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You Make Sense
How Your Nervous System Creates Your Entire Experience
01:08:41
In this first episode, Sarah dives deep into the foundation of all healing: nervous system regulation. She explains how your Autonomic Nervous System creates every sensation, feeling, and behavior you've ever experienced, from anxiety, worry, and depression to joy, presence, and flow, and how it influences your ability to connect with others and pursue your life’s purpose. By harnessing the power of your nervous system, you can begin to get unstuck and step toward your desires. Sarah shares her own personal journey, having lived through chronic dysregulation and its associated struggles—panic attacks, depression, and even chronic illness. Through years of training and somatic healing work, she has not only transformed her life but also helped thousands do the same. In this episode, she introduces the tools you'll need to begin this transformation, starting with understanding how your nervous system creates your entire experience.
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Sarah
Hi, I'm Sarah, and welcome to youo Makesense. I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner and expert on trauma resolution, attachment parts work, and nervous system regulation. This podcast is a manual to understanding your human experience so that you can navigate the world with freedom, ease, empowerment, and create the life that you desire. Remember, you make sense. All parts, always. Hi, my friend, and welcome to episode one of youf Makes Sense. I am so excited to be here with you. I have to tell you, my team and I have spent the last year getting this podcast off the ground for you. And honestly, even long before that, I had the vision for this. And the reason why I decided to put this together for you is because we learn so many things in our lives and yet nobody gives us a manual, really, for how to navigate the human experience. Like, how do we do it? How do we step into the life that we want? How do we get unstuck? How do we live the big, expanded, expressed, fully expressed version of our life that only we can live? And so, in our time together, over the course of however long this podcast lasts, my goal is to teach you about the systems inside of you that are responsible for either the stuckness you're experiencing or the expanded life that I want to help you step into. And I'm going to give you and equip you with tools necessary to actually shift your experience. And we're going to do it together, one step at a time. So in this episode one, I want to talk with you a bit about the foundation of all healing, and that is beginning to understand and bring regulation to our autonomic nervous system. So this autonomic nervous system, it actually lives subcortically in our bodies. And I think of it like a vehicle. Like, literally, like essentially like a car. You can think of it that way. And it's the vehicle that nobody teaches us how to operate. Now, we learn so many things in our lives, right? I can't even begin to think about the number of things that I've learned in my schooling, like, why do I know the difference between a cumulus cloud and a stratus cloud? Why? And yet nobody has taught me, certainly, and anyone of my generation or older, what to do when we're feeling anxious or we're feeling stuck or hopeless, et cetera. So my intent in this episode, and further ones as well, is to teach you about the system that lives inside of your body, your autonomic nervous system that is literally creating your entire experience. That's why I think of nervous system regulation work as the foundation of all healing. So this autonomic nervous system, again, it lives in your body. It is responsible at any given moment for every sensation you have in your body. So sensations are things like a racing heart, butterflies in your stomach, tension in your body, feeling numb, disconnected, or things like flow and ease and warmth and groundedness. Your nervous system creates all of that. It also creates every single feeling you have ever had in your life. So feelings like anxiety, worry, frustration, fear, terror, rage, apathy, hopelessness, depression, disconnection, dissociation, or the good. Feelings like joy, love, awe, connection, aliveness, all of those yummy things, everything I just named is a result of what is happening in your nervous system. So you can think of those almost like symptoms of what is occurring on an autonomic level. It also creates every single thought you've ever had. So everything you've ever thought is a result of what's occurring in your nervous system. The racing thoughts, the good thoughts, the hopeless thoughts, all are a result of what's happening in your nervous system. It creates every behavior you ever have. That one, every time I say it, and I swear to you I've said that probably 10,000 times, it just floors me. That means that every, any action you have ever taken, anything you have ever done or inhibited, not done, is a result of what's happening in your nervous system. It creates your perception of yourself. So how you experience yourself in the world and in your life and how you perceive other people in the entire world around you. So it literally is creating every moment of your experience. And can you believe that this isn't taught to every single one of us in kindergarten? We should have learned this a long, long time ago. The good news is it's never too late to learn this. And this is what's necessary to actually get in the driver's seat of this vehicle that's inside of you. When you get in the driver's seat of your nervous system, you can actually take control of your life. You can actually get unstuck. You can actually feel better in your body. You can actually make choices that are informed by your highest truth, and you can step towards them with ease. And that is what we're going to focus on, not only in this episode, but really throughout our time together. I also want to say that this nervous system is actually the vehicle that is responsible for how you attach. So how you relate to other people, what goes on in your relationships is a result of what's happening in your nervous system. How you experience your purpose and your calling, your health in your body, all of it. And not to go on and on and on, but I could go on and on and on how this system is really the foundation of everything. There isn't a human being on the planet who couldn't benefit from this work. And the thing about our nervous system is it's 500 million years old. Just want you to know that this is a very, very old system. Every mammal on our planet has it, and it has one primary function or one job, and that is to keep you safe and alive at all costs. It will do anything in its power to ensure that, including it actually has the ability to even eat our own muscle tissue if necessary, in order to ensure that we are safe. When I learned this, learned the neuroscience behind our nervous system, it made me realize how, first of all, unbroken I was. And so if you have felt that way, my hope is that learning about this and the science behind all of this really shows you that, because that is unequivocally the truth, that your system has been working for you on your behalf every millisecond of your life to ensure your safety. And it will never let you down. It will always support you to ensure that you are okay. And we're going to get to this in a little bit. But it's the symptoms of that self protection that cause us pain and suffering in our lives. That's really it. So the primary reason for human suffering is dysregulation or active self protection of our nervous system, essentially. That just means a lot of us have nervous systems that don't yet know we're safe. And so the work that we're going to do together is how do we begin talking to our nervous system in a way that it understands. And the result of that is we actually begin to get unstuck in our life and feel better in our bodies and heal the past in the process. Now, the real, I was going to say the real reason, it's not the only reason, but one of the primary reasons that I created this podcast and certainly do the work that I do, is because I know what it's like to be perpetually dysregulated and stuck. I know it. On a personal level, you're going to hear a lot more about me and my own journey throughout the course of our time together in this podcast. But I think it's just important to name that I am certainly a trained professional. I have over 10 years of training in somatic work, which we're going to talk about in a moment, and attachment work and parts work, and lots of Other things. But I come to this work first and foremost as a person who experienced chronic dysregulation or active self protection in my nervous system throughout the majority of my life. And that meant that I was experiencing chronic anxiety, panic attacks, depression, dissociation. I had chronic illness. We're going to talk about why that comes up in terms of dysregulation later. I was not able to function in my life. I literally felt like I was benched, Like I was sitting on the sideline of my life and I was watching other people step towards the lives that they were desiring. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to will my way towards the things I was wanting or to feel better. I used to think of this like an invisible wall. There was an invisible wall keeping me from the things that I wanted. And I'm like probably a lot of you where I was determined, still very determined, but determined to change things. Because the other option for me felt like being with this chronic dysregulation or chronic pain and suffering and hardship. So I became ravenous for information, probably like a lot of you. So I read every book there is on trauma healing and healing as a whole. And all of it I was seeing so many different therapists. I. It was like a full time job for me in order to try to heal. And the thing is, if you aren't in my field, in the mental health field, when we think about, and I certainly wasn't in my field yet before I started my healing process. When we think about getting help in this area, you think about going to a talk therapist or you might just think I go to a therapist because predominantly most therapies that are practiced are talk therapy in nature or psychodynamic therapy. Mindset work is very similar. Now that all has a very important place in the healing process. But it's not everything or the holistic lens or experience that's needed to facilitate holistic healing. And so think about the medical field for a moment. The medical field has specialists, right? So there's ophthalmologists, cardiologists, there are gastroenterologists, gynecologists. We've got a lot of kind of doctors, right? A lot of different types of doctors. So they're all specialists, meaning you go to them when you have an issue in that particular area. Now, in terms of emotional healing and getting unstuck in our lives, there are many different types of specialists that we actually need, but that's not public knowledge. So for most of us, what happens Is when we step into our healing journey. We are going to find a talk therapist, which, again, has a very important place. But there are things that talk therapy cannot do, and that's just what science confirms for us and lots of research. Talk therapy cannot regulate your nervous system. So talk therapy can't get rid of the symptoms of dysregulation. You remember we talked about those a moment ago. That means talk therapy can't get rid of things like anxiety, worry, frustration, fear, terror, rage, your racing thoughts, apathy, hopelessness, depression, and so on and so forth. It also can't address our attachment, so how you relate to other human beings. And it also can't address our parts or support us to get fully unstuck in our lives. Now, here's why. When we go to do talk therapy, we are connecting to our cortical thinking brain, which is your prefrontal cortex. This is giant part of our mammalian brain in the front. The front of our brains. This is where rationalization, reason, and understanding all reside. So when I'm talking and gaining information, that's. That's the system that is being computed through now your autonomic nervous system that I talked about, this vehicle that lives inside of you, it lives in your body. So that means it's subcortical, and that means it's disconnected or below the cortical thinking brain. So when it comes to your nervous system, a verbal language does not compute. And this is why, if you have ever felt anxious in your life, or maybe you felt panicked before, you've noticed that, well, I tell myself to calm down, but I don't feel more calm. Or maybe you're in a relationship and you feel you have an anxious attachment, so you feel like you're worried the person's gonna go away and you're not gonna be okay without them. And you might tell yourself, I can trust them. They're not gonna go away. They've been so. They've shown me for years that they are in this and committed. And yet when I don't hear from them for 30 minutes and they're supp and they aren't, I get panicked. And there's no amount of talking my way out of it that makes me feel like I can trust them. That's because all of that experience is happening in your nervous system. So for so many of us, we have been trying to talk ourselves out of dysregulation, talk ourselves out of an experience that's happening in our nervous system, and our nervous system simply cannot hear us. So if that's you. That was me, by the way. I spent. Oh, my goodness, couple decades trying to do that. It's exhausting. And I can tell you it doesn't work, both personally, but also from a scientific level. It doesn't. What we need, in addition to these cognitive therapies, are somatic therapies. And somatic therapy is essentially the therapy of the embodied experience, and it's the language of our nervous system. So think about this for a moment. Sometimes when I think, think about the difference between cognitive work and somatic work, I think about something. I want to give you an example that that will make maybe sense to you. Think about being a gardener. Okay, so maybe you wanted to. Or if you wanted to take a course on gardening, a cognitive course that was just about connecting to your prefrontal cortex, which means absorbing information. That means you never actually go garden. It means that you learn a lot of the concepts of gardening. So we're going to read a lot of books, maybe watch a lot of videos. We're going to have lectures on gardening. And you could become a real expert in gardening without ever gardening. That is a cognitive understanding. Now, a somatic understanding would be a program that I would probably teach because I am an expert in somatics, where we ditch the books and instead we go into the soil and you're touching the earth and you're taking, I'm not a gardener. So whoever's a gardener, and you're like, oh, my goodness, Sarah doesn't know anything about gardening. You're right, I don't. You're taking a plant out of a pot, and you're loosening the roots before you put it in the soil. And you're packing the soil down and you're learning how much water to water it with. And you're watching, watching the flowers blossom or the fruit blossom, and then you eat it. That is all an embodied experience, and that's the language of our nervous system. So I often say that we have to show, not tell, our nervous systems that we are safe because it doesn't understand our verbal telling, meaning us telling ourselves, the past is over. I'm safe now. I'm safe to embody this life that I'm desiring. So the thing about this nervous system is there's really an order, and we're going to go through it in all of these episodes. First, we must understand this vehicle that lives inside of us, this vehicle number two. We have to learn how to get into the driver's seat of it, meaning, gain control of the vehicle, because again, we learn so many things in our schooling, right? So many things. But if no one taught us about this vehicle that literally now, you know, creates your whole experience. It's literally creating your experience right now. If no one teaches you about this system, what happens is it's like it takes over on cruise control and you fly into the backseat of the car and it's driving the vehicle of your life. It is literally making choices for you and driving you towards things that it thinks are safe and away from things that it thinks are dangerous. And it's doing that not to cause you harm or make life hard for you because it loves you so much and all that it cares about is your survival. So what it does is it essentially says, well, it has a whole catalog of your past experiences and it has decided, I'm going to ensure that you don't experience those same kinds of struggles in the past ever again. So as you navigate your adult life in the here and now, what it does is it guides you down roads that avoid any kind of pain and suffering that it thinks might be on the road or along the way. And that means that for a lot of us, we're going to find ourselves not able to take the roads that we are desiring, meaning go in the direction that we actually want our life to be going down. So the work that we're going to do is, number one, we're going to begin in just a moment getting to know this system inside of you, because we can't change what we don't understand. And then what we're going to do is we're going to get into the driver's seat of it. And when we get into the driver's seat of it, you gain control of your life. This is the only way to live the embodied life we are here to live. To live the life that you are here to live, that you are called to live. And I can tell you, as somebody who spent two and a half decades totally stuck, like truly totally stuck. I have a complex trauma history and I want to name. You certainly don't have to have a history like mine for this work to be important for your life. There is not a human being on the planet who could not benefit from this work. But for myself, I spent so much of my life completely dysregulated, meaning my nervous system was protecting me and I was experiencing all the symptoms of that self protection, like deep depression and dissociation as I named. I couldn't step towards the life that I wanted. I was chronically ill. I. I Didn't have people in my life, even though I wanted people in my life. I didn't have the relationships I wanted, even though I deeply desired them. And I most certainly was not doing a podcast like this or didn't have a community of over a hundred thousand people that we are now supporting. It's this work that allowed me to show my nervous system that I was safe. And the result of that is I was able to step into my calling and able to experience health in my body. So I had so many autoimmune diseases that completely shifted because of this work and experience health in my body now. And so, again, the reason why I created this podcast is because I know what it's like to be suffering and stuck in life. I know what it's like to be living a smaller life than we are called to. And I know there are people listening right now who are experiencing that. And I want you to know that I, on a personal level, know what it's like to go from that to actually getting unstuck and expanding into the life that I am here to live. And truly, there's nothing I care about more in this lifetime than helping other people do that, which is why this podcast exists. And I care deeply about you being able to have that experience, too. So, as I named earlier, we cannot change what we don't understand. So I want to begin introducing you to this system inside of you that has been loving you in the form of self protection for maybe decades, like it was for me. So your autonomic nervous system has one primary function, and that is to keep you safe and alive at all costs. It's actually evolved for the past 500 million years to do it. So it's a very, very old system. Every mammal on the planet has it. The oldest part is 500 million years old. A younger part's 300 million years old. The youngest is 200 million years old. So just so you can see here, this is a very, very well adapted system, as I named. Its primary job is to keep you safe and alive at all costs. At all costs. There are only two ways, two predominant ways that you can experience your autonomic nervous system. And is when your nervous system thinks you're safe, and that's called being in regulation. The other is when your nervous system thinks you're in danger, and that's called dysregulation. And what I want to name is it is not possible. It is not physiologically possible. And this is what neuroscience confirms. It is not possible to have the full, happy Life we desire unless we are experiencing it predominantly from a state of regulation, meaning that our nervous system thinks we're safe. I live in Los Angeles, where there's a lot of people with a lot of things, a lot of people with private jets, a lot of people with 15 homes, a lot of people with even the career that they're wanting. But what I can tell you is I also know because I worked with so many people here, that there's a lot of people who have all of those things. They got all those things and yet they're still not happy. They may even have the relationship they want or the children, the family they desire and yet. But they can't fully experience that from a place of happiness because they aren't experiencing it from a state of regulation. So the only way to have a full, happy life is that we're predominantly anchored in regulation in our nervous system. Meaning your nervous system thinks you are safe when your nervous system thinks you're safe. And if you can't see me on video, I want you to. I'm going to just let you know what I'm doing visually here. When your nervous system thinks you're safe, it's as if your nervous system stands at your side. So it's still there. It's ready for you if you need it. Meaning it can protect you at any given moment, but it's not actively protecting you. The result of that is it's not blocking you from things. And that means that you can easily step towards the things that you desire with ease and you can also let things come towards you. This is how we manifest things in our lives. This is how we flow down the river of life with ease from a state of regulation in our nervous system. And regulation is where we experience all the yummy, wonderful things we want. Anything that you classify as good is, is probably happening in regulation. Things like joy, connection, aliveness, playfulness, creativity, feeling ease in your body. You can be still, you can be restful. You could also be exuberant and playful and all of those fun things as well. There's just the right amount of energy in your body. You connect your. You feel connected to your truth. Relationships are nourishing for us, that challenges are manageable for us. Life is just good. The most ordinary moment on a Tuesday afternoon is beautiful. I can tell you I'll never forget the moment when I finally had regulation in my nervous system. I was sitting in a somatic therapist's office and I was feeling really regulated for the first time in my life, meaning really good. In my body. And I looked out the window and there was. The sun was shining on this beautiful tree and tears started rolling down my face. And I said, there'll never be words for the terror of trauma and the terror of dysregulation, meaning all of the active self protection. Everything that I experienced, it felt like a living hell inside. And that's what dysregulation can feel like. And so I said there could never be words for that. And there could never be words for how extraordinary the most ordinary moment can be when you're finally safe to be in your body and when your nervous system finally thinks you're safe in the world. And that's really true, my friend, it is true. All the other things in life, they're nice, but they are nothing. They have nothing on what it means to have a regulated nervous system. It really is what allows us to feel full aliveness. And that's why I know I'm a broken record, but I say that this work is the foundation of all healing, literally will affect your whole life. Now, again, your nervous system goes to this state of regulation when it thinks we're safe. So our real goal here in regulating our nervous system is we have to show, not tell our nervous system that we're actually safe. All that's occurring, if you are presently safe in your life or predominantly safe, but you are disregulated or you don't feel good, all that means is your nervous system doesn't yet know that the life you're living is safe for you. That's it. And it is not punishing you. You are not broken. It is not doing this because something is wrong. It simply doesn't know you're safe. And it will protect you until the end. The last breath you have if it doesn't know you're safe, life. The beautiful thing is we can actually befriend our nervous system. And when we become friends with it and we learn to speak its language and we begin to see, which I hope you're already seeing, that you are not broken. There is nothing wrong with you. If you're finding yourself stuck, your nervous system just might not yet know you're safe. And when we're able to show not tell our nervous system we're safe, our life gets unlocked for us. We begin to feel good in our bodies and good in our life. And that's what we're going to continue doing. So back to some of the learning about this vehicle. Before we begin, that is, I want to teach you a little bit about Dysregulation. So remember two overarching ways you experience your nervous system from regulation or from what is called dysregulation. Dysregulation is simply active self protection. So it's your nervous system has decided, I don't think you're safe. And so what happens a lot of the time, not just in the world of mental health, but really in so many different fields, is that we're addressing the symptoms of active self protection. So remember I told you, your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, sensations are all a result of what's happening in your nervous system. So if you're dysregulated, meaning you're actively self protected, the symptoms of that dysregulation are going to be the unsavory things that we don't desire in our life, like the anxiety and the racing thoughts and the worry, the frustration, the apathy, the terror, rage, hopelessness, malaise, dissociation, et cetera. Those are all symptoms of dysregulation. The biggest problem in mental health is that we are treating symptoms without ever getting to the root cause of the problem. That's what occurred for me. So my symptoms were getting treated. You know, I was told I had treatment resistant depression, which I can tell you depression is not treatment resistant. Depression is simply a state of a symptom of dysregulation in our nervous system. It said I wasn't getting the proper help that I needed, or I had chronic anxiety and I was trying to treat that with a lot of things that weren't actually getting to the root of it, the problem, which was dysregulation. So when we actually change the dysregulation, what's happening in our nervous system, those symptoms just go away. And that's the power that this work has. So there are two reasons why we become dysregulated, only two. One is that we are actually not in safety in our present lives. The second is something called perceived danger. And so I just want to quickly explain the umbrella of those two for a moment. Obviously it makes sense, the not being safe in our present lives, right? This is really adaptive. We don't want to be regulated all the time. Because imagine, for example, back when we were hunting and gathering. I'm out there gathering and I'm having a lovely day in regulation and I'm looking around and feeling so grateful for whatever, you know, this beautiful place and the berries that I'm picking. And then I hear something and my nervous system says, I think that's dangerous. And I see in the Distance, a lion, it would be very maladaptive, meaning it wouldn't be a good thing at all if I just stayed really calm and I thought, you know what, I'm going to lay down now because it's so good to be relaxed and still and I roll around in the grass or I pick flowers. If you saw me doing that, you would think there was something seriously wrong with me. Right? The appropriate response would be to become dysregulated, actively self protected, so that I could run away from the lion. I probably wouldn't try to fight the lion because it's going to beat me, but I would try to run as fast as I can away from that lion because there is very real danger in the present moment. The goal would be as soon as I evaded the danger, got away from the lion, that my nervous system would say, sarah's safe now. And then I come back into a state of regulation, meaning I feel better and I tell everyone in the village about how I evaded a lion and they would throw a party for me. I don't know if they did that when they were hunting and gathering, but maybe. So you get the idea of real danger, right? Real danger in our lives. We want to become dysregulated because it's our nervous system's way to protect us when we're not in danger. We want it to come into regulation. Now. One of the predominant reasons for human suffering, I really, I say I believe this and then it makes it sound like it's just a theory or a belief I have. This is actually what neuroscience confirms, the predominant reason for human suffering. One of the predominant reasons is really because of what is called perceived danger. And I want to also just have a caveat here. You know, if we are living in poverty, we don't have our primary needs met. Those are things that make us not safe in the world. And there are many other things that make us not safe in the world as well. The color of our skin, how we identify as a human being, where we live in the world, and so on and so forth. So I just want to name that as well. So perceived danger, on the other hand, is when our nervous systems are thinking that our present moment is dangerous because something similar in the past was dangerous, even though our present moment is actually safe. And this is something that so many people, millions of people, I would say billions of people are experiencing even on a daily basis, this. And so the result of perceived danger is we might have this really safe life now. We are not living in the past. Anymore we are here, but our nervous system does not know that. And so essentially, it superimposes the past onto the present and decides that our present experience isn't safe. Now it's the vehicle, this nervous system, that's doing all of it. And I often think of this vehicle. I use a lot of different ways to describe it. First, we started as a vehicle. Another way I want to explain it to you really quickly is a Special Ops team. Now, the reason why I call your nervous system a Special Ops team is because a Special Ops team is the best of the best, right? There are many members, like think of Seal Team 6. Many members of that team, they're the best of the best. They all have slightly different jobs, but they have one primary mission, and we need them to have different jobs so that the whole mission can actually be accomplished. Your autonomic nervous system is the same way. It is the best of the best, as I named it's been evolved for the past 500 miles million years. There are seven predominant members of your autonomic nervous system, with all having different jobs, but they have one primary mission. And the mission is to keep you safe and alive at all costs. It's been doing that since the moment you took your first breath. Actually, it's been doing it before that when you were in your mother's womb. Now, the first member of this special ops team is called neuroception. Neuroception is a term coined by Stephen Porges, who I certainly see as a mentor for me. And I just want to name my other mentor, one of my other mentors, Deb Dana, who is a real pioneer in the work of polyvagal theory, as well as Steve is. So Stephen is the theorist behind polyvagal theory, the scientist behind polyvagal theory. So the neuroception, which I also think, by the way, is really cool that people can just make up words. Neuroception essentially is this threat detector that lives subcortically in our brain stem that every millisecond of your life, every millisecond, everybody that is so fast, every millisecond of your life since you came into this world, it has been looking out, out into the world to see if you're safe or not. So it does this. It says, is that safe, dangerous or life threatening? Is that safe, dangerous or life threatening? Is the sound of Sarah's voice. Safe, dangerous or life threatening is the way the sun is coming through that cloud. Safe, dangerous, or life threatening is the way that this person is tilting their head and slightly looking away from me. Safe, dangerous, or life threatening. It picks up on literally everything. If you have ever felt lazy or like there's something wrong with you, my hope is that in just in hearing that, it shows you how brilliant you are. Now, it also looks inside of our bodies to see if we're safe or not. Not. That's called interoception. So it looks inside and says, is this safe, dangerous or life threatening? Is this sensation safe, dangerous or life threatening? And so on and so forth. Now, the way that it decides if you are safe or not is by looking to or resourcing an internal database that lives in your midbrain. I think of this like a computer system. And inside this database is every lived experience you have ever had in your life. You don't have to remember them all. They are in there. It also includes your ancestors experiences as well, so via epigenetics, so perhaps unresolved traumas of your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents, et cetera. And also the good things are in that database too. Now, the way that the threat detector works is as it looks out into your world, it immediately looks to the database to see if what you're currently experiencing is safe. The way that it functions is it doesn't look for identical matches. It looks for flavorings or similarities. So I want to give you some examples from my own life. When I was a kid, my home was a very dangerous place. I experienced a lot of abuse and a lot of neglect, and it was not a place I found any safety. I grew up, though, in the middle of the woods of northern New Hampshire. So what I would do as a kid was I would go out into the woods and I would create a whole world. It was kind of my. It was not kind of. It was my way of surviving. So I created a magical world in the forest. And that meant that bugs were safe to me, spiders were safe to me, trees were safe to me, moss was safe to me. All of that was like my only home. And so what occurs? So that's all in my database. So what occurs is when I see a beautiful tree, let's say, or honestly any tree, because I think all trees are beautiful. I'm a tree hugger. I love them. I love them, I love them. When I see a tree, my threat detector says, what intel do we have on trees? And it looks to 18 years, and then a lifetime after that, my whole life of trees being really safe. So in a millisecond, the threat detector says, that is safe. The coast is clear for Sarah. The result of that is it has six different team members because remember, there's seven members of your special ops team that it can call in to support it. And there's three states of regulation and we're going to get to that in a different episode that it can call in. So if it says that's safe, it calls in a state of regulation. The primary one being what's called our ventral vagal complex. And it says ventral vagal complex. Sarah is safe. That tree is safe based on past experience. And that means that she can not be self protected in that moment. The result of that, again, my friend, all this happens in a millisecond is that I look at a tree and I find I feel safe. I feel relaxed, I even feel really good because I'm reminded of all those wonderful experiences. That's how we experience regulation. Only if the threat detector decides we're safe. Now. I had a lot of experiences in my database where the past wasn't safe. For example, as I just named, we'll use this example. My home was a very dangerous place where a lot of abuse and neglect occurred. And again, I just want to continue to name. You do not need to have a complex trauma history like mine for this work to be very important for you. If you had loving parents and a wonderful childhood, there were things they couldn't get right. One of my mentors, Peter Levine, says it's not possible to go through life unscathed by trauma. And the result of that is that all of us are experiencing unnecessary dysregulation in some way. So I just want to name that this work is necessary for everybody and will help your life in a big way. So for me, my house was really not a safe place. And when I moved to Los angeles before, almost 17 years ago, before I had I can't believe it's been that long ventured on my healing journey. My I didn't have a lot of healing yet from those past experiences. So when my threat detector saw a home, other people's homes were really safe actually because my friends homes were really safe places to be. But anytime I created a home for myself, what when and I really settled into that home, my threat detector would say, oh, this is your house. What intel do we have on your house? And it would look to my childhood and it would say, well, your house in the past was not a safe place to be. So what I would find is in my own home I would feel really depressed or hopeless, or I would feel disconnected and dissociated or even panicky and anxious. A lot of the time, that is because when I was inside my house, my threat detector was saying, that's not safe. And in a millisecond, it decides that I need to be actively self protected. And it calls in. We're going to get to know these states a little bit later. One of three states of self protection. And then I experience the symptoms of that self protection, the things I just named like anxiety, worry, frustration, et cetera. I just want to give one other example for you how the threat detector works. Let's say that in the past that your caregivers were very authoritative. So when you got a bad grade at school, maybe it wasn't even a bad grade, it was a B. They withheld love from you, or they gave you the message that you weren't good, or this was really bad, or they harmed you in a particular way. So what my system learns is it's not safe not to be perfect. Something bad happens, even if it was subtle, like, oh, well, that's too bad. I mean, I don't know how you're going to get into that Ivy League school because like, you got to be now. And that's really problematic. See, the message there is it's not okay not to be perfect. Perfect. So we have all of that in the database right now. You're in a job in your adult life. It is not possible. We all know this to be perfect. And so let's say that your, your boss, your supervisor says, oh, hey, I just want to meet about that project and talk about a little, go over the things that went well and also the things that we can change, you know, down the road, et cetera. So, meaning constructive criticism. Well, as I go into that meeting or before the meeting, I find out about the meeting, my threat detector is going to say, what in information do we have on getting things wrong? Or confrontation by authority figures? Remember, the threat detector looks for flavorings of the past, not identical matches. So the flavorings there are authority figure getting things wrong and confrontation. Well, if in my, my childhood, my parents were authority figures, if I got things wrong, things weren't okay, and confrontation was scary in some particular way that as I stepped towards this very safe experience with my boss, my threat detector looks to the database and it says, I don't think that's safe. The result of that is it immediately brings me into a state of dysregulation and all of a sudden I feel panic and I can't sleep with the night before the meeting and I'm just panicking and I'm Telling myself, bob's a really nice guy. Bob has always been nice to me. I don't know why I'm so worried about Bob doing this. Bob's wife invited me over for dinner, and we had a lot of great laughs. I don't know why. Bob and his wife. I'm finding Bob and his wife, but sometimes these examples just come to my mind. So, anyway, you've had a great time with Bob and his wife, and yet your system is terrified. And that is because the past is superimposed on the present. And I am perceiving danger where there's not actually danger. And the result of this, everybody, is that our nervous systems, for many of us, are protecting us when we actually don't need to be protected. And herein lies the stuckness that so many of us experience. Herein lies why we'll find ourselves not living the expanded life that we are here to live. Here's why we. This is something I used to say a lot. I got to a point in my healing where I was feeling a bit better, and I looked around my space while I was in a. I was actually on a video call with a therapist many years ago, even before COVID and we were doing that. And I said to them, you know, I've built a beautiful prison that I'm stuck inside of. It used to be not a beautiful prison. In my childhood. I did enough work that I was living this, like, beautiful prison, but I was in a prison, meaning I couldn't expand into my calling, even though my soul was saying, like, sarah, there's this thing for you to do. I couldn't do it. Even though I deeply wanted community, I couldn't fully step towards it. I wanted to travel the world. That's something that really is important to me. I couldn't do it. I was living this very small, simple life. And that was because my nervous system didn't know I was safe. So if you're wanting to expand into the bigger life you are here to live, if you are wanting to follow your soul's calling, if you're wanting to feel like you can flow down the river of life with ease, if you're wanting, like I named earlier, for an ordinary Tuesday, to feel extraordinary, the only way to that, my friend, is through learning about this vehicle that lives inside of you, your autonomic nervous system, and then gaining control of it, getting in the driver's seat. And when we do this and we befriend our nervous system, we actually take control of our lives. And the last thing I Just want to say in this episode, if you're saying how do we do it? How do we do it? There's so much to know. I know that's why we're going to be doing this for many years to come, I hope. And I don't want you to think you need many years to get all this information. One more episode and you're going to have some things you can do. What I want you to really understand and know is that when we do this, it unlocks the life that's waiting for you. It really, really does. That's what science confirms for us. So if you have been trying really hard and you felt like there's an invisible wall in front of you, it is not because you are lacking effort and it's certainly not because things are hopeless. It's simply because your nervous system doesn't yet know you're safe. And the last thing I just want to name is when you're actively protected, meaning your nervous system is working really hard to protect you. It is as I just named working really hard. It's like running an ultramarathon, a car that's been running for however old you are, your numeric age, it's going, it's going, it's going. That's what's happening when it's actively self protected. When you are regulated, your nervous system is resting. That's it, it's just resting. So if your nervous system can work that hard like an ultramarathoner, if it's, if an ultra marathoner can run like that, they most certainly can stop running. Right? The same goes for your nervous system. We just have to show, not tell through its language, which is somatics. Show, not tell your nervous system that you are actually safe now in your life. And when that happens, everything opens up for you. And that's we're going to do in our time together. So what I want us to do is we're going to go over to questions, the questions that have been submitted so that you can see how this work resonates for individuals and their own life. And certainly that means it's going to resonate for you because the human experience is so much more similar than it is different. Thank you for being one of the first listeners to youo Makesense for this week only. If you rate and leave a review, you can claim a free spot in my upcoming three day live experience called Expansion. I'm going to show you how to break through stagnancy and step toward your purpose using your nervous system. Link in the show notes to learn more about the giveaway and also how you can enter a raffle to win a free one on one session with me. So every episode that you listen to is going to include a Q and A session. And the reason why I decided to do this is because it's so important to really gain an understanding of how this work integrates into our lives specific to us. And the thing I found in working with thousands of people at this point in my career is that that the human experience is so much more similar than it is different. So even if you haven't submitted a question, what I think you're going to find is the things that people have asked are going to be really resonant for you. And I will say there is an opportunity to submit questions, whether that's a video, you can submit a recording, or even a written question to us. And I have a very special treat for you. She's certainly a special treat for me. Her name is Rachel and she's my human connection specialist. She's been working with me for quite some time. She's a trained social worker and you'll find her inside of every community, every program that I have, she runs all of the communities. She even runs some of those calls. If you're messaging us on Instagram, you'll find her there. And aside from me, she is the person who, on my team and inside of our programs would be supporting you. So I'm really excited to have her here today. She'll be a part of every episode where we're having a Q and A. She truly is. And I think you're gonna find this as you continue to listen to her and get to know her, one of the kindest, safest people that I've ever met in my life. And she embodies this work fully. And that's so important. We're gonna get to that and talk about that in future episodes. But it's one thing to cognitively understand all of the information that we're digesting, but it's a really different thing to actually embody it and live it. And Rachel is one of the people, one of those people that does both. So without further ado. Hi, Rach. Can you say hi to everybody?
- [43:22]
Rachel
Yes, I can. Hi, everybody. Oh, it's really lovely, lovely to be here with you all. And yeah, so moving, Sarah, to hear you say those things about me. So thank you.
- [43:32]
Sarah
Oh, it's just so true. And, you know, there's a lot of people listening who have been in long term partnership There's a lot of people who are listening, who are parents. I'd love for you just to take a second before we get into the questions to share and sometimes everybody. I put Rachel on the spot. I didn't tell her I was gonna do this. Can you just share a little bit about the impact this work has had on. On you? Because I think it's so. It's just so helpful for. For folks to hear that we're not alone, that. That there are others who really understand and. And. And are experiencing the things we're experiencing.
- [44:04]
Rachel
Yeah, absolutely. So for a really, really long time, I've just was so emotionally overwhelmed and been on this massive quest to learn how to. What to do with emotions. And I've been searching for 24 years and. And yeah, the work that you teach Sarah is absolutely the work that has nailed it for me because before that, I was spending a lot of time really shut down, not being able to connect with people, really struggling being a parent, and then, yeah, not being able to parent how I wanted to. So I had really high ideals of wanting to do it in a really loving way all the time, and then just not being able to match that expectation that I had because of my own conditioning and. And what I'd been through as a child myself. So, yeah, so the work that you teach Sarah has absolutely made it so that I can now parent how I always dreamed I could parent. And. Yeah, it just makes me quite tearful, really, to just know the power of this work and to have been a single mom for a really long time and so overwhelmed. Yeah. And now to not be. To now be able to have teenagers, and it's really great. And I know when they're dysregulated, what to do and how to help them. And I know how to nurture and support myself, too. So my life is off the charts different, but also how I longed for it to be. So. Yeah. I'm so grateful, Sarah, to you and what you do and what you teach.
- [45:37]
Sarah
Thank you so much, Rach, for sharing all that with everyone. And the thing I say a lot is, you know, this. This work is for everybody. There's not a single human being who could not benefit from this work. And the other thing is that neuroscience confirms that the work works. And so I just want everyone listening to know a couple of things. We, Rachel and I, are in this with you. We are embodying this work all the time ourselves. And we've also experienced a lot of struggle and challenge in our lives. You've already Heard that me talk about some of mine in this episode, and I'll certainly talk about a lot more of that in the many years that we are doing this podcast. But I think that that's really, really important. And I know both of us. I'll speak for Rachel because I know her as a friend personally, that we've had experiences of feeling hopeless, like everything I'm trying is not working. And so I hope in hearing a little bit about Rachel's experience, that it shows you what is possible when you actually embody this work in the tangible way that we're walking you through it and walking right by your side. I think that it's so important to me, when I think about the traditional mental health model, that there's not a hierarchy because we are all human beings. We all experience challenge and struggle. And I think it's just so powerful to know there is a way to actually make change. So thank you, Rach. I love you. And thank you for being here.
- [46:59]
Rachel
Oh, thank you. I love you, too.
- [47:01]
Sarah
All right, Rach, can we get to our first question for this episode?
- [47:04]
Rachel
Yes, absolutely. So this question is, Dearest Sarah, can you please expand on disconfirming experiences when, how and more examples of what it looks like day to day? Thank you.
- [47:17]
Sarah
Such an important question as it relates to our nervous system and also as it relates to getting unstuck and living the expanded life that we desire to live. So, to put it simply, a disconfirming experience is essentially how we show, not tell, our nervous system that that which was once dangerous in the past is actually safe now in our present lives. What's super important to understand, that I named in this episode about our nervous system is that our autonomic nervous system, to be specific, is that it's. It's subcortical. So all that means is it lives below the cortical thinking brain. It's not connected to our prefrontal cortex. Our prefrontal cortex is where language, rationalization, reason, and so on and so forth all live. So when that part of our brain is online, the language of it is a verbal one. Now, the language of our autonomic nervous system, because it's not connected to the prefrontal cortex, is a somatic one or an embodied language, because it resides inside of our body. Another example of that to kind of, in layman's term, make sense of it. Imagine we were to. You never drove a car, but somebody was telling you about driving a car, you would be gaining cognitive understanding of it. Now, if you got behind the driver's seat of the car. That's a somatic, embodied understanding of it. So it's a lived experience of driving. So a disconfirming experience is a lived experience of safety to something that was not safe in the past. Meaning if something was unsafe in the past, we are showing our system that that thing is now safe in our present. And because the language of the nervous system is somatics, we cannot talk our way into it. Which is why if anybody listening, you've ever told yourself, you know, I can trust my partner and, and you know, until you're blue in the face, you say to yourself, I can trust them, I can trust them. They're not going to leave or betray me. But yet you can't actually feel that. You feel anxious and you feel nervous and you feel on edge. That's because you're trying to cognitively and verbally talk your nervous system into something and it literally cannot hear us. It literally cannot hear us when we do that. It's the same goes for why when you try to tell yourself to just calm down when you're feeling anxious, you might notice it doesn't work. So a disconfirming experience is the embodied way that we show our nervous system. Things are different now. And just one other thing I want to name about this, just to tie it all together for terms of what we talked about in this first episode, is we all have this neuroception or this threat detector in our brain stem that's looking out into the world every millisecond of our lives to see if we're safe or not. And it resources or looks to our internal database that we talked about that has every lived experience inside of it that we've ever had. So the really good things, the hard things and the life threatening things and the dangerous things. So as it looks out into the world in, you know, our present day, it looks to the database to see if everything that's occurring is actually safe for us. And it doesn't look for identical matches, it looks for flavoring. So let's say in the past I was always made to feel like I didn't belong. So what's going to happen? Whenever I encounter a group in my life, whether it's a work group or a dinner group or whatever, I get into that group dynamic. The threat detector looks to the database and says, well, I didn't really belong in my family of origin. I didn't really belong at school, I was bullied. And so in a millisecond, the threat detector is going to Say that's not safe in the present moment, even though those people might be totally different from your family and the people in school, et cetera, etc. And the result of that is I will immediately be self protected in the form of dysregulation in my nervous system. So in order to show my system that I actually belong, I can't just tell myself that because it can't hear me. What I have to do is experience what are called disconfirming experiences, where my nervous system gets actual data points that things are different. So a simple example of what this looks like, it might be saying, you know what? I really want to take a pottery class. I've always wanted to take a pottery class. And you find this really great pottery class. And you go to the pottery class and guess what's gonna happen? Your threat detector's gonna say, this isn't safe because it's a group. But what will occur is if this is a safe group and what we're wanting to give ourselves is experiences of safety, what's gonna occur after the experiences, it's gonna get stored in the database as different than past experiences where I didn't belong, my nervous system's gonna say, hmm, all right, May. And once you connect enough of those disconfirming experiences, you have more data points in your database that show you that belonging is actually safe. The result of this is then you get into a group and you no longer feel dysregulated or like you don't belong. You immediately feel like you do belong. And so it's a really practical process, and it's a necessity in order for us to shift how our nervous system responds in the present.
- [52:17]
Rachel
And that's really beautiful because it's taking those tolerable steps. I know we talk about tolerable steps a lot in your programs, and it's a way that people can inch nearer towards the things that they would like to do to give those disconfirming experiences. So, yeah, it's a really gentle way and a kind way to your nervous system. Rather than leaping into something huge, it's taking smaller steps in the process and looking after your nervous system at the same time.
- [52:46]
Sarah
Yeah. And thank you for saying that, Rach. Be that. Tolerable steps, a tolerable step, everybody is simply a step that I can complete. And it doesn't feel good. The reason it doesn't feel good is because our nervous system is saying, I don't know if this is safe. I don't know if this is safe. Based on things in the past. So I just want people to know that if you expect that you're just going to feel good stepping towards the thing that you're desiring and that you wait around until you feel good, you're not gonna feel good because your nervous system needs data points to show it that it's actually safe. And so a tolerable step is one in which it. It's challenging and it doesn't feel great, but I can complete it. And I think that's the real important thing for people to remember. It's making the steps small enough that we can complete it. So, Rach, can you bring us to our next question?
- [53:35]
Rachel
Yes, I can. So this one's around confusion. So I experience confusion on a daily basis. I believe that's a dysregulative pattern. I can stand and stare at the tasks I need to do for a long time time and have a hard time doing them. What can I do to help with this? Thank you.
- [53:56]
Sarah
Confusion is something that so many of us experience. It is why, for anyone listening, you may find yourself asking so many different people for advice on what you should do. Should I leave this job or should I stay? Should I leave this relationship or should I stay? Should I? And if you're me, at one point in my journey, I was so disconnected from my channel, I would ask waiters at restaurants, should I order this or should I order this? And it wasn't even, like, similar things. I would be like, should I order the steak or should I order the fish? And they're like, those are very different things, my dear. I don't know what you should order. What do you want? And I'm like, I don't know what I want because I have confusion occurring. So the reason for confusion, confusion is really a symptom of being disconnected from our embodied truth. And what I want to name is that all animals, we are animals, have the innate ability to be connected to our truth. When we come into this world, we are embodied, meaning I am connected to the internal compass where my truth lives and what occurs when we experience traumas along the way is that we become disembodied or disconnected from our truth. So a really simple example, if you look at a child whose truth isn't taken away, if I was to ask that child, do you want to blow bubbles or do you want to hula hoop? They would know the answer to that. They wouldn't ask, phone a friend. They wouldn't use Google or look at Instagram to see which one is better for my body, which One would be a better idea to do. They just know. But when we have been, our truth has been taken away from us. Now I'm disconnected from it. And this can happen in the most subtle ways. Here's a simple example of what that could look like. Like let's say that you have a, you know, a gathering with people at your home. Somebody, a parent, you know, well meaning parent, says to the little three year old, go hug so and so goodbye as a loved one is leaving the house. And a child might say no. Now where did they find that no? Well, they were connected to their innate truth which lives inside of their body. They might have felt sensations or feelings that were saying I need space, that's too much because I just spent 17, not 17 hours. That would be a really long family get together. Maybe I spent three hours or seven hours with my aunt Carol and I don't want to hug aunt Carol now because I was, everyone was hugging me. But if I had a parent who then says, oh, that's not very nice, you're hurting aunt Carol's feelings. Look at her crying. And then aunt Carol, who's not a very good actor, pretends to cry, but the three year old believes her. And so what occurs is this child immediately experiences a situation where they're being shamed for their truth. That message is your truth is wrong and it hurts people. And so if a child consistently gets that message, chronically gets that message, not just once, but consistently, like there's nothing to cry about when they're crying, and so on and so forth, what occurs is we learn to disconnect from our truth and we become overly focused on everybody else. So I am laser focused on how do you feel, what do you need, what do you want? Almost like in a hyper vigilant way. And I am much less connected to my embodied truth. And the result of that is I might find myself now in my adult life because I'm not connected to that compass really easily getting confused about what my truth actually is. You know another, another reason for this is, and this doesn't, everything I'm talking about right now is stemming from childhood. But this can happen certainly later in life is that oftentimes in our family system. So family of origin, you know, the dysfunctional things are normalized. So most families have some kind of dysfunctional things occurring, but there's a normalization of it. So instead of it being named that there's an elephant in the room, we just pretend like there is no elephant in the room. And so the result of that is, I might feel stressed about the fact that my parents fight a lot in front of me and they're yelling sometimes, but they never talk about it. And so I feel stress in my body, but then I'm made to feel like maybe this is fine and normal. So again, it's another disconnection from our truth. Lastly, I want to name another reason we become disconnected from our truth is when we experience trauma, which is just an overwhelm of energy in our body. So it's just stimulation or energy we actually really brilliantly will disconnect from our bodies because the only other option is to be with the perpetual dysregulation that we're experiencing, to be with perpetual anxiety or hopelessness or depression or panic or terror or rage. So we learn to disconnect from it and become disembodied. A lot of people who are really up in their heads, that's actually a protective response to get out of the embodied experience. That's really overwhelming. So how do we change this? Well, the first thing I just want to name is that this is an inherent biological thing that we all have the ability to do. I know I talk about this a lot. Lot is. It might be kind of weird, but there's a lot of squirrels in my. Around my house, like, a lot. And they're like my little friends. They come around all the time. And these. These squirrels are so good at listening to their truth. Like, they'll sunbathe for a while. Then I see squirrels playing together, and then they're, like, ripping apart my flowers because they think it's fun, but I can't do anything about it because I'm on a call with you and 400 other people. But they're listening to their truth all the time. And. And so all of us have the ability to come back into our truth. And the way that we do that is through regulating our nervous system and building our capacity to actually be in our bodies a little bit at a time. The result of that is you no longer look for advice from every single person in the universe about what you should do. You know, like, you know, like, you know, like you know what your truth actually is.
- [59:45]
Rachel
And it's such a different feeling to know it in your body rather than be confused and trying to work it out. And, yeah, seek. Seek other people's advice so much that that just adds to the confusion. So, yeah, it makes such a big difference to know your. What's true for you in your own body.
- [60:03]
Sarah
Yeah, it's such a relief. It makes Life so much easier to just know. And there's a steadiness to that, and that's certainly what the work that we do provide.
- [60:15]
Rachel
Yeah, it really does. Okay, are you ready for the next question?
- [60:19]
Sarah
I'm so ready.
- [60:20]
Rachel
Okay, great. So this one's about relationships and dating, and the question is, I meet someone who I consider might be a potential partner for me, and soon I'm able to establish that we are incompatible and decide not to explore a romantic relationship. Even with this tiny ending that makes a lot more sense and feels a lot more aligned than pursuing the potential. My anxious attachment gets very activated and makes it so hard to just let go and move forward. The logic theory makes sense cognitively, but how do I stop getting so attached and so affected by this type of extremely brief potential? Even when I'm making good, healthy choices for myself, it feels painful. It makes it so much harder to date and open myself up to people. How can I navigate this?
- [61:07]
Sarah
Well, what a resonant question that I am sure so many people listening to really have felt themselves in. In some point or juncture of their lives or maybe many times in their life. It's something that I sure felt a lot. I don't know about you, Rach, but I really know this. So I just want to name that for whoever submitted this question. Now, something that this episode is not about attachment and relationships. There'll be many more coming that are. That are focused on that. But a lot of listeners have probably read the book Attached, have listened to podcasts on attachment, and have a lot of cognitive understanding. So a real understanding of how attachment works. Like this person, like, I have an anxious attachment. I really only feel safe when people are close, and I don't really feel safe when they're not around. Some people know they have an avoidant attachment. I just sort of shut down with people. It's hard to let people close. I call that like being an island. Some of us feel like we want people close, but when they're close, we push them away. But when they're away, we want them close. And we don't even know what our truth is. And one day we're like, I really love this person. The next day we're like, I don't like this person at all. That's called disorganized. And if that's all new to you know, there's gonna be episodes coming where we talk specifically about attachment. But what I wanna name is, and I am such a broken record with this, but I have to name it again. Even though I'VE already said it in this episode because it's the truth. Your nervous system creates your entire experience. It creates, just to recap this, every thought you have, sensation, behavior, feeling, and of course, the perception of self, others in the world around us. So what was important in what I just said, it creates every behavior. So that's every action you take or don't take is a result of what's occurring in your nervous system. So it's the vehicle responsible for how we attach. Attach simply means how do you relate or connect to another living being, whether that's a human being, a pet, by the way. This even is a part of how we attach to other things like your purpose or finances, et cetera. So the way that this works is everything goes back to that threat detector, which is the primary or number one leader in our autonomic nervous system. Remember, it looks out into the world every millisecond of our life to see if we're safe or not. And it resources that internal database. That's what it looks to, to see if our current situation is safe. Safe. Now, when it comes to romantic partnerships, it is going to look to our earliest childhood experiences because those lay the blueprint for how we relate to other human beings. And look at the similar flavorings here. So a romantic partnership, this is supposed to be, you know, the goal is maybe your, your best friend, your most important person, your home, your family, your place of vulnerability and belonging and all of those other things, love. So the threat detector says, well, what intel do we have on that on love, belonging, connection, family, home? It looks to your earliest childhood experiences. So what occurs or transpires is when we're out in the world, we're looking for a partner. Our threat detector says, well, here's the data that I have on partners. Partners are people who maybe this is from your childhood, are not fully available. I have to earn their love. They are not, you know, around very often, and I have to caretake them. Maybe that's what I had to do in my childhood. So when you are looking for a partner in dating, that is the foundation of what the threat detector is going to look to. Because that's all it knows that love is. Which is why everybody listening, this is why. And there's gonna be a lot. If you're like, I need to know more about attachment, there's gonna be a lot of episodes where we talk just about this and relational dynamics. Dynamics. But this is why you will find the same kind of patterns happening over and over in your life. Because the threat Detector subconsciously is picking up on the most subtle cues. When you're out in the dating world. Like literally someone doesn't text you for, you know, maybe they text you the next day after the date instead of texting you at, you know, a few hours later. Your threat detector is going to say, oh, this is a lot like my caregiver who is aloof or not around. And then you're going to be attracted to that because that's what love was in the past. And so your system's going to say this is what love is now. Another not to throw another wrench in the thing here, but another really important thing to understand is when your threat detector is reminded of experiences in the past, it's literally as if we travel time back to that experience when we were young. So let's say this person has been dating this other person and they realize quickly, ah, that we're not compatible. This isn't right for me. But in the dating process their threat detector was reminded of when they're, I'm just going to make up an age when they were 8 years old and that's what it was like to be with their caregiver when they were, they were eight years old. So it's literally as if adult dust kind of flies out the window and young us is embodying our experience. So this is why when you're in a relationship you, when you're not in a relationship, let's say you might feel like I feel like good in myself and I got my life together and everything's okay and I feel grounded and safe and all those things. Then you get into a relationship and you're like, that's gone out the window. I feel out of control. I feel scared. I feel like I don't know what's even going on because a young part is in our bodies. So what's occurring for that person when they decide to do the right thing, which is to end the relationship because it isn't right for them. It's literally as if that 8 year old is reliving what they experienced in the past. And it is literally like I'm eight and I'm going to be all alone in the world without my parent. Because what's occurred is they've superimposed their parent onto the partner or onto the person they're dating. This can happen when two dates, so you don't have to date someone for a year for this to transpire or occur. And that's what's, that's why they're Feeling so much activation because they're identified with a young part, their nervous system is saying, what do I. What did I need to do when I was young? And it's doing the same thing now, which might be going into a pain, panic state or I need to get you back because I'm not going to be okay without you. So the beautiful thing is when we regulate our nervous system, because that's the vehicle through which we attach, it actually begins to shift this for us so we can get in the driver's seat. And when we have internal safety, which is what regulating our nervous system is all about, when then we're safe in the world on our own. Instead of feeling like, I need another person to feel safe. Which goes to just a preview to another episode where we're going to talk about the difference between love from choice versus love from survival. And just one more thing I want to say to this person. It is huge that you were able to leave something that wasn't for you. That's just such a marker of healing, right? Because I mean, for me, I was in long term relationships that I could not leave because I didn't feel safe by myself. And so it's a really big deal. A person's able to do that. And the more we do this work we're talking about, the more that changes. Changes.
- [68:00]
Rachel
Yeah, it is a really big deal. And, and I've seen it in my own life and lots of people in our programs of when we start to heal our attachment style and regulate our nervous system, just what change can occur both in dating and within existing relationships. So I actually have you, Sarah, to thank for my relationship now thriving rather than dying. So thank you for that.
- [68:24]
Sarah
Oh, that means so much to me, Rach. Thank you for sharing that. And yeah, yeah, it's. It's so beautiful what this work can lead to.