how limiting beliefs are made? the neuroscience of blocks and getting unstuck—
now what? I know… I have been there too! I spent years being stuck repeating unhelpful patterns despite knowing all the neuroscience of why! I feel you and why I want to help you for free! FREE UNBLOCKING SESSION
How do we really get unstuck so we can live the life we want? By showing (not telling) your body & protective parts its safe to
While some believe we change or create the life we want by ‘shifting our mindset’, ‘trying harder’ or wishful or positive thinking, research tells us this is not true, but there is a scientific way too! It turns out the stories our brain makes and then directs our experience begin and are shaped by the messages our nervous system perceives from our internal, external and relational environment (neuroception). But what if our ‘unconscious surveillance process’ or ‘nervous system intuition’ perceives and sends a ‘abort, it’s dangerous!’ message to the brain — just as we’re about to finally send on the book proposal or make our website live — making us shut the computer and ourselves down? Your protective system is doing exactly what it was designed to do in the face of a real threat when the trauma that triggered this response occurred in the first place. The problem is that this once adaptive and appropriate response is now maladaptive and is holding us back from taking action aligned with what we want. If this sounds like you, you are not alone! My protective parts, too, were working overtime, showing up in the form of fearful, disempowering thoughts and frozenness each time I tried to make a step towards what I really wanted. Building your nervous system capacity is often overlooked, but it is imperative to truly transform your emotional, physical and psychological wellbeing so you can step towards creating the life you want!
Despite my efforts, for many years after I left home and the dynamics that inflicted woundings, I felt unintentionally stuck, re-playing and living in the confines of my unprocessed stories and childhood traumas. Learning that trauma was a psychological or emotional wound that lives in the body, and the 'stuckness' and physical pain I felt, was a protective response and manifestation of unprocessed woundings, was transformative in my healing journey. Learning about trauma's impact on the nervous system, human development and correlation to disease gave me context to the 'brokenness' I felt and helped me reframe the antagonistic relationship I had towards my body. It wasn’t until I understood how stories and behaviours are made and started to process the trauma that was dysregulating my nervous system (which laid the framework for the creation of disempowering stories, leading to adaptive disempowering behaviours based on these stories) that I was able to get unstuck and begin manifesting my purpose. You can live or embody the story you want to tell — learn the science below ‘why’? and ‘how’ doing your storywork is the pathway to
Neuroscience FAQ? —
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Over or under reactive perceptions - when we are dysreguated our ‘neuroception’ (threat detector) is off or faulty, seeing danger when it is safe or ‘over reacting’ to eternal events or people or the sensing safety when there is danger.
Feeling stuck or not manifesting your goals- this is the nervous system response born out of dorsal vagal or dorsal/sympathetic ‘freeze’
Chronic Pain/ Health Conditions - a chronically dysregulated nervous system is the root cause of chronic illness. It disrupt the immune system, and trigger a global inflammatory response. We need to be in ventral vagal to ‘rest, digest, repair and thrive’
Excess weight or digestive issues - being in chronic stress or survival mode, makes us hold onto weight as well as disrupts out gut biome and hormones in our body leading to not feeling fullness, slower metabolism and digestive issues
Not knowing when your hungry or full - when we are disconnected from our bodies we don’t know how to care for ourself or what it needs
Feeling disconnected from our body - when the body is an unsafe to be in when it is holding trauma
Being in dysfunctional relationships, unable to set boundaries or unable to maintain relationships - when we are in survival mode our ability to care for ourself, know what our needs are and set them is inhibited.
Physical symptoms; anxiety, depression, fogginess, numbness, disconnected, reoccurring headaches, insomnia or sleep issues
Inability to make decisions, focus feeling out of control and overwhelmed
Being in your head, ruminating - we had to be in our mind to escape perceive danger
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Behavioral neuroscience tells us, that when our nervous system doesn’t feel safe, our Autonomic Nervous or ‘self protective’ System come online, in the form of activation or dysregulation. This system essentially stands in front of us, preventing us from stepping towards what we want. It does this because it doesn’t know that what we desire is safe.
Think about it like this; if your body thinks your running from a lion, making steps towards your dream life doesn’t seem that important —- that is what your NS is saying if you are stuck.
This automatic response is going to continue to derail you until you work with not against this process. We do this by learning and speaking the language of the body and these protective parts.
When we feel safe, our nervous systems support the homeostatic functions of health, growth, and restoration connection, creativity and creation; ie. manifesting the life you want!
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Neurobiology tells us that 80% of the nervous system fibers are afferent, meaning the majority of the message our brain makes meaning from comes from the body. This is why we cant think our way to feeling better or tell our body we are safe - we have to show our body it is safe.
Level of safety vs. threat is determined by an unconscious, automatic and ‘neural’ process termed neuroception by the founder of polyvagal theory, Dr. Stephen Porges. Think of this process as an ‘internal surveillance system’ or ‘nervous systems intuition’ which automatically scans the internal, external and relational environment, for cues of safety and danger. It makes an assessment and this determines the ‘state’ or appropriate response to suit the threat.
neuroception -> perception -> state -> feelings -> behavior -> story
When the body neurocepts safety the ventral vagal system is activated and we feel connected, safe, regulated and we can move out into the world, while when the body neurocepts danger the body shifts towards sympathetic or dorsal collapse.
Neuroception ‘surveillance system’ is molded by all past experiences of ‘safety and threat’ and ‘its memory’ informs all future assessments and subsequent response. When your system perceives threat, your response is not voluntary and your rational mind is not in control. You don’t decide to fight, flee, freeze, or collapse, but your nervous system responds with the capacity it has in that moment, based on how it’s been conditioned by past experiences, what was modeled to you as a child.
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What is trauma?
Trauma is not simply an event, it’s any experience that overwhelms one’s nervous systems ability to cope and return to equilibrium. It’s less about what happened and more about what didn’t happen; when the energy/charge created by an event is not effectively processed/discharged from the body, the charge is left in the body. This creates an inflexible and dysregulated nervous system as it makes our ‘surveillance system - neuroception’ more sensitive. When we experience an overwhelming experience, attachment injury or trauma, these feelings and memories or are suppressed in our subconscious mind and body. Common causes of trauma include experiences inflicted on a person that is too much/too soon/too fast (ex. assault, war, bullying, accident) or through acts of omission (neglect, poverty, chronic disconnection, parental divorce, not having needs met).
How unprocessed trauma distorts and dysreguatates the nervous system?
Prolonged stress or trauma skews our neuroception becomes sensitive and/or flawed. In the example mentioned in the beginning, the nervous system perceived ‘submitting the book proposal’ as if it was life-threatening because it unconsciously triggered a past trauma , resulting in an over activated shut-down response. This is how unprocessed trauma (when activation is not physically discharged from the body) keeps us stuck, as trauma can shock the autonomic nervous system into a state of hyperarousal and hypervigilance, leading our response patterns become biased towards survival and self protection. When a trauma occurs, it’s picking up the danger signal. This is a wonderful built in alarm, but the wiring can stay stuck in a loop if your system doesn’t perceive a return to safety.
Unprocessed trauma and emotions are stored in the body so much be felt fully and processed in the body. The reverberations of trauma is stored in somatic memory in the body, in order to release it, we need learn to speaking the language it understands; a somatic not cognitive one. We do this by showing not telling our body is safe. With the aid of various somatic and polyvagal practices, we are able to digest or discharge the energy that was frozen in the body at the time of the trauma, bringing resolution to this story, and facilitate the contracted energy to flow once again. Through processing the memories held in stories of these wounded parts, and building the capacity to safely stay in ventral vagal regulation the whole system can come back into greater harmony and balance.
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When we say ‘we are trigged’, this means our neuroception ‘surveillance system’ has picked up cues of danger or threat from the internal, external and relational environment. While this may be a true assessment of danger, when we are triggered it is often because our protective parts may subconsciously superimpose our past onto the present and see danger where there might not actually be danger.
After the ‘danger’ alarm bells go off in our nervous system, this activates our amygdala to take over and protect (fear center of the brain). This shuts off the Prefrontal cortex, which helps us think, reason, speech and process memories, to conserve energy and allow the amygdala to do its protective job. The amygdala also releases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline so we can ‘fight, flight, freeze’ response. All the sensory information gets stored in the neuroceptive memory storage for future reference.
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If we want to get unstuck, transform our our limiting stories, patterns or behaviors into empowering ones so we can take aligned action with what we want, we need to support your body + nervous system to come into regulation. We need to do this through somatically showing our system it is safe so we can effectively shape our brain using neuroplasticity.
Through understanding the neuropsychological mechanisms involved in expressed behavior and nervous system regulation, we are able to functionally inhibit and replace unhelpful brain processes and neuropathways with helpful ones. How? Through a neurobiology process called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to form new connections and pathways and change how its circuits are wired and therefore how we think, act or behave. Our brains are constantly being shaped by our experiences and have the ability to change by strengthening and over-writing undesirable neural pathways with desirable ones. This is how at a neurobiological level we learn a new skill, build emotional intelligence, improve performance, or change a behavior or foundational belief.
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If we want to get unstuck, transform our our limiting stories, patterns or behaviors into empowering ones so we can take aligned action with what we want, we need to support our body + nervous system to come into regulation. Feeling stuck, is a symptom of something that isn’t being felt or processed in the body and we must speak through showing the body it is safe via somatic processing and healing. By bring awareness to and hearing the stories of these parts holding the dysregulating trauma stories, we are able to tell these parts that they are safe in the here and now. This allows us to slowly digest or discharge the energy that was frozen in the body at the time of the trauma, bringing resolution to this story, and encouraging the contracted energy to flow once again. Through processing the memories held in stories of these wounded parts, and building the capacity to safely stay in ventral vagal regulation the whole system can come back into greater harmony and balance. From a regulated place, we are able to use the power of neuroplasticty and take tolerable steps towards manifesting or creating our lifes purpose.
neural exercies that turn on the vetral vagal axis so we can get more of this vegal influence to our bodily organs
optomize the neuroal regualtion
Inquiring into what ways or domain in life you are stuck; stepping towards purpose, fulfilling relationships, creating abundance, being seen or receiving, in community, health?
somatic awareness - learn to listen to the message your body is sending you - what happens in my body when I try to step towards what I want?
track your state - what state are you are in (see pyramid below)
identify the protective parts, and where they originated - when in your past is this pattern reminiscent of? What is the somatic story of these protective parts?
learn what somatic and polyvagal practices are appropriate to each state and show not tell the protective parts we are safe now
use regulating resources to discharge or complete the traumatic activation cycle that caused the dysregulation - BSTVM breath, sound, touch, vision, movement
find ventral openings to engage in tolerable action steps, regulating practices and increasing vagal tone
as our body and system feeling psychologically more safe, our story naturally changes (remember, your state creates story)
the more we have disconfirming experiences where it was safe to do that thing,
our window of tolerance in ventral/regulation increases
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The only way to truly create the life we want is to be able to envision what we want and take aligned action towards it.
Behavioral neuroscience tells us, that when our ‘self protective’ or Autonomic Nervous Systems, doesn’t feel safe, it comes online in the form of activation or dysregulation to stop us because it doesn’t yet know the things we are stepping towards is safe.
Until we learn how to speak the language of this protective system, and the specific parts that are stepping in front of your next step, these parts will continue to derail you. We do this through learning the stories of these protective parts and working with rather than against them.
When we feel safe, our nervous systems support the homeostatic functions of health, growth, and restoration, as well as creativity, connection and being bale to take aligned action with creating the life we want.
