We all have a hard-wiring within our brains that has been written from our development, genetics, experiences, and knowledge base. These four areas shape our understanding and create an automatic response that occurs prior to our brain even registering a reaction (our defaults). Understanding and noticing these automatic responses to situations allows us to further understand our thinking patterns and emotional comprehension. This ultimately allows us to connect both with ourselves and others.

Let’s challenge ourselves to notice these automatic responses (especially when this time of year brings increase stress levels within our environment—- even though some of the added stress that comes with the holidays is a positive our bodies automatic response can get in the way of our understanding of the excitement vs negative stress, which results in us falsely seeing something as a threat).

1. Take frequent pauses prior to social situations beginning to understand what your expectations of the event are.
2. What is my internal judgement (and fears) of the individuals that will be present?
3. What are my needs; to remain safe in this social situation (knowing the exists, giving myself a script for certain questions I worry that will be asked, etc)?

Taking the time to “check-in” with ourselves in these intentional ways gives us the ability to notice our automatic responses. This allows us to course correct to an alternate response that better suits our needs based upon the different situations.

“Trust your instincts, Intuition doesn’t lie.” Oprah Winfrey

Trauma often disconnects us from our inner workings of what we need in certain situations. Resulting in us disconnecting from ourselves and putting ourselves into increasingly risky situations. IE: not trusting our gut instinct when it’s telling you to leave the conversation you are in (because that would be rude) or choosing to not sit next to an individual on public transit and stand instead (as that would be rude or offensive).

Allowing ourselves to hear our gut instinct is an indicator of healing from our trauma. We start to develop internal safety and trust through restoring that communication line. We can start this process by:

1. Being in touch with our inner desires and voice.
2. Being curious as to what your body is telling you and why.

There is a strong (and damaging) myth when it comes to grief “time heals everything; and as time passes, you’ll heal, and it gets easier.” Those phrases are well meaning but very inaccurate. As time passes parts of the grief shift, memories refocus, meaning from their life is created and honoured, and emotions become processed. Grief is a unique beast within the human experience—- we all go through it, as we all experience loss, and yet we never experience the same loss as another person (even if we both lost a sibling, parent, spouse, child, etc.).

Be kind with yourself and catch those moments of comparison to others lived experience of grief and turn that inward—- Refocus yourself too: How far have you come in your personal grief story? Focus on that comparison. As I’m a firm believer that, this is the only form of comparison that is productive and supportive.

Reflection thoughts from: “The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy” Written by: John Gottman and Julie Schwartz -Gottman

Our inner narratives can get in our way of truly loving and receiving love. Unpacking that narrative to truly see what the negative and positive cognitions you are holding, is so important within this process towards understanding (and ultimately healing). Some cognitions you might want to check in on are do you feel: You are you worthy of love? Worthy of self-love? Deserving of love? Good enough?

We are geared for connection as humans; and we need to invest into connections for them to be successful. This reflection work of our romantic relationships will give us the answers of how much we have invested into them, how much more is needed, and what we need (tools, support, etc) to accomplish the work towards a successful connection.

In partnerships we often can get stuck on talking about time (“there is no time,” “I don’t know where to schedule in the time,” etc). ——Time isn’t this pressure filled reality we believe it to be. We don’t need to be spending 20 plus hours together a week, or any set amount for that matter, with our partners——small moments are the most valuable. The concept of “Turning towards” (as described within the Gottman’s work) can take a few seconds to validated and make our partners feel seen, heard, and valued. Examples of this are: when your partner starts a conversation by asking a question or making a comment, physically turn towards them and lean into it. Give them a response, answer the question fully, ask if they got the information they required, validate their comment. Simple moments equal connection.

If we become aware of the opportunities for connection with our partners and then build habits with them, once we master these two very key concepts we assure that our partners are feeling seen, heard, and valued.

The beautiful work within ‘Burn Out’- By Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski; They speak to the realities of stress within our lives and the impacts that it has on our overall well-being. Their research focused on a new vantage point of stress and didn’t focus on the specifics of the situations that create our stress points. They highlight that —of course in circumstances that we have control over preventing a stressful situation from occurring we should do that, otherwise they provided insight to how can we adapt and learn to productively survive stress when we must go through it. — That is where their ‘completing the stress cycle’ approach becomes a fundamental requirement for us to positively care for our overall well-being.

Completing the Stress Cycle can occur in so many ways:

1. Physical Movement: Focus on moving your body (dancing it out, shaking your body, fast-paced walking, etc).
2. Creativity: Making something new (craft, art, music, writing, humming, etc).
3. Laughing: Moves the mindset (even when forced to start), provides a release and can be even more beneficial when sharing laughter with someone.
4. Crying: Expressing the emotion, sitting with it, and releasing it.
5. Physical affection: Hugging (for a prolonged period—ie: 2 minutes or longer), holding hands, sitting close to those that are a safe connection for you.
6. Deep breathing: Trying a variety of different breathing techniques—Box breathing, 4-4 breathing, etc. Having the focus being on the breath.

It’s important for us to reflect upon how we communicate. What is our communication style? What is our intention of the specific communication? What is the expectation of the person I’m communicating with? What is my need within the communication itself? If we define clear answers to these questions we can effective improve our communication abilities within all our relationships (personal and professional).

Realizing and acknowledging that we can only control our own actions. Through this approach we can set boundaries within our communication to ensure we are heard, understood, and the other individuals on the other side of the communication are respected. This can effectively reduce defence mechanisms on both sides of the equation.

Within the book Burn Out- By Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski; They speak to an important concept of the ‘Human Giver Syndrome.’ This concept highlights the methodology that society feeds off the belief that we (especially women) have a “moral obligation to give your entire humanity and do so cheerfully.” It is the belief of:

1. ‘Owing’ something to all those relationships around you.
2. That any ‘failure’ of being kind, calm, self-less is a failure of you being a human.
3. That ‘failure’ is deserving of harsh punishments—resulting in negative cognitions.

The damage that the ‘Human Giver Syndrome’ creates is a barrier that ultimately stops you from pursuing a larger meaning in life. It stops us from believing in ourselves and taking risks, putting ourselves first, and active problem solving that looks out for our best interest. As the ‘Human Giver Syndrome’ forces us to live a life for others, not ourselves.

Take a few moments to reflect if this represents you in any way, if it does take some active steps today to start living for YOU.

We are often driven by our sense of purpose, and this is often gained by our measurement of being productive. This reality can often overwhelm us and leave us feeling not enough. No matter what achievement we complete, or accomplishment we level up too we can fall into a trap of a never-ending loop of “what’s next?” and miss out on the celebration of “what I have already done.”

In order to understand this for ourselves better we need to ask ourselves these questions:

1. What is your sense of purpose (where do you locate this within yourself)?
2. How do you feel most productive (within action, and absence of action)?
3. What external validation do you require to measure purpose and productivity?
4. Does any internal validation matter for you? And are you giving that to yourself?
5. What is the goal (and the steps to achieve it)?
6. How will I know once I have achieved that goal?
7. How am I going to celebrate that success?

The opposite (far enemy) of ‘Belonging’ is ‘Fitting In’. We must give up parts of ourselves in order to ‘Fit In’. Belonging is the experience of being acceptance for your truest self!

Finding surroundings where we truly belong is one of the most beautiful gifts, we can provide to ourselves. Finding those individuals to surround ourselves with that allow us to be seen, valued, and worthy is the only way we can allow for our truest selves to be witnessed by others.

Important items we need to consider for ourselves: What are you searching for in terms of connection? Belonging or to Fit In? Be Included or Be One with the crowd and loose our sense of self?

Atlas of the Heart— Brene Brown (2021).

Safety is the largest part of true healing. We need to have physical, emotional, and psychological safety in order to establish a sense of self-regulation prior to being able to do a deep dive into trauma healing.

Awareness:
To start off being able to identify what safety looks like for you is key! — Naming past experiences where you felt seen, heard and valued would be a good start to unpack the meaning of safety for you.

Setting boundaries is a great next step. —- How can you voice your needs to those around you?

Challenges:
A challenge that can present for you within this work can be this cognitive dissonance that you’re undeserving of safety. This will be a helpful belief to unpack with a trusted professional to gain some understanding and validation on this fact.