This is part 4 of
a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young
and a guest speaker for the month of MARCH. This one was entitled:
"Exploring Your Posture Toward Your Body." I will be breaking this down in parts. I am attending one of these
on the first Saturday of each month for a year and taking notes for my
own references. This talk was by Adam Young.
There are two ways that your body communicates with you:
1) The first is through your affect.
2) The second is through impulses.
Let's first talk about: AFFECT
One important way that our body communicates to us is through affect. Affect is the felt sense of what is happening in our body. It is our moment to moment awareness of our internal bodily sensations. I've discussed this before, but here is a reminder. There is a spectrum.
- 1 to 3 is hypoarousal (numbness, feeling shut down, checked out, detatched, disconnected and correlates with emotions of shame, hopelessness, despair.) DYSREGULATION! These people often appear calm and present, but they are JUST as dysregulated as those in 7-10. It just looks different on the outside. Avoidantly attached people are more likely to be in this category.
- 4-6 is in your sweet spot. REGULATION! When you are here, your affect is regulated. You feel present and alert with just a slight feeling of excitement.
- 7-10 is hyperarousal (racing heart, faster breathing, tightening in the chest or stomach, jitteryness, amped up inside and correlates with panic, terror, and/or rage.) DYSREGULATION! Ambivalently attached/anxiously attached people are more likely to be in this category.
All of this above is affect. You can check in on your affect at any time and see where you are on the scale of 1 to 10. During these lectures, I actually found myself dysregulated during one point in the talk. When I started worrying about what people felt about me because Hilary seemed a little on the "non-Christian" side, I started to float away and go into hypoarousal. However, my awareness of this has begun to really change! I was aware that I got dysregulated. I could feel it.
Your nervous system is always in flux. Your affect shifts throughout the day. Why is it important to know when your body is dysregulated? Because your body is letting you know helpful information about your present environment and your past story!
When you become dysregulated, it is your body's way of giving you information about the present AND the past (i.e. your story!)
There is a reason you feel dysregulated. EVERY SINGLE TIME you get dysregulated, there is a reason for it. Memory is being evoked! When you become dysregulated is telling you things about your story.
1. What are the kinds of things that dysregulate you?
2. Are you aware of the kinds of things that dysregulate you?
Take a moment to jot down the types of things that move your body into dysregulation.
There is a reason your body does what it does, and that truth is rooted in your story.
1. Notice when you get dysregulated. A few years ago, it took me days to realize I was dysregulated. But as you become aware that your body is dysregulated.
2. Identify whether you are hypo-aroused or hyper-aroused. Once you become aware, you can identify whether you are hyper or hypo-aroused. We often usually trend toward one of those and not both. I, personally, trend toward hyper- but I can often go hypo- as well.
3. Be curious about what present circumstance/experience/event prompted the dysregulation, and what your dysregulation is revealing about your past story. Lean into it. Wonder. Think. Ponder. And what might this be revealing about your past story.
Adam shares a story about a young boy who keeps falling apart and losing it. Lawrence gets dysregulated because his son is able to do what he was not allowed to do as a boy. Lawrence must address the heartache from his story before he can tolerate his own son's crying. It isn't the crying persay that is triggering Lawrence. He doesn't get dysregulated when his daughter cries. It is the crying of his son that causes the dysregulation.
The word "trigger" is overused today. A trigger is an event which catalyzes your body to enter a physiological state of stress. A trigger dysregulates your affect. A situation triggers you because you are remembering something.
Your brain is recalling something from your past. But it is activating implicit memory instead of explicit memory so you don't have a sensation of recall. He is remembering back to his childhood but he doesn't have the sensation of recall. Because you don't have a sensation of remembering something, it feels present.
Significant shifts in your affect tell you precious information about what is happening in the present or what has happened to you in the past, or, most likely, both.
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Now let's first talk about: IMPULSES
What movements does your body want to make? Do you pay attention to inclinations toward movements? If you have a history of trauma, it is likely that you have at least partially ignored or dismissed your body's inclinations to move in particular ways.
One way to do this is to use your imagination. Think about visiting your parents' house for a holiday gathering. As you imagine sitting at the dinner table, what does your body want to do? You may have the bodily impulse to stay there forever because its such a joyful experience. Or you may have the bodily impulse to throw a plate across the room. You may have the impulse to push your chair five feet back from the table because you don't want to be associated with these people. Why do you want to throw a glass of water in your step-father's face? It's an impulse to movement. You may have the bodily impulse to get smaller so that no one notices you or engages you. The scenarios are endless.
There is no suggestion to act on your bodily impulses. Pay attention to them and let them teach you about your story and your nervous system. Your bodily impulses are enstoried. It is not genetic and it is not random. Bodily impulses can cause changes in body posture. You can watch people try to be smaller than they really are. Watch the way people hold themselves.
What is your posture toward your body?
What part of your body are you the most fond of? And what part are you the least fond of? Whatever your answer to these questions are, there is a good reason for that and that reason is rooted in your stories. When did you stop being fond of that part of your body? You didn't come out of the womb hating that part of your good and precious body. As you are pondering these questions, notice what emotions come up for you inside. You may feel sorrow, shame, anger. It's all welcome. Just, notice it.
But if you write down that you have hated your thighs since high school, well, there is a reason for that. You didn't come out of the womb hating your body. Most of us have experienced "the cursing" of one or more parts of your body. If you have heard things from parents or other people about your nose size or your weight, you will often just join in on the negativity because it's the only way you can deal with it.
Self-contempt can become a compass for you. It can take you to the places in your story where you have been shamed. Where you have self-contempt, can you become aware of it? You will then become aware of stories you are telling yourself.
Adam shares about the fact that he looked like he shaved his legs because he didn't have much hair on his legs while the rest of the boys in his class did. Students started making comments about this. He had immense shame and self-contempt because he hadn't developed as quickly as the other boys. There was a shame that he felt about his body.
Take some time to reflect on your posture toward your body.
Can you make some space for some kindness toward yourself? What would it look like if you changed the narrative and welcome the possibility that you access more kindness toward your good and precious body?
Summary
The wounds are the pathway to the healing. They tell us where the injury is. Can you spend some time noticing ...
- What the trigger is.
- What is causing the dysregulation.
- Why you feel the contempt.
Each of these are the way IN to healing and the way to GET to the other side of our story.
Being a parent is such an incredible way of recognizing our triggers. If you aren't a parent, maybe there is a different relationship where you can really notice your triggers? Who are the people in your life that matter to you and that you experience some manner of dysregulation in your relationship with them?
The nature of relationships is that there is sometimes a bit of dysregulation. When "Joe" did that thing and I had big feelings in my body, I can allow that to bring up questions and thoughts about my own story without being afraid.
Normally, when we have an emotion, we turn toward the person and say "You made me feel that way!" But it isn't about them. It is about us. We flip the script in our head. We blame. The speed picks up.
Can you say instead: "This is about me. This is for me. This is connected to something of mine." And if it doesn't have something to do with us, it might be that we are recognizing that this is a person that has repeatedly hurt us, and we don't want to put ourself in that path any longer.
Adam discusses "The Gap." When Hilary harms Adam, there is always a GAP between the severity of the transgression and the level that he feels it in his body. So she might offend at a level 3, but he feels it at level 8 or 9. Hilary can own the 3. But she can't own the 9. Adam needs to let his dysregulated body reaction prompt curiosity about: "What else is being stirred up in my heart/mind/body based on this interaction with Hilary?" He has to figure out why, what should have been a 3, is actually registering at a 9.
Our experiences become clues and gifts to the deeper part of our stories. Try: "How is this familiar?" or "What does this remind me of?"
Let's look at our body. What do you feel right now? Let your body tell you about all the times it has felt this before. Your body is saying, "This matters." If Adam can get control of things, he can start reacting like it's a 3 instead of a 9. That's a start.
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