Living with someone who has significant vulnerability in their nervous system can lead to a sensitized stress response system, resulting in unpredictable and sometimes unsafe behaviors. This can leave our own nervous systems in a state of distress. While we often discuss secondary trauma in parenting kids with trauma histories, the truth is that living with someone who has significant dysregulation is trauma in itself. Understanding this perspective allows us to acknowledge the challenges we face without criticizing ourselves or others.
The Impact on Our Nervous System
When living with or being in close relationship with someone in chronic protection mode, our own nervous systems can become stuck in fight-flight, collapse, or other protective states. This prolonged state of protection mode overwhelms our nervous systems, which are designed to handle short bursts of danger. As a result, we feel depleted and lack the co-regulation and support we need to care for ourselves and our vulnerable loved ones.
The Consequences of Burnout and Lack of Support
Many caregivers find themselves without the necessary support from agencies, organizations, or society at large. Instead of receiving the understanding and assistance they require, they often encounter blame and shame. It is important to understand that while this behavior is not excusable, it can be attributed to the burnout and fried nervous systems of those in helping roles. Recognizing the reasons behind this behavior allows us to shift from protection mode to a more powerful state of connection, enabling us to set boundaries and seek understanding.
Signs of a Fried Nervous System
Various symptoms indicate that our nervous system is overwhelmed and depleted. These symptoms include feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, blaming, and shaming, as well as a lack of motivation or interest in understanding the behavior of our loved ones. Intense mood swings, overusing coping skills, and withdrawing from support systems are also common signs. Recognizing these signs is crucial to understanding the state of our nervous system.
Bringing Rest and Healing to our Nervous System
Once we acknowledge the state of our fried nervous system, it is essential not to rush into changing it. Instead, we should aim to bring moments of rest and healing through connection. Recognizing that our nervous system needs safety, acknowledgment, and soothing is crucial. Seeing and validating the part of ourselves that is fried and offering self-compassion are important steps towards healing.
Practicing Self-Compassion and Seeking Compassionate Spaces
While self-compassion may feel challenging or out of reach, we can scaffold it by immersing ourselves in compassionate spaces and seeking external sources of compassion. Reading books, listening to podcasts, and being in environments where compassion is abundant can help us develop self-compassion. By surrounding ourselves with compassion and participating in acts of compassion towards others, we can gradually learn to extend it to ourselves.
Recognizing the Need for Healing
Taking time to recognize the state of our nervous system and being gentle with ourselves is crucial. Pausing to acknowledge our own limitations and the necessity of self-care is important in navigating the challenges of daily life. While healing and change may not happen overnight, understanding and addressing our fried nervous system is a step toward restoring balance, resilience, and well-being.
Choosing Nourishing Foods
It is important to incorporate nourishing foods into one’s diet, even while acknowledging the natural human craving for quick sources of energy like carbs, sugar, and comfort foods. We can avoid shaming ourselves for indulging in these foods but I also suggest sneaking in healthier options like apples, cheese sticks, or hard-boiled eggs to add some nutrition to meals.
Gentle Movement for Safety and Discharging Energy
Gentle movement is important for the body, especially for individuals with a highly stressed or fried nervous system. While cautioning against starting intense exercise routines, I advocate for small moments of gentle movement that can help the body remember its experience of safety and release pent-up energy. Movement doesn’t have to be traditional exercises like running or yoga but can be as simple as swapping a desk chair for a swivel chair.
Finding Supportive Relationships
It is highly important to find supportive relationships and spaces where we can express our suppressed feelings without judgment. This is challenging for individuals in high-stress environments, such as healthcare practitioners and parents, who often prioritize others’ emotional experiences while neglecting their own. I encourage you to seek out relationships and places where their feelings can be held and seen, without being judged or getting stuck in negative emotions.
Cultivating Self-Compassion and Surrounding Oneself with Compassion
The practice of self-compassion is crucial, as well as immersing oneself in spaces where compassion is valued. You can do things like reading books, listening to podcasts, or engaging with communities that promote compassion, even if you feel undeserving or unable to provide self-compassion at the moment. Surrounding oneself with the energy of compassion can be a source of support and healing.
Tiny Acts of Self-Care for a Fried Nervous System
Recently, members of The Club shared small, practical, and easily achievable acts of self-care. These acts include going outside barefoot, feeling grass, splashing cold water on the face, stretching, showering, listening to music, taking naps, talking to understanding friends, having snacks or drinks, engaging in physical activities like jumping on a trampoline, and immersing oneself in enjoyable hobbies. The emphasis is on finding moments of joy and relief for the fried nervous system.
Additional Support for a Fried Nervous System
For additional support consider seeking therapy or finding someone who understands the challenges of chronic protection mode and can provide support and belief. You may try outsourcing non-childcare-related tasks, simplifying life, and considering functional or integrative medicine approaches. These approaches can offer additional assistance for individuals experiencing chronic stress cycles and help identify and address underlying factors contributing to the fried nervous system.
Impossible, Necessary Grief
Underneath all of these moments of care, and underneath are very, very fried nervous system is very righteous, grief, and grieving is exhausting. And so it makes a lot of sense that when your nervous system is totally fried, that grieving feels impossible. There is this delicate balance of grieving being necessary to bring some balance back to our nervous system, while also being true that grieving is exhausting.
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Resources mentioned in this podcast:
Previous episode recommendations:
- Connection vs. Protection (7)
- Self Compassion (8)
- Understanding Behavior is Not Excusing Behavior (109)
- Grief in Parenting Kids with Vulnerable Nervous Systems (129)
- Scaffolding (82)
- When Parenting is Traumatic (95)
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This blog is a short summary of a longer episode on The Baffling Behavior Show podcast.
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