject or any other subjects we've covered in the podcast. We are so excited to be launching our signature membership program at mending trauma.com This is a trauma informed mental health membership where we combine clinically effective practices courses and mentoring while putting you in the driver's seat. We teach you how to heal your trauma with the latest research combining mind body and spirit we want to walk you through a healing journey while also empowering you if you have felt this episode is helpful. We would absolutely love if you would go to Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your pods and give us a review. We'd also love it if you would share it with someone you think it might help tag us on social media at mending trauma.com Or at Amy Hoyt PhD, we would love to reshare and also if there's anything we can do to help we would love to hear from you email info at mending trauma.com Give us your suggestions or topics you want to hear about. We would absolutely love to be of more service to you. We're so excited because we have so many good episodes coming up in season two, and we can't wait to go on this journey with you
