The goal is to go from the diagram on the left below to the one on the right.

In the diagram on the left, in which our baggage is represented by the red squiggle, triggers are the green arrow, and our reaction is the red arrow, you can see a dysregulated nervous system – one that overreacts to the trigger. The diagram on the right represents a nervous system that is well regulated as a result of using boundaries and containment.

To reframe our experiences, we must bring attention to our triggers, our baggage, and our reactions. It’s easy to consider ourselves the victim in situations that trigger us and make us feel unsafe, but there is very little we can do to control what life throws at us. What we can do, however, is use boundaries and containment to lessen the impact that our triggers have on our baggage. When we do this, we create something like a shield around that vulnerable, wounded part of ourselves.

The whole process of regulating the nervous system would be far easier if we experienced fewer triggers less often. So, keeping things manageable is a priority and to do this, we can use boundaries to begin to build a bubble of containment around our dysregulated nervous system. But how do we know in practice exactly what those boundaries should be?

Let’s look at the following story about housemates Sue and Ann.

Sue and Anne are flatmates. They met through friends and although they get on well enough, they have quite separate lives. One day Sue comes home, looking forward to the leftovers from a dinner she cooked for a friend the night before. But the food has already been eaten; the Tupperware is empty and not even washed up in the sink. She’s upset because she’d made no other arrangements for dinner. She’s exhausted and could have picked something up on the way home. However, now she’s nervous because she doesn’t know what to say to Anne. She doesn’t want there to be an atmosphere in the house, but equally it just doesn’t feel right just to ignore it. After all, things like this have happened before. Anne comes in later while Sue is watching TV.

In talking about her triggers, reactions, and baggage, Sue could explain to Ann:

“When I think people have taken my stuff at home that’s a trigger for me.

Here Sue has carefully identified her trigger. She then manages her reaction by adding:

‘And I’m feeling really scared to talk about it, like it’s not OK or something bad will happen to me.’

Sue the shares her baggage with Ann, by saying:

That reminds me so much of being at home with my siblings. I never felt like I had any privacy but we couldn’t complain because my parents were so overwhelmed by my sick brother.”

From here, Sue can put a boundary in place by saying:

“I’m going to make it really clear what’s mine and what I need to have left alone rather than to share with you. I hope that’s OK. I’ll find a way to do that in the kitchen and the bathroom to make it easier for you.”

This avoids shifting the blame onto the other person. Sue is setting up Anne to be able to help her to get what she needs. She is also making her needs crystal clear. If this doesn’t work, then she is most likely going to have to move out, but she is giving both of them the best chance to avoid that by being really clear with herself where the original problem came from, and then, from this place of clarity, making a plan to reduce this trigger in her home as much as she can. Also, it is kind to Anne. Sue is allowing Anne to see into the window of her nervous system to understand where all of this is coming from. That makes it less weird for Anne and makes her more likely to want to help.

So, once you find the boundary, which protects you from a trigger, take responsibility for making sure that you take care of you. And when you do, you can start to solve all your other problems from a different, more regulated place.

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Blog/Video #15

Something magical happens to our nervous sytem’s regulation when we clean up our behaviour. To see why we can look at the two poles of behavioural health, which I sometimes call boundaries and containment, but which are basically what we receive and what we send.

The principle behind each of them is related to some growing awareness of what is left unfinished in our nervous system and how that baggage gets triggered. Boundaries are an attempt to lessen the force of these triggers. Containment is an attempt to reduce how much of our reaction we spray onto other people after we have been triggered.

Between them they represent an attempt to begin to behave as if we had no baggage at all. This might sound like a repressive regime, but it certainly is not a mandate for not allowing your feelings, or even sensations. It is, however, an exhortation to try to locate these things back where they belong, which is with the unfinished business in the nervous system.

The advantage of creating this more orderly space in and around ourselves is that it is a place in which we can begin to feel ourselves more directly and even perhaps to heal. Boundaries and containment are really just the flip side of each other. And once they combine, something extra is created. Here’s why.

Being triggered looks like this, life remorselessly hitting our baggage.

The red squiggle in the diagram represents our baggage, the green arrow is a stimulus, or trigger, and the big red arrow is our reaction, which in this diagram represents an overreaction.

Boundaries look like this, and keep the world a little bit more at bay.

Containment looks like this, working in the opposite direction.

If you do both, then there is half a chance that you will be less triggered, which will lead to smaller reactions, which themselves will then be easier to contain, and that the end result will be what might look like a fairly normal reaction; not too much, not too little, but just right – the Goldilocks response. This looks like this:

What’s interesting is that the boundaries and containers link up, creating a whole circle of space in which we start to experience ourselves differently. So not only does the world experience us differently, but we now have something new around and inside us; a new sense of space holding our baggage in a different way.

Holding is an important word. Space is an important word. Both are needed by the nervous system for healthy functioning. To see why, have a look at a healthy nervous system, which has no baggage, and how it responds to those pesky moments in life which we might otherwise experience as triggers.

Interestingly, this is the same diagram as the one above, but with the inside part cleaned up to almost nothing. So this tells us that the difference between the behaviour of a healthy nervous system and one like ours which is full of baggage can be counteracted by creating a holding space around the baggage, allowing for us to at least simulate being healthy with our behaviour.

But it is cleverer than that. It goes both ways. So if we start to simulate healthy behaviour, it creates a holding space around the baggage in our nervous system. And that is the first step to healing it. We know this from studying babies.

Infants are not born dysregulated, but they are not yet old enough to manage their own nervous systems. So they need caregivers (mothers usually) and these adults hold the space for the babies, regulating them with their own, larger, bodies and functional nervous systems. This is sometimes called being ‘attuned’ to the babies, and is the key factor determining what becomes good enough mothering for an infant. This attunement holds space for the child, wrapping around them a place in which their nervous system is both protected (boundaries) and soothed (containment).

As adults, we get to do this for ourselves. If we didn’t internalise this when we were young, then we have to fake it until we make it. Boundaries and containment are therefore our ways of mothering ourselves now that we are all grown up. It is hard, and often painful, but it puts us back in control and gives us a clear path to finding a healthier space in which to heal the underlying drama of the unfinished business in our nervous systems.

For tips on how to practice boundaries and containment, read the 28-day recovery plan in my book The Invisible Lion or come to a workshop and we can do it together.

You can download this post in a handy 2-page PDF to print and share with friends, family, clients or colleagues. Follow this link to download now.

You can buy a copy of The Invisible Lion now on kindle or paperback from your local Amazon store. Just click here to buy now.

Blog/Video #14

When our nervous systems are dysregulated, we can be very reactive. It is very helpful for our nervous systems if we can identify the triggers which we react to, and even to work on completing some of the unfinished business in our bodies which creates the baggage that these triggers set off, but what can we do when all of that fails? That’s where the practice of containment comes in.

Boundaries are hard to do, because we need to understand where our need comes from (our baggage) in order to set them up just right. Containment is sometimes even harder to do, because it is our last line of defence and we can often be quite out of control by the time we need it. However, it is well worth getting good at. It can help us to simulate having a regulated nervous system, and this makes everything else we are trying to achieve in recovery much easier to attain.

The model of containment is built around the idea of an over-reaction, because there needs some sort of reaction to contain in the first place. It is much harder to apply to and under-reaction where it is not needed. However, it is important to bear in mind, even for under-reactions, because the first sign of improvement for an under-reaction is an over-reaction, so you better get your containment skills ready.

Once our baggage is triggered, we are typically flooded with energy which is beyond the scale of response which the situation, in the here and now, requires. There are only two places that this energy can go; either out of us, or around in us. These two options feel very different. Typically hanging on to this energy so that it circulates around us feels very unpleasant. Someone once described it to me as having someone renting space in your brain. It is when your thoughts loop and you have the same conversation with yourself over and over again, achieving nothing. Most of us, when we feel like this, want to do something to someone instead of obsessing about the problem on our own. Often, we want to be quite rude, and it can look like this:

The red squiggle in the diagram represents our baggage, the green arrow is a stimulus, or trigger, and the big red arrow is our reaction, which in this diagram represents an overreaction.

There are two problems with this way of behaving. Firstly, our response doesn’t match the scale of the problem so we are very unlikely to be able to find a productive solution in this way. Secondly, if we are behaving like this with other people, who can’t see our baggage, it is likely to lead to not very happy relationships which may not last.

Neither of these is good for our nervous system. We find life easier when we can solve problems and make friends. We find it harder, and often more triggering, when we are making our problems worse and people don’t want to help us. So we need to find another way. The goal of behavioural work, at least at first, is to simulate the experience of not having too much baggage. When we are like this a 3 out of 10 problem gets a 3 out of 10 response. This looks like this:

The only way to simulate this, once my baggage has been triggered, is to hang onto some of my reaction, and this is what we call containment. It is very important to understand that this is not the same as shutting down. The energy still happens, but rather than spray it all around me, I have to work on managing it within my own mind and body. That might sound esoteric, but actually it rests on a very simple idea; instead of talking about you, I talk about me. It looks like this:

An example of this might be to say “I feel hurt”, rather than “you are a jerk”. We all know that the former is harder to do, and feels more upsetting, and yet we all know which one we would rather hear from someone else who is upset. This is a life skill which we could all practice and never perfect. It relies on having the awareness to know that we are triggered, and this relies on having some sense of our baggage and when our boundaries are breached. It’s a lot. And no-one should ever expect to do it perfectly, but when you begin to explain to other people how you are feeling, and even the baggage that was triggered that got you to feeling like that, you will notice that you start to have a new relationship with yourself, and with others. It will be more vulnerable, more painful, but more authentic.

A very simple rule of thumb is that if you never say the word “you”, you can never be out of containment. It may sound bonkers but I challenge you to try it. When you are triggered, don’t say “you”. What you will find is a new inner landscape of energy, and that is where you can begin to do the really transformational, foundational work of reducing your baggage in your nervous system.

You can find more examples and techniques to do this in the 28-day recovery plan in my book, The Invisible Lion, or just try a day without using the you word. It will be an eye-opener!

You can download this post in a handy 2-page PDF to print and share with friends, family, clients or colleagues. Follow this link to download now.

You can buy a copy of The Invisible Lion now on kindle or paperback from your local Amazon store. Just click here to buy now.

Blog/Video #13

When we look at how well our nervous systems are functioning, we start to see that there are three kinds of responses to the stuff that life throws at us. If we are lucky, or feeling well regulated, or the stimulus is not a trigger to our baggage, then we might respond just right. This is very functional. It helps us to solve problems, to get on with people and to make our world safer and more productive. However, if we are dysregulated and carrying baggage from unfinished reactions to earlier threats, then we might over-react. This can lead to arguments, escalations of conflicts before they are necessary, and thus make situations more dangerous, or problems less easy to solve. At the extreme of this spectrum, we might want to explode so much that we actually find ourselves to be the danger, and when this happens we shut down. Once we shut down, we can’t protect ourselves from anything, or solve any problem. That’s not helpful either.

So we live in reaction to the world in any one of three states; over-reacting, under-reacting and sometimes getting it just right, the Goldilocks response. When we draw these responses, they look like this, and sometimes we can give them numbers too, saying the trigger is a 3 out of 10, and these three reactions are 9/10, 0/10 and 3/10.

Over-reacting:

Under-reacting:

Just right, or a Goldilocks reaction:

In the above diagrams, your baggage is represented by the red squiggle. The green arrow is a trigger coming at your baggage, and the red arrow is your output, your reaction. In the first diagram – over-reacting – the output or reaction is greater than the intensity of the trigger. In the second – under-reacting – there is little to no output, which is not at all healthy for the nervous system. In the third diagram – the Goldilocks reaction – the reaction is proportionate to the trigger.

This is a given, on a daily basis. It is both how we are and how the world is around us. So the question is, what can we do about it. It helps to get really clear about the three stages of the process, because each of them can be targeted to change this situation for the better.

The trigger arrives from the outside world. The baggage is always with us, our unfinished business. And the reaction is the combination of the two, an involuntary result of the trigger hitting the baggage.

Our goal is also very simple. Whenever we encounter a trigger of 3 out of 10, we want our response to be a 3 out of 10 too. We can almost define our behavioural recovery as a constant search for Goldilocks among the rubble of our triggered baggage. In some ways it wouldn’t matter if we were dysregulated, or carrying a ton of baggage, if only we could find some way to make sure that our responses to life were always just right. It would be a good start. And that’s where boundaries come in.

Boundaries are about triggers

We begin at the beginning. This problem starts with a trigger. It’s a 3/10 and results in an over-reaction from us, say a 9/10, or, perhaps even worse, a 0/10 if we can’t even react. So it is logical that we would feel better, do better and have a better chance of getting a grip on our reactions if the trigger was less. If the 3 was a 2, or a 1 or even less. This requires us to do something to tone it down, to lessen the impact of the trigger as it arrives at our nervous system; to put up a kind of force-field; some kind of boundary between the trigger and ourselves.

Now this tells us what a boundary is, and what it is for. It is really important to note at this point that the boundary is about me. It is derivative of what triggers me. It is not about you, or the world, or the trigger. It is all about my baggage and lessening the impact of the trigger on it.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make in behavioural health is to talk about boundaries, and their failure, as if that is someone else’s problem or responsibility. It isn’t. My boundaries are about me, and mine to manage. If you don’t want to play ball with me, that’s not your problem, it’s mine. It’s no use me saying things like “you don’t respect my boundaries”. The truth is I don’t respect my boundaries if I continue to let you trigger me.

This also tells us what the boundary should be. It is simply anything which reduces the trigger. So let’s imagine that I get triggered at work when my boss is critical of my work. What should I do? It’s very tempting to want to over-react and tell him to stuff his job. Or more usual to under-react, suck it all up and then go home miserable. And a lot of people will try to avoid these outcomes as they become more self-aware, but then fall into this terrible trap of making their boundaries his problem, telling him how to behave and castigating him if he doesn’t take the instruction. But no, that’s not what boundaries are, or are for.

What you want it this, a shield for your baggage:

And the way you get it is by understanding that it is built in reverse, from the baggage back to the trigger. So a boundary is a way of acknowledging the baggage, sharing it with others, and asking for their collaboration in helping you to protect it. Thus, the right way to deal with the critical boss, if you can bear it, is to lead with the baggage, rather than an attack on his behaviour.

“I have a lot of stuff left over from my childhood about being told I was wrong, so I find that when you criticise me, my reactions are all over the place. This makes me less receptive to understanding your point, less productive, and less motivated to be a team member. So, if you want to help me, I’d really appreciate it if you could give me gentler feedback.”

This is much harder to say than “stop being a dick”, but it’s healthier, more likely to be listened to, and accurately asking for what your nervous system really needs, rather than demanding someone else to be different. It sets both you and your boss up to succeed.

You can download this post in a handy 2-page PDF to print and share with friends, family, clients or colleagues. Follow this link to download now.

You can buy a copy of The Invisible Lion now on kindle or paperback from your local Amazon store. Just click here to buy now.