Regulating Emotions into the Present to Immediately Reduce Anxiety & Depression

Our autonomic nervous system (ANS) operates as our internal barometer constantly searching for cues of safety and threat - rising and falling below our level of conscious awareness, ideally flexing through regulation and dysregulation, as needed. With regulation overseeing the system and being our birthright, it is important to know when our system is in dysregulation so that we can begin to rewire it based on the present, instead of it being habitually stuck in the past. Being aware that what worked beautifully to help us feel safe in the world when we were very little, oftentimes becomes stuck in a dysregulated state long after a threat has passed. Therefore, it behooves us to begin to tune into what dysregulation feels like, bringing it into our conscious awareness, and beginning to question if it is accurately picking up on threats in present time or merely reacting to memory feelings of threats we have already survived. An experience that was once a threat when we did not have the capacity or means of protecting ourselves may not be an actual threat today. And since our ANS gets wired through lived experience, it may still be signaling a "threat" and stuck in a dysregulated state, when we actually have more capacity to regulate ourselves now. In fact, regulating our ANS into the present, allows us to have more capacity to solve problems in real time, helping us feel more in control, which is what is so desperately needed today.

Our birthright is to live in regulation, allowing us to be connected to love and presence - to move through life calm, clear, confident and compassionate. Making decisions and choices based on love instead of fear. And yet, so many of us are moving through our lives more often in fear than love. Because our nervous systems are stuck in threat and survival responses, we are unable to feel safe, to be regulated, to connect with ourselves, others and the world with love. We have it backwards and upside down and many of us don't know how to flip it. Dysregulation has become so ingrained, familiar and normalized that we think this is the way it is supposed to be. I promise you, it is not. We are born into this world full of love. That love never leaves, it simply becomes buried beneath all of the barriers that had to be erected to protect our hearts when we needed to attach in order to survive. Until one day, we begin to feel discontented, longing for something different. Perhaps not even knowing what 'it' is, just knowing that this is not it. We may begin to try to change outside circumstances so that we can feel better, try to control things that are out of our control. This is a surefire way to burnout. The real work, our life work, is to tune inward, focus on our own inner state. Begin to recognize dysregulation within our own self. Realizing that dysregulation is a signal that we are under threat. Beginning to use our brains to ask the question - is this threat or survival response necessary and helpful in this situation? Or might it be overreacting, based on a history of protecting me when I didn't have as much knowledge, awareness and capacity as I do today? I promise you this, the answer to the first question will almost always be no. And if that is no, the second answer is almost always yes. I can also guarantee you that when you are under an actual threat, your ANS will respond as needed in service of your survival. For most of us though, our ANS has become stuck in a threat or survival response, instead of flexing into those responses when necessary. Hence, we feel stuck in life, instead of in flow.

I invite you to begin the journey of turning within. At any given moment throughout your day, check in with your body - are you holding tension anywhere? If so, ask if it is necessary and helpful at this moment in time. If not, release the tension, perhaps soften your shoulders, shake your hands, arms, legs, speed up or slow down your breathing. Feel what it feels like to release. Ask your body what it needs. And if it feels right, provide it, give yourself permission to soften. To relax. To allow your internal system to reset. To come home to regulation. To ultimately feel safe in the present moment. Even if it is for 1 second or 1 breath. You are rewiring, updating your ANS to come back into regulation in the present. Every second and every breath allows for a rewiring into safety in the present moment. And soon becomes your new familiar.