Hey guys.
I'm really excited to talk to you today about the state of flight in the nervous system.
This might be you if when faced with confrontation or conflict:
Your go-to response is to avoid.
Maybe you tend to retreat or self-isolate.
Perhaps you hide.
You may experience a lot of anxiety or hypervigilance.
A lot of times this can happen…
When we grow up in families where it's glorified and praised to self-sacrifice.
To ignore your own needs in order to take care of other people’s feelings or desires before your own
This can even become a bit of an expectation that if you don't meet, you're considered mean, wrong, difficult, or bad.
These messages can then become our internal voice.
Our harsh self-critic, if we stand up for ourselves or we set boundaries or we say what we need, we will feel unsafe. Love will be withheld, we’ll be judged and criticized, and perhaps seen as selfish, mean, wrong, or bad.
These are a lot of the narratives that I've personally had to work through with the help of internal family systems, parts work, and inner child work.
These tools are really helpful in better understanding our internal narratives and finding safety in our bodies to show up in new, healthier ways.
For me…. My flight response was a go-to for most of my life.
I think it was very comfortable for me to just retreat and hide when:
Things felt uncomfortable
Or when I felt like there was a lot of conflict
Or I felt really dysregulated
I spent much of my childhood alone in my bedroom. I had a whole world going on in my mind and it became my safe haven.
Which makes so much sense as a kid, right?
When we're children, we don't have a lot of freedom in choice to create our experiences and our realities.
So we can see why these patterns develop. But then our nervous system begins to interpret these coping mechanisms as safety and they become go-to’s in adulthood that often don't serve us anymore.
Because, if we've been made to feel small in childhood, we often stay small in adulthood if we don’t revisit these parts of ourselves that need new leadership from us.
I had this experience the other day…
As I've been doing this work and being more conscious of the states I'm in, I have been meeting myself in these places, trying to complete the cycle, rather than just going down the familiar path of my survival instincts.
I had this experience where I was like, “I need to speak up and use my voice. I need to set a boundary.”
I work from home now but for a long time, I was a stay-at-home mom. My kids are older now, they're 13 and 16, and so when they go to school, that's my time to do my work.
And I had to have a hard conversation with a few people in my life around, not just showing up unannounced, from 8am-3pm because it was becoming disruptive.
I knew if I wanted to create the life I desired, I needed to have this conversation,
But speaking up and creating boundaries can feel mean to me sometimes because of this coping mechanism I developed when I was little.
All these untrue things started running through my head:
“Boundaries are aggressive”
“Boundaries or selfish”
“Will they think I’m mean?”
I've had to retrain my body and my nervous system to a newer, healthier way to cope.
But I could feel this anxiety coming on. I could feel myself wanting to avoid and not have this conversation because of old outdated narratives and fears.
So here’s the 3 step process I took:
I identified my nervous system state- I was in flight, wanting to avoid what felt like confrontation.
I did a few of my self-regulation strategies for the state of flight, shaking, and heel drops.
I've listed more techniques + guided sessions below for you.
And then I resourced and I found something in my room that felt calming.
And I went on my porch, put my feet on the ground, found safety in my body, and made that phone call.
That phone call I normally would have avoided in the past.
And I was able to express what I was feeling in a very kind regulated, respectful way.
I got off the phone…. and my body immediately felt flooded and dysregulated.
Like I just did the most aggressive act
and I'm this mean horrible person
and I'm selfish
and all of these narratives that I've internalized from when I was little on why I don't set boundaries and why I avoid tapping into my healthy aggression, start popping up.
So once again, I went outside, put my bare feet on the ground and my hand on my heart and I breathed.
And I tuned into this part of me that held this story.
I got curious about it: How old is this part of me? What is she feeling? And without judgment or making her wrong, but truly holding space for her perspective.
…. And then I had this opportunity as the adult me to show up and hold space for those feelings.
To shed light on the truth, that I am safe.
That it is loving to me and other people to set boundaries and speak my needs.
That I'm not responsible for other people's feelings or other people's perceptions of me.
I was proud of myself for speaking up, taking care of myself, and having my own back.
I was giving this wounded part of me what she needed- strong leadership in myself to keep her safe.
And I just sat in the sun and breathed into that until it integrated into my body.
And I was able find strength, confidence and clarity in this adult me who knows the truth about healthy boundaries and healthy aggression.
I held that little part of me that was still confused, and showed her that it was safe to use her voice.
I can see now how this has physically impacted me…
Specifically with my gut issues, which I’ve had since I was a kid and that didn't really heal until I started addressing these emotional roots and supporting my nervous system in getting unstuck from this survival state.
Our gut shuts down in prolonged states of fight or flight because all the blood motility goes out to our limbs and our digestion slows down.
It's important to know that when it comes to our nervous system, it's not just about calming down all the time.
I think when we think of emotional regulation we often think of ourselves in these escalated states and we need to find calm. And sometimes that is the case, but that's not always the case.
Sometimes, it's about tapping into our healthy aggression, because that healthy aggression is actually our vital life force energy that propels us forward in life.
We use healthy aggression and life force energy to:
Protect and defend.
To be productive.
And passionate.
And to play.
To create a world where we feel respected and seen, and our needs are met and honored.
And so it's practices like these, that I still am bumping into on the daily.
The difference is I now have the tools to meet myself there and to bring myself out of it, instead of avoiding the hard conversations, not speaking up, or perpetuating this pattern that doesn’t feel good to me anymore.
Because that's on me…
That's on me to create the structure in my day that I want. That's on me to communicate in ways that I feel good about. And that's on me to show up for that part of me that feels dysregulated because I'm stretching myself to do new things, to do hard, unfamiliar things.
We are responsible for our experiences.
Yes, difficult things happen.
Crappy things happen.
Inconvenient things happen.
And we get to choose to step out of the old cycle.
So here are 4 techniques that have helped me step out of the flight state
Heel Drops
You can do this sitting or standing. It's like a calf raise where we're going to raise our heels and then drop them like a thud onto the ground. The goal is to get your heart up to release that adrenaline and cortisol.
Heel Pushes + Heels Up
When we're in that flight response, we tend to want to move forward- like we’re running away. So getting up on our toes, we're going to go towards the activation to release the cycle. In this technique, we're going to activate our calf muscles as we're on our toes in that propelled forward position.
The Tense + Relax Sequence
When we're in a state of anxiety, we can tend to grip or brace or have a lot of tension in certain muscles. For me, it's my neck, shoulders, and lower back. In this session, we will lean into those places, to release some of that stuck energy.
Visualization
Visualization is a great strategy to use in any of the states and can provide quick relief. Today, we're going to be walking through how we can apply this in the state of flight when we're feeling anxious.
Taking off the armor does feel scary because it's not familiar.
Our nervous system sees it as dangerous because it's not the way we've always done it.
And when we have trauma, as many of us ADHD moms do, we often find ourselves stuck in one of these protective states, whether it's:
But as you begin to learn these tools and how to self-regulate and better understand your nervous system and how to meet yourself in that space.
You'll find that it naturally starts drawing in healthier dynamics with people who honor your boundaries, who appreciate your honesty, who are curious about your experience, and who can hold space for what you're going through.
Why? Because you know how to do this for yourself. So within, so without.
But it all starts within us… I feel like that’s the biggest lesson I've learned.
How incredibly powerful is it to heal ourselves so that we can create the lives we actually want to be living.
If you're interested in this work and want to dive deeper, I would love for you to join me on the paid side:
We are going to be creating more and more resources to support you through this process with a simple guide to meet you where you’re at in your journey.
I’ll be walking you through tools that will work for you and your unique nervous system and support you in finding safety in your body.
And if you're a mom with ADHD and you are struggling with these things…
Struggling to show up for yourself and your kids in the ways that you feel proud of, that foster secure, healthy relationships where you feel confident and empowered.
Add your name to the waitlist below and I'll make sure to keep you in the loop for the upcoming Reframing Neurodiversity course releasing end of January.
We'll be diving into:
The impact of trauma and understanding our nervous system.
How we can begin to reparent ourselves so that we can not only survive but begin to thrive and feel empowered and confident in our lives while shifting generational cycles for our kids.
Strategies I've personally used in my own life to shift out of unhealthy patterns that were once familiar and step into new ways that allow you to feel seen, connected, and like you can truly be yourself without masking or self-abandoning!
If you are interested and want to be kept in the loop drop your name on the waitlist below and I’ll be in touch with more details!
Share this post