Hi friends.
Today we're going to be talking about a state in the nervous system that is very near and dear to my heart: the state of flight.
When we're in the state of flight, this looks predominantly like:
Anxiety
Worry
Panic
Fear
Hypervigilance
It's that state where we really want to flee, runaway, avoid confrontation.
And it can really be experienced as heavy anxiety, which is I’ve personally struggled with on and off for most of my life.
So to have tools and to better understand what's going on in my nervous system, in my body and to meet myself in a way that's effective, has been life-changing for me.
First I want to debunk a myth that I bought into for a really long time around anxiety…
For many years, I thought I just needed to:
Calm down
To suppress
To meditate
To breathe slowly
To just relax out of anxiety
and it's actually the EXACT OPPOSITE.
When we’re in the flight state of the nervous system, we actually have a lot of adrenaline and cortisol going on in our bodies that needs to be expressed or discharged.
So when we do things to suppress those things, to calm down, to avoid, we're actually keeping those survival hormones stuck in our bodies.
And we're not allowing our nervous system to complete the cycle. Which is actually what's going to make us feel that sense of calm and relief.
So the counterintuitive part here is that we actually want to go towards the activation so that we can release that trapped adrenaline and cortisol and find relief in completion of the cycle. You're going to want to do things that get your heart rate up.
So that we can then create a greater sense of calm in our body.
So today we're going to be talking about a way that we can actually move towards the activation, that is going to help us release that stuck adrenaline and cortisol so we don't build up more and become stuck in this state.
Because if you do, you could:
Implode
which means we go into shutdown, immobilization or freeze.
Or Explode
which looks more like a panic attack or those more severe symptoms of anxiety.
So today we’re going to dive into one my favorites… Visualization
You can view all the techniques and learn more about the flight state here.
Like always give it a try and if it feels like it’s working for your nervous system and you feel relief. Great. Write it down.
Keep track of it with your toolkit, but don't feel like all of them have to work for you.
Remember, all of our nervous systems are unique. And so I'm just sharing with you some things that work for me. You want to feel into what feels best for you.
