The Rhythm of Regulation

My first encounter with the word resilience was not in psychology but in physics.

In a psychological context the term is usually used to describe an inner strength that can prevail under a lot of pressure. So the goal of interventions is to make people more resistant to stress by adding positive resources.

You can imagine that as a twig that, taken all by itself, breaks easily, but when you bundle them, they get very hard to break.

 

In physics resilience describes a sightly different phenomenon. It stands for a material’s ability to return to the initial shape after it was put under a lot of pressure.

You can imagine it like one of those foam balls we used to play with as kids. You could press all the air out of it and it would get very small and out of shape, but over time it would unfold again and return to the original shape.

 

I believe that we can gain from investing in both kinds of ‘resilience’.

 

 

I will try to explain to you one of the most important things you can learn in Phase 1 of your therapy. If you never make it to Phase 2 because you cannot gain enough stability for that, you will still be able to improve your life tremendously if you use this. It is based on the ‘physics’ concept of resilience.

 

Instead of a ball that is under pressure we can imagine our nervous system getting stressed. We go from calm & engaged to hyperarousal (flight/fight) to hypoarousal (freeze/collapse).

[Note: although it is called „hypo“arousal, dissociation is actually a state of highest activation in our nervous system. It is so heavily in over-load that we shut down, which feels like no arousal, but that is not what is really happening.]

Some like to imagine the different arousal stages as a ladder that is climbed. For some reason I started to think of it as a huge pendulum, that is in center when calm & engaged and raises to the side the higher the arousal levels get.

 

 

If we just try hard not to ever get stressed and have arousal levels rise, we will fail. A healthy body swings back and forth between arousal levels, it is not static. A change in stress levels is our natural response to the world around us.

So instead, our focus needs to be on practicing the inner movement of returning to our calm & centered state after we get stressed or triggered. To climb up the ladder. Or swing back the pendulum.

There is a fixed order to our stress responses. It is always 1. calm&engaged, 2. flight/fight, 3. freeze (although we might not always go up all the way and just stay in flight/fight).

Sometimes we go through fight/flight so fast it seems like we enter freeze at once, which is not the case.

When we climb up the ladder from freeze, we will pass flight/fight again. That is why many people who are brought out of a dissociative state tend to lash out at the people around them or, like us, tend to self-harm in a mindless act of fighting something that isn’t there.

 

 

The first step of learning how to swing back is to get to know yourself in the different stages of arousal, so you can recognize them when you experience them. I recommend a creative approach of exploring this using a sand tray, paint, word clusters or pantomime. Always end with exploring the calm state, so you will feel relaxed when you finish the exercise.

 

The next step is to find things that can influence your arousal state.

Usually when we are in hypoarousal that means small movements to break free from the freeze spell or different ways to stimulate our senses. They can bring us up to flight/fight, where movement is a big thing.

We might have to change the intensity of movement to get a release of energy that accumulated in our body and muscles to be able to calm down and enter the engagement system.

When you are in freeze, your first goal has to be to reach flight/fight. Just trying to ‘calm’ yourself by resting, can keep you caught in the freeze response and constant flashbacks. In that situation you don’t need to be calm, you need to return to activation first. We keep a picture of a girl doing kickboxing in our home to remind us of the need for activation when we are in dissociation.

If we skip that step we are not getting anywhere.

Movement is just one example. Experiment with sounds, smells, pictures, …

Start to collect things that can shift you into different arousal levels. Put a special effort into finding things that make you feel safe, relaxed, supported and protected to manage the step up from flight/fight into calm&engaged.

 

 

When you have collected things that stand for different arousal levels you can start to use them to practice the swinging movement inside. It is best to practice when you are grounded and stable.

I am practicing with a playlist of songs. I collected those that make me feel relaxed, grounded and pleasant. I then added songs here and there that create a more excited state in me. Usually adding drums or bass does the trick for me. After just one of the more stressful songs the playlist returns to something soothing. Simply listening to music and following the rhythm of excitement and calming down helps me to get a better sense on how my body is reacting and how that movement of swinging back to center feels like. So I can repeat it when there is a stressful situation. While smells are best to quickly interrupt a dissociative state, sounds are ideal to move us from calm to excited and back. If you pay attention to your breath you will notice a sigh when the shift happens.

 

You can also use movement and especially dance moves to practice. After finding movements that represent different arousal stages you can practice moving from one to the other, always ending with the calm and engaged state.

If you practice mindful qigong you might notice the small movement of closing your feet after a shape that used a step. I like to imagine that closing my stance is like bringing the pendulum back to center. While doing the movement on the outside I can do it on the inside as well. The practice of qigong, of guiding energy around through movement, is very close to my experience of flow when I practice returning to center. It helps to restore a certain rhythm inside.

 

 

It is best not to practice alone. It makes a difference if there is someone else around and not just to help you be more aware of your arousal state through feedback. Being in the presence of someone with a regulated, calm body helps us to calm down as well. It is natures idea of support. Being around a regulated body is one of the best grounding exercises we can experience. Good trauma therapists have regulated bodies and are aware of their own changes in arousal states. That makes them able to notice changes and help us to swing back to center. It can be a continuous exercise you share during your therapy sessions. Talking about difficult topics will create a stress response and your T can use these natural opportunities to guide you up the ladder. In that way it doesn’t have to be the main topic of what you are talking about, and yet be a constant exercise in the background of your therapy work.

 

Learning how to swing back to center has been one of my biggest breakthroughs in healing. It didn’t need exposure therapy for that. Just a better understanding of my stress responses and how I can influence them, followed by practicing a flow and a rhythm to help me learn what it feels like to calm down. I can make up for my lack of strength in the face of stress by tapping deeply into my ability to return to the original, calm shape after I got triggered. And that is improving resilience too.

 

 

This concept of swinging back is based on the polyvagal theory,

and the polyvagal ladder

it is also a key step in somatic experiencing (working on a post about that, please be patient)

 

 

 

 

 

to Mrs R. who taught me how to swing on purpose