Trauma Recovery – Benjamin Fry

How Early Trauma Makes Emotional Safety Feel Unfamiliar, and How That Can Change

Benjamin Fry — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

When we think about emotional safety, many of us imagine a very natural, warm and grounded feeling. It’s like something we trust will just be there. But for people whose early childhood was shaped by unpredictable caregivers, neglect, or harm, emotional safety can feel very foreign. Early trauma doesn’t just leave memories. It leaves marks on the nervous system, on relationships, and on the internal sense of safety. Understanding why emotional safety feels unfamiliar and learning how that pattern can shift invites compassion, curiosity, and psychologically-informed healing.

When the Nervous System Learns Danger First

Trauma is not just something that happens to a person, but is something the body remembers. Peter A. Levine, a trauma expert and author of Waking the Tiger, argues that trauma is “a life experience that overwhelms the nervous system” (Levine, 1997). In early life, when a caregiver is meant to be a safe source of comfort but instead is unpredictable, harsh, or absent, the nervous system doesn’t get the stable responses that it so needs to learn safety.

The nervous system learns through experience. When a baby cries and is consistently soothed, the nervous system learns how to calm down. When a child is afraid and left alone or punished for distress, the nervous system can learn that safety is unreliable. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory helps us make sense of this. Porges describes how the autonomic nervous system shifts between different states of regulation, such as safety, mobilisation (fight or flight), and shutdown (freeze), depending on cues of danger or safety in the environment (Porges, 2011). Early trauma makes the nervous system act with vigilance and defence, even in safe settings.

In practical terms, this means that someone who experienced trauma might perceive social cues differently. A neutral expression might feel cold, a gentle correction might feel threatening, a sigh might feel pointed, and silence might feel like rejection. Here, the nervous system is not malfunctioning, but is doing exactly what it learned to do, which is to protect you from further threat.

Emotional Safety: A Learned Sense, Not a Born One

We often talk about emotional safety as though it is something innate. But emotional safety is more like a language learned in early life, a language of connection, soothing, and attunement. Daniel J. Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry and author of The Developing Mind, emphasises that secure attachment in childhood fosters a coherent sense of self and mind (Siegel, 1999). Secure attachment emerges not just from care, but from attuned care, when the caregiver has the capacity to notice, respond, and regulate the child’s emotional states, in a balanced and healthy way.

If early experiences taught someone that emotional signals are unpredictable or unsafe, an internal capacity to be open and vulnerable may not have formed. Emotional safety in relationships might feel foreign, but this doesn’t mean that the person is incapable of emotional safety. It just means that their internal roadmap was never fully drafted.

Boundaries as a Bridge to Safety

When emotional safety feels unfamiliar, healthy boundaries can feel confusing, too. Boundaries are often misunderstood as rigid walls, but at their core, boundaries help us communicate our needs and protect our well-being. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, illustrates how trauma affects not only the mind but the body’s sense of agency, and the ability to feel that “I am in control of my actions and responses” (van der Kolk, 2014). Boundaries are an expression of that agency.

For someone whose early life lacked consistent safety, boundaries may at first feel like selfishness or rejection. That’s because the nervous system learned to equate self-protection with danger. If keeping the peace was once necessary to stay safe or loved, saying “no” can feel less like self-care and more like risking abandonment. Healing involves teaching the nervous system to recognise that setting limits can stabilise, not threaten, connection. Over time, practising boundaries in safe relationships (not necessarily romantic ones) teaches the body that limits are signals of respect, not abandonment.

Healing Happens Through Regulation, Not Just Reflection

Talking through past experiences can help make sense of them, but healing from early trauma is not just an intellectual exercise. It involves retraining the nervous system to perceive safety differently. Somatic therapies emphasise exactly that by working with the body’s felt sense rather than only with thoughts. This principle is central to approaches like Somatic Experiencing (Peter A. Levine) and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (Pat Ogden). These approaches help people notice physical sensations, become aware of internal reactions, and develop new patterns of regulation.

Nervous system regulation doesn’t mean suppressing emotion. Regulation means having the capacity to tolerate, process, and recover from emotional states. Porges’ Polyvagal Theory offers tools for this by helping people understand how different states of the nervous system show up in the body, for example, shallow breathing when anxious or numbness when overwhelmed, and how intentional practices like breath work, slow movement, and social engagement cues can shift states toward felt safety.

A regulated nervous system creates internal space. In that space, reflection becomes grounded. What once felt like chaos can become a sequence of sensations to observe and respond to. This creates the foundation for emotional safety that feels familiar rather than foreign.

Relationships as Repair

Healing from early trauma doesn’t happen in isolation. Secure, attuned relationships, where someone listens, responds, and can return to connection after tension, create healing experiences. This idea comes from attachment theory and is supported by decades of research showing that relational experiences shape the brain throughout life.

For many people, therapy is one of the first environments where consistent attunement happens. Therapists trained in relational and trauma-informed approaches understand that emotional safety is built gradually. The therapist’s consistent presence, empathic responses, and patience teach the nervous system what safety feels like in real time.

Beyond therapy, supportive friendships and partnerships help reinforce these patterns. When others respect boundaries, respond to distress without judgment, and communicate openly, the nervous system receives repeated messages that emotional safety isn’t a mirage, but is something that can exist here and now.

The Path from Unfamiliar to Familiar

If emotional safety feels unfamiliar, it’s important to understand that this is not a personal failure. It is the echo of early systems that were doing their best with limited resources. The nervous system adapted to protect, and those adaptations served a purpose. Healing does not require erasing these adaptations but integrating them into a larger sense of safety, agency, and connection.

Emotional safety becomes familiar through repeated experience, not just through thinking about it. It develops in relationships that are consistent and through boundaries that reinforce self-worth. Practising strategies for nervous system regulation teaches the body and mind how to move from survival into presence. Crucially, it also builds a compassionate understanding that progress is not linear. There will be setbacks, but with repetition and support, lasting change is possible.

Trauma changes the internal landscape, but it does not determine the entire terrain. With patience, support, and intentional practices, the nervous system can learn new patterns. Emotional safety can transition from something we can only imagine to something we recognise in our bodies, our relationships, and our everyday lives.

References

Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books. https://archive.org/details/wakingtigerheali00levi

Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company. https://archive.org/details/polyvagaltheoryn0000porg

Siegel, D. J. (1999). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. Guilford Press. https://archive.org/details/developingmindho0000sieg

van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking. https://ia601604.us.archive.org/35/items/the-body-keeps-the-score-pdf/The-Body-Keeps-the-Score-PDF.pdf

Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy. W. W. Norton & Company. https://archive.org/details/traumabodysensor0000ogde

Small‑T Trauma Doesn’t Always Mean Small‑T Trigger: Supporting a Partner to Process Baggage

Benjamin Fry — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 13:52:56 +0000

We often associate the word “trauma” with major, life-threatening events: war, abuse, or natural disasters. But many people carry the weight of less obvious injuries: being shamed as a child, chronically ignored, or growing up in a home where emotions weren’t safe to express. These experiences are sometimes called small‑t trauma, but the term can be misleading. Just because the events were “small” in appearance doesn’t mean the emotional impact, or the triggers they leave behind, are small at all.

In relationships, these unprocessed experiences often show up in subtle but powerful ways. A missed text may feel like abandonment. A disagreement might flood someone with shame. And if we don’t understand the roots of these reactions, we risk dismissing our partner’s pain or taking it personally.

Understanding small‑t trauma and its effects is essential to building emotionally supportive relationships. This article explores how to recognise small‑t trauma, how to support a partner through their healing, and how boundaries, containment, and nervous system regulation play vital roles in the process.

What Is Small‑T Trauma?

Trauma specialist Peter Levine reminds us that trauma isn’t defined by the event itself, but by how it overwhelms a person’s ability to cope (Levine, 1997). Experiences like being humiliated in class, frequently dismissed by a caregiver, or living in a high-stress household, can create deep wounds if the nervous system doesn’t get the chance to process and recover.

Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk echoes this idea: “the body keeps the score”. Emotional pain can live in the body just like physical injuries, and the nervous system can get stuck in patterns of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, especially in relationships (van der Kolk, 2015).

While big-T trauma is often recognised and validated, small‑t trauma may go unnoticed or minimised by society, family, or even the person themselves. But its impacts can be just as enduring.

Triggers: Old Wounds, Present Reactions

One of the defining features of trauma is that it creates triggers. These are intense emotional or physical reactions that seem disproportionate to the present situation. But these responses are not about now; they are echoes of the past.

According to trauma researcher Judith Herman, trauma shatters a sense of safety and control. Until it is processed, the past can intrude into the present with “no beginning, middle, or end” (Herman, 1992). For example, a raised voice or a cold tone may unconsciously remind someone of being yelled at or emotionally neglected as a child, even if their current partner means no harm.

The mistake we often make is judging the trigger by the apparent “size” of the original trauma. But small-t trauma doesn’t always mean small‑t trigger. A minor comment can feel like a major threat when it activates unresolved shame, abandonment, or fear.

Supporting a Partner Through Their Baggage

If you’re in a relationship with someone carrying small‑t trauma, it can be hard to know how to help. Here are key principles drawn from trauma-informed approaches:

1. Don’t Pathologise Their Pain

It’s tempting to say, “You’re overreacting,” or “That was years ago.” But invalidating your partner’s experience often makes the wound deeper. Instead, try to stay curious: “Can you help me understand what that brought up for you?” This builds trust and invites your partner to reflect, rather than defend.

2. Containment, Not Fixing

Containment means holding space for another person’s emotions without absorbing or solving them. This is crucial in trauma work. You don’t have to “fix” your partner’s pain — in fact, trying to may feel controlling or overwhelming. Instead, be present. Offer calmness and validate their experience. According to Herman (1992), the healing of trauma happens in safe, supportive relationships where the survivor can regain control of their narrative.

3. Respect Boundaries: Yours and Theirs

Boundaries protect everyone’s emotional well-being. A partner healing from trauma may need space to process, and they may also need reassurance. You, too, need boundaries to avoid burnout or codependency.

Supporting someone doesn’t mean abandoning your own needs. Clear, compassionate boundaries, such as: “I want to talk, but I need 10 minutes to calm down first”, create a sense of safety for both people.

Regulating the Nervous System: A Foundation for Connection

When someone is triggered, their body reacts before their mind catches up; heart pumping, muscles tensing, thoughts racing. In this state, rational conversation becomes almost impossible.

Peter Levine’s somatic work emphasises that healing requires helping the body complete stress responses that were frozen or interrupted (Levine, 1997). Simple actions like breathing deeply, grounding through physical touch (feet on the floor, hand on heart), or co-regulating with a calm partner can soothe the nervous system and bring someone back to safety.

As a partner, you can support regulation by:

Staying grounded: Speak slowly, breathe deeply, soften your body language.
Offering co-regulation: Gentle presence, a reassuring tone, or even silence can help.
Not escalating: If you get triggered too, pause and tend to your own nervous system before continuing the conversation.

The Role of Self-Responsibility

While it’s beautiful to support a partner’s healing, it’s also important to remember: you are not their therapist. Encouraging them to explore therapy, somatic work, or support groups can help them develop tools outside the relationship. Trauma healing is deeply personal and requires ownership.

Relationships can be containers for growth, but only if both partners are tending to themselves. Over-functioning for a wounded partner can lead to resentment and burnout.

What Healing Looks Like

Healing from small‑t trauma doesn’t mean triggers vanish overnight. But over time, with care, self-regulation, and relational safety, they can lose their charge.

What once felt like an earthquake becomes a tremor. What once caused a spiral now invites a pause. And what once felt shameful becomes something you can name, share, and move through, together.

Conclusion

Small‑t trauma may look invisible, but its impact is real, especially in relationships. Triggers don’t need to be justified to be valid. They simply need to be understood.

If you’re supporting a partner through their emotional baggage, know that your presence matters, but so do your own boundaries. By practising containment, honouring your needs, and supporting nervous system regulation, you help co-create a relationship where healing is possible.

Love doesn’t mean rescuing someone from their pain. It means walking beside them — with steadiness, empathy, and respect.

References

Herman, J.L., 1992. Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror. New York: Basic Books. https://archive.org/details/judith-herman-trauma-and-recovery-the-aftermath-of-violence-from-domestic-abuse-

Levine, P.A., 1997. Waking the tiger: Healing trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. https://med-fom-learningcircle.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2015/04/Waking-the-Tiger.pdf

van der Kolk, B.A., 2015. The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York: Penguin Books. https://ia601604.us.archive.org/35/items/the-body-keeps-the-score-pdf/The-Body-Keeps-the-Score-PDF.pdf

Relationships Can Help Heal Trauma, Under the Right Conditions: A Polyvagal Perspective

Benjamin Fry — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 10:49:17 +0000

Trauma can leave deep emotional scars, often affecting how people connect with others. When the nervous system is dysregulated from past trauma, it becomes challenging to form healthy, secure relationships. However, with the right conditions—like trust, boundaries, and emotional containment—relationships can help heal trauma. The Polyvagal Theory, which explains how our nervous system responds to stress, is key to understanding how we can use relationships to heal.

How Trauma Affects the Nervous System

For trauma survivors, the nervous system often remains stuck in fight-or-flight or freeze modes (sympathetic or dorsal vagal), making it hard to feel safe, seen and calm in relationships. The good news is that with the right kind of relationship, it’s possible to move toward healing by re-regulating the nervous system.

Trauma doesn’t just live in our memories—it reshapes how our nervous system operates (Porges, 2009). After overwhelming or threatening experiences, the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which controls our physiological responses to safety and danger, can become chronically dysregulated. This dysregulation makes it difficult for trauma survivors to feel safe in their bodies or in connection with others, even long after the traumatic event has passed (Porges, 2011).

According to the Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr Stephen Porges, the ANS has three main states:

Ventral Vagal (Safety and Connection): We feel regulated, calm, socially engaged, and capable of trusting others.

Sympathetic (Fight or Flight): Activated in the face of perceived danger, this state readies the body for action: heart rate increases, muscles tense, and we become hyper-alert or anxious.

Dorsal Vagal (Shutdown or Freeze): When escape or defence feels impossible, the system can collapse into immobility, leading to numbness, emotional withdrawal, and disconnection.

For many trauma survivors, the nervous system can become “stuck” in chronic sympathetic activation (anxiety, agitation, hypervigilance) or dorsal vagal shutdown (numbness, depression, dissociation). These states are adaptive, meaning they were once necessary for survival, but over time they can disrupt relationships, emotional expression, and a sense of self (Porges, 2009).

Healing is possible, and relationships can play a powerful role. When we experience safe, attuned connections that include trust, consistent boundaries, and emotional containment, our nervous system can begin to shift. Over time, these experiences help rewire the brain and body for connection over protection, allowing us to return to a state of regulation (Porges 2003).

This is why trauma-informed therapeutic relationships—and personal relationships grounded in safety—are essential in helping people move from survival into healing.

Co-Regulation in Relationships

In a healthy, supportive relationship, two people can help regulate each other’s emotions—a process known as co-regulation (Butler & Randal, 2012). When one partner is feeling overwhelmed or anxious, the other can offer calmness, empathy, and support. This helps to shift the nervous system from a state of fear or stress into one of safety and connection. Through this process, both individuals can begin to heal their nervous systems and move toward healthier emotional states.

Safety, Boundaries, and Emotional Containment

For trauma survivors, the first step in healing is feeling safe. This goes beyond just physical safety—it means creating emotional security. Trauma can make people feel constantly on edge, hypervigilant, or unable to trust others. In a relationship that prioritises clear boundaries and containment, the nervous system can begin to settle.

Setting boundaries allows individuals to feel safe because they know what to expect from each other. Healthy boundaries communicate respect and trust, which helps to regulate emotions. Without boundaries, the nervous system remains on high alert, but with them, there’s room for relaxation and connection.

Empathy and Compassion: Healing Together

One of the most powerful ways relationships can help heal trauma is through empathy. When partners can understand and respond to each other’s emotional states with care and compassion, they activate the ventral vagal system, which encourages calm and connection. A simple, empathetic response, such as listening without judgment or offering comforting words, can help soothe a dysregulated nervous system and restore a sense of safety.

Vulnerability and Open Communication

Open communication and vulnerability are essential in healing from trauma. When a partner feels heard, seen, and understood, their nervous system can shift from sensing threat into a state of calm. Vulnerability in relationships means expressing feelings honestly and being open about emotional needs. This not only builds trust but also fosters an environment where both partners feel safe to share their experiences, taking responsibility for what is theirs while remaining open and accepting of the others’ boundaries.

It can be difficult to communicate when we feel triggered, but having a partner who listens without judgment makes a huge difference. It’s through this kind of communication that relationships evolve into safe spaces where both people can heal.

Containment: Holding Space for Each Other

In the healing process, containment refers to the ability to hold space for another person’s emotions without trying to fix them or rush the process. Trauma survivors often need emotional space to express their feelings, and this process is best supported when the other partner is calm and non-reactive.

A relationship that offers empathy, support, and emotional containment can provide the perfect environment for trauma survivors to heal. These relationships allow individuals to shift their nervous systems from chronic stress states into a more grounded, safe space where true emotional connection can take place. Over time, with mutual care and effort, trauma survivors can rebuild their ability to trust, connect, and experience emotional intimacy.

It’s Never Too Late to Begin Healing

No matter how much time has passed or how entrenched trauma feels, it is never too late to begin healing through healthy relationships. By learning how to co-regulate, set boundaries, communicate openly, and contain each other’s emotions, individuals can create relationships that promote emotional healing.

Healing from trauma takes patience and effort, but the power of a supportive relationship cannot be underestimated. With the right tools, such as emotional containment and nervous system regulation, relationships become a space where both partners can grow, heal, and create deeper, more meaningful connections. Trauma doesn’t have to define the way we relate to others, and with the right foundation, it’s possible to build the kind of relationship that promotes healing, safety, and emotional resilience.

References

Butler, E.A., & Randall, A.K. (2012). Emotional Coregulation in Close Relationships. Emotion Review, 5(2), 202-210. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073912451630

Porges, S.W. (1995) ‘Orienting in a defensive world: Mammalian modifications of our evolutionary heritage. A Polyvagal Theory’, Psychophysiology. Received March 6, 1995; Accepted March 23, 1995, 32(4), pp. 301–318. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1995.tb01213.x.

Porges, S.W. (2003) ‘Social engagement and attachment: a phylogenetic perspective’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1008(1), pp. 31–47. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1301.004.

Porges S.W. (2009). The polyvagal theory: new insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system. Cleveland Clinic journal of medicine, 76 Suppl 2(Suppl 2), S86–S90. https://doi.org/10.3949/ccjm.76.s2.17

Porges, S.W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W.W. Norton.

The Hidden Presence of Trauma in Our Relationships

Benjamin Fry — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 14:24:07 +0000

Often without knowing it, our trauma, or “baggage,” is present in almost every connection we make. Our unresolved, unfinished business from the times when we felt threatened or overwhelmed stays with us, affecting the way we deal with human connection and relationships. Our baggage can often make connection feel like walking through a storm. Those of us with trauma often can feel threatened when there is no clear threat—like running from an invisible lion. From a nervous system perspective, our baggage is both our greatest potential for growth and a significant source of discomfort. Facing it can feel like stepping into the eye of a storm, revisiting the very experiences that once left us raw. But with awareness and understanding, confronting and working through our trauma allows us to join the path back to safety, balance, and regulation. That said, it’s something that needs to be handled with great care.

What Is Our Baggage?

Baggage isn’t just some abstract thing we carry around. It’s the remnants of past emotional responses—those moments when we felt too much, too deeply and didn’t have the space or tools to process it. Our reactions to these threats—whether they were real or perceived—became a part of our nervous system’s default settings, shaping how we interact with the world. Even though we may not realise it, every time we try to connect with someone, this baggage has a way of sneaking in and influencing how we interact. This can manifest in many ways.

Fear of Rejection: An Invisible Trigger

Our baggage can cause us to fear rejection, often in ways we don’t recognise. Past experiences of abandonment or being hurt can leave an emotional scar, and those scars work overtime, triggering the same feelings every time we sense potential for rejection. The thought that someone might not choose us can feel like an overwhelming threat, not just a disappointment. So, we prepare ourselves by closing off, distancing ourselves, or pulling away. While this is supposed to protect us, it actually robs us of the chance to open ourselves to true connection.

Trust Issues: The Fragility of Connection

Trust is very important for connection, but when past betrayals or broken promises are lodged in our nervous system, trust becomes fragile. Every potential relationship is filtered through the lens of previous disappointments. Every offhand comment or shift in behaviour is a potential trigger for the same old anxieties, making it hard to open up. The lack of trust feels like constant pressure, making any attempt at connection feel less like a safe space and more like a minefield. We walk on eggshells, afraid to cross a line, and as a result, the connection remains surface-level and guarded.

Overprotectiveness: Defending Against the Past

Baggage can cause us to become overprotective. When we’ve been hurt in the past, we become hyper-aware of every small detail, overanalysing every gesture and word. “This reminds me of the last person who hurt me, so this could end up in the same way.” This unconscious connection between the past and present can quickly turn innocent interactions into potential threats, leaving us unable to engage fully with others. Instead of seeing the person in front of us as they are, we see a reflection of our past wounds, which can prevent us from ever truly engaging.

The Challenge of Vulnerability and Intimacy

When we have felt overwhelmed in the past, we learn to build walls as a defence mechanism. We hide our true selves, guarding our authentic emotions for fear of getting hurt. But while it may seem protective, it has the opposite effect. We keep our real selves locked away, only allowing others to connect with the version of us that we create in order to keep us safe. This doesn’t allow for real depth or vulnerability. The more we guard ourselves, the more isolated we become, even though all we really want and need is to feel true connection.

Real intimacy requires vulnerability, but our baggage makes it very difficult to be vulnerable. Connection is about opening up and letting someone in. It’s about being able to show the parts of you that you’ve kept hidden, without fear. When our past experiences with intimacy were painful or disappointing, we start to see it as something dangerous rather than something connecting. The thought of someone getting too close feels overwhelming, so we hold back, avoid, or deflect. True closeness feels like a risk—one that might just lead to being hurt again.

The Cycle of Conflict: Unresolved Issues at Play

Baggage doesn’t just show up in the way we relate emotionally—it also shows up in how we deal with conflict. If we haven’t resolved our past issues, we tend to repeat them in new relationships. The slightest disagreement might spiral into something bigger because unresolved issues create patterns we don’t even recognise. We find ourselves reliving old battles—fighting over things that often have very little to do with the issue at hand. The result is a disconnection that feels cyclical and exhausting as if we’re never really able to move forward.

Transforming Baggage Into Growth

Our baggage is always going to be with us. It’s a part of who we are. But the good news is, it doesn’t have to dictate how we connect with others. With boundaries, containment, and strategies for nervous system regulation we can prevent past trauma from overwhelming the present. Clear boundaries create space and safety, allowing us to engage with others without feeling emotionally flooded. Containment helps manage the intense energy triggered by unresolved trauma, preventing under or over-reactions that feel distressing to you, and your partner.

Working on nervous system regulation can reduce reactivity and create space for connection. Healing isn’t about eliminating past wounds but learning to navigate them with self-awareness and the tools for internal stability.

When we integrate these tools, we move beyond survival mode and into healthier, more fulfilling relationships. By understanding our own nervous system and setting boundaries that protect us, we create relationships based on safety and authenticity, rather than fear and reactivity.

Re-Regulating our Nervous System using our Senses

Benjamin Fry — Sun, 03 May 2020 11:00:00 +0000

In freeing ourselves from a dysregulated nervous system, an important step is learning how to reframe our experiences and manage our triggers, reactions, and baggage. We need to do this so that we are no longer subject to learned ways of behaviour that negatively impact our lives and the relationships we have with others.

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.

If we want to re-regulate our nervous system and leave that state of dysregulation, we need to connect with our bodies, and allow our reptilian and mammalian brains to finish dealing with our unfinished business, the root cause of our dysregulation.

If we are going to disengage the thinking brain and activate the mammal brain, it’s not very easy to do that while reading words. We need to go instead into the part of the brain that’s aware of sensations, which show up in our five senses; touch, sight, smell, sound and taste. They are experienced, not thought about or read about.

So, this step in freeing ourselves from dysregulation sees us using the sensations from our own body as a bridge through time. That’s right; we’re going time-travelling, back towards the original trigger that created your baggage. You are going to visit the reaction was so strong that you had to pause it. You never completely un-paused it, so the reaction is unfinished and remains dormant in your nervous system. Using sensation to time-travel back to that experience is the first step to resolving it.

Essentially, you are including in your awareness today an awareness of this same experience before today. It’s just a bigger window of awareness we’re opening up going from the now to the now-and-then. This time-travel is done by your body. No thinking required.

The nervous system is linked to the event in the past, as if it is happening right now. So you just have to train your body to listen to your nervous system, and your mind to listen to your body. With the right preparatory work, you can tap into this magical somatic dialogue at any time.

Let’s use a practical example to get a better understanding of how we can connect with ourselves and discharge our baggage.

John has agreed to pick up Mary from a work drinks event and take her to a dinner with his friends. He’s supposed to collect her at 7pm. At 6.55pm, she tells everyone she has to go, gets ready and is expecting him. He doesn’t show up. There’s no call, no message, nothing. As she’s waiting by the lobby of the bar, some of her colleagues leave together and comment that they thought she’d left. They ask her if she’s ok. Mary smiles bravely and tells them that everything’s fine. But inside she’s dying. She has no idea what’s going on and having played it all cool, like she had to leave because she had another event to go to, now she’s the one standing on her own looking foolish. It doesn’t help that one of the people passing her in the lobby is her work nemesis! John finally turns up at 7.50pm. Mary is still waiting, but not exactly pleased to see him. As he walks into the bar, all flustered, and greets her, she must make a choice in what to say.

When talking about her triggers, Mary would respond well to this situation by saying:

‘When we agree to meet at 7pm and you show up at 7.50pm, that’s a trigger for me.’

In doing so, Mary makes her response about her and her own triggers, not about John. Mary could add to the communication about the trigger by also including a good description of the reaction.

And now I notice that I feel very angry, upset, hurt, confused and scared. My stomach is tight, and everything feels hot in my abdomen. I don’t feel safe.

Once you have carefully identified your trigger, and diligently noticed and safely articulated your reaction, it’s time to open up the bit in the middle, the bit that links the trigger to that reaction. For Mary, that looks something like this:

“When we agree to meet at 7pm and you show up a 7.50pm that’s a trigger for me. And now I notice that I feel very angry, upset, hurt, confused and scared. My stomach is tight, and everything feels hot in my abdomen. I don’t feel safe. This reminds me of when I was always waiting for my Mum. She was always late for me when I was younger.”

What does this help Mary to learn about herself now as an adult? She has an over-reaction to people she cares about being late for her. She obviously has some work to do on this, but in the meantime, how can she keep the triggers to a minimum, so that this work is easier to do? She can ask John to help:

“So, in the future it would really help me if you could be on time, or let me know if there’s a problem as early as possible. And what I will do to help myself is if you are late and I’m getting uncomfortable, I will just go home.”

In this story, Mary has successfully identified her trigger, manages her reaction, and opens up about her baggage. She then let’s John know about her boundaries, which he can then, if he chooses, collaborate with Mary on keeping them. By simply letting people know what your boundaries are, they may find it easier to help.

Imagine in this example that she’s not saying this to John now, but she’s actually working through this on her own, or with a friend or even a therapist. She now wants to use this statement describing the sensations she felt to do some work on her nervous system, to get better at handling these kinds of triggering events in the future.

So, while remembering what it felt like when she was waiting for John, Mary goes into her body and looks for sensations. She has already noticed that her stomach is tight and everything feels hot in her abdomen. Now is her chance to go towards those feelings, not away from them. The goal here is to stop analysing and to allow the experience to start to take over.

Once we find these sensations and focus clearly on them, we have a very important question to ask. This question is not asked of the mind; it is asked to the body. You might feel like this makes no sense at all, but just go with me here. It works. I’ve seen it work hundreds of times. What it really comes down to is just a trick of language, but it means something to us all in a way that’s hard to describe with words. You will know it when you feel it.

Once you have a clear awareness of your sensations as you recall the trigger, reaction and your baggage. Now is when you ask your body this question:

“Can you float that back in time and see where it goes?”

And then you let that hang there for a while. You might want to repeat it. Your body might resist answering. Your thinking brain might be desperately trying to get in on the act. Come back to your sensations, back to your body. Its initial response might be to draw a blank.

That’s OK; hang out with blank for a while. If you stay with it, eventually something will happen. Something will pop up on the radar.

Sometimes we think it doesn’t make sense and so we resist it. Go with whatever comes up, however crazy it may seem. The memory might be an unwelcome one and your mind might tell you not to go there, but the reality is that your body is already there. It’s not a memory anymore; it’s something happening right here right now. So, there’s no point listening to your mind telling you not to go there. You are there. And now you have a way out.

The most important thing here is to respect the pace at which your body wants to work. There is nothing to be gained by rushing anything. The body can’t do more than it can do when healing anything, whether it’s a broken toe or a dysregulated nervous system. It takes the time it takes. So if you need to, give yourself permission to do this slowly, carefully, in stages.

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.

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Our Baggage and The Nervous System

Benjamin Fry — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 11:00:00 +0000

In freeing ourselves from a dysregulated nervous system, an important step is learning how to reframe our experiences. We need to do this so that we are no longer subject to learned ways of behaviour that negatively impact our lives and the relationships we have with others.

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

For the purposes of this blog, let’s look at how we can approach our baggage and reframe how we experience it.

Let’s look at the example of Eric in the office to see how this can be applied in practice.

You work in an open plan office and you are on a tight deadline for an important project. Eric sits opposite you and often tries to engage you in conversation. You are quite shy but don’t want to just say outright that you don’t want to talk. You feel trapped and the stress of your deadline just keeps growing.

In dealing with you triggers and reactions, you could be open and honest with Eric by saying something like:

‘Hey Eric, I’m on a deadline and the conflict of also wanting to talk to you is a trigger for me. I notice that it makes me stressed and I’d like to avoid that.’

Or you could keep your reaction work related by saying:

‘It makes me less productive because I feel like I’m in two places at once.’

In doing so, you act as a witness to yourself. The goal of working with our reactions is to notice them in the simplest way possible. We want to avoid blame and judgement..

To set up this process of drawing the other person in, rather than putting them on the defensive, you start with the careful explanation of the trigger. If you don’t attack, blame or judge with the trigger, you will usually find that the person you are talking to (even if it is yourself) can also find some degree of empathy and compassion with whatever the difficult experience, sensations or feelings you are having in reaction to this trigger.

All of this then sets the stage for the final part of opening up the window into your nervous system, which is when, in the image above, we go from the diagram on the left to the one on the right.

By not alienating or abusing the other person, and by even generating some empathy for our experience, we are creating the right conditions safely to explore and expose our baggage. We now get to tell them why we had the reaction we did. Or, at least, have a really good guess.

Our baggage, of course, is at the heart of all of our problems. It is the unfinished business from our responses to threat in the past. In nervous system recovery terms, it’s our greatest opportunity but also our greatest threat. Revisiting unfinished threat responses is always going to be difficult because we are returning to the experiences which most overwhelmed us in the past, but completing them is our surest pathway back to regulation. All the same, it’s something to approach very carefully.

This is where we start to guess at the origin of our baggage.

It is a fairly simple formula. Once you’ve described the trigger and the reaction that went with it, you try to make sense of the distance between the two by telling yourself, or the other person, what this combination of your trigger and your reaction reminds you of. It might not work; it might not remind you of anything. But usually, especially if you have got the first two parts right, you will find that the baggage comes into view.

So, in our example in the office setting, dealing with our baggage might look something like this:

“Hey Eric, I’m on a deadline and so the conflict of wanting to talk to you is a trigger for me. It makes me less productive because I feel like I’m in two places at once.”

And then you might add:

“I felt like that in my last job and it didn’t work out so well. So I’m trying to do something differently here.”

What this brief snippet of conversation does is opens up a window into the link between your nervous system, your behaviour and, therefore, your relationships. It puts this picture into language that’s specific to that situation.

And it keeps you in relationships while you do it. Staying connected is the very best thing you can do for your nervous system. It regulates you and gives you a chance to repair attachments. To be able to process unfinished business whilst staying connected is priceless.

I could give you a thousand examples, but this only works if you practice it for yourself in situations that are meaningful to you.

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.

A Regulated Nervous System

Benjamin Fry — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 12:00:00 +0000

The dawn of self-awareness created a dysregulated nervous system in humans. All of our problems followed, like a chain of cascading dominoes. We have seen the effects it has on our health, our behaviour, our relationships, our personalities, our society and even our planet. And the inevitable question we must all ask ourselves is, how would I be if I was not dysregulated? How would we all be? And how might we get back to the way we were supposed to be?

To achieve freedom from a dysregulated nervous system, we first need to understand what a regulated nervous system actually is. Dysregulation happens when our mammal and reptile brains are in disagreement with our thinking, human brains about the level of threat in our environment and what to do about it. In the face of a threat, our nervous system accelerates to get away from the danger. Our fight or flight response kicks in, to fight for our lives or flee if fighting is not an option. If the threat is overwhelming (too much to handle) we freeze, storing that accelerated energy in our bodies until it is safe to discharge it. Problems arise when we store that energy and fail to discharge it, because it stays in our bodies and affects all future responses to threat. A dysregulated nervous system, then, is one that is out of harmony with the environment.

A regulated nervous system understands the level of threat, or lack thereof, in the environment, and isn’t subject to residual baggage influencing day to day behaviour.

In the diagram above, we can see that the thinking, human brain (the prefrontal cortex) suppresses the mammalian and reptilian impulses in response to threat that the human brain can’t logically see or understand. This creates a conflict between the brains and this conflict affects our nervous system functioning.

The first step towards a regulated nervous system is to train your thinking brain to allow the mammal and reptile part of your brain to take over. Essentially, you need to agree to get out of your own way. I’m afraid there’s no way to skip this step; it’s the foundation of everything that comes after. Until we return control for some things back to the mammal brain, we will remain forever stuck in these loops set up by our self-awareness. The only way to do this is to fully understand what’s happening, and why.

I know this sounds like a lot. But believe me when I say that your greatest enemy in this process is your own thinking human mind. Sadly, it’s not like some distracting app you can delete or shut down when you’re trying to get something else done. You have to make an ally of your mind and persuade it to allow you to do the rest of the work of recovery. And to do that, you only have to show it that this all makes sense. This is what makes us feel more in control. And that’s how your human brain feels safe.

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.

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What does ‘mental’ health mean?

Benjamin Fry — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Blog/Video #10

When did health get mental? About a hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud, a doctor in Vienna, first suggested that the physical problems of his patients might have something to do with their emotions or psyche. As a result, he started something called the ‘talking cure’, which was novel to doctors at the time. The idea that you could just talk to people and they would recover from their physical problems was revolutionary. This gave rise to the science of psychology and from that we have the popular idea of mental health. But what does it mean?

The difficulty here is that we are used to the idea of health as stemming from our bodies, which is something we understand. However, when that idea doesn’t work for us anymore, such as when we don’t get well through conventional medical methods, we need a new idea. In physical healthcare, when it doesn’t work, patients are labelled as having Medically Unexplained Symptoms (or MUS). An extension of this is what we now call mental healthcare, but is it really any different from a problem in the body which we don’t know the cause of?

How can we have poor health in our mind if we don’t really have a physical thing called a mind? It is quite possible that one of the reasons why mental healthcare is so ineffective, compared with normal physical healthcare problems, is that we are confusing ourselves with the way we think about the problem in the first place. If we don’t understand the problem correctly, then how can we fix it. Are we perhaps going down a blind alley?

DSM 5

During the last century, doctors faced an increasing difficulty in dealing with these kinds of problems which they could not understand and obvious cause for. Gradually they got organised around this, in the way which medicine had taught them to. They started to classify the problems into clusters of symptoms. This didn’t explain anything, but it gave them a common language, so that when patients said that they were worried, or nervous, or anxious, the doctor could then tell them that they had Generalised Anxiety Disorder. This made everyone feel better, as if there was now something understood which they could then fix. However, in truth, the doctor had done nothing more than to repeat back to the patient what the patient had already told the doctor. I call this Capital Letter Syndrome. It is reassuring, but functionally useless because it adds no information.

This gave rise to a book, called the Diagnostic Statistics Manual (or DSM), which became the bible for psychiatrists the world over to use to give credence to their diagnosis with capital letters. It is now on its fifth incarnation and many people, including some who were involved with it from the very beginning, are starting to say that it has got out of control. Everything now has a capital letter diagnosis, even mothers who grieve their children for more than two weeks.

The problem with all of this is that it is replacing an accurate explanation with a pseudo-explanation. It is like the emperor’s new clothes. And the problem with that, is that if you stop looking for a true, causal explanation then you give up on a logical pathway to finding a cure. Only once you know the real problem, can you easily implement a real solution. If I go to my doctor with a sore foot and he tells me I have Sore Foot Syndrome, then I don’t know what to do. If he tells me I have a thorn in my foot, then I do.

Nervous system theory explains much of what we call mental health problems, but with an actual, logical, casual rationale, not just capital letters and guess work. Here are some examples:

DSM 5 Diagnosis – Nervous System Explanation

Alcohol/Substance Abuse – Moves the nervous system up and down

Alcohol/Substance Dependence – Moves the nervous system up and down

Anxiety Disorders – Threat response over-activated

Adult Attention Deficit/Hyper-activity Disorder (ADHD/ADD) – No one sits still or learns when they are being chased by a lion

Bipolar Disorder – Swings between over-activated and crashing into under-activation

Major Depressive Episode – Nervous system has crashed through over-activation

Hypomanic Episode – Extreme activation

Manic Episode – Extreme activation

Depression – Nervous system has crashed through over-activation

Eating Disorders – Introducing food to the gut regulates the nervous system

Generalized Anxiety Disorder – Threat response over-activated

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder – The invisible lion feels so real is must be in the room somewhere

Opioid Use Disorder Symptoms – Moves the nervous system up and down

Panic Disorder – Threat response over-activated

Postpartum Depression – Nervous system has crashed through over-activation

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – Dysregulation

Schizophrenia – Possibly a genuine brain health problem

Social Anxiety Phobia – Threat response over-activated by the threat of people

There is a lot to be gained by moving away from the descriptive language of DSM 5 as if it were medicine. It was important for doctors and psychologists to be able to get a grip on their world when this work was originally done, but it has become a monster which has taken over from solving the problem to becoming part of the problem.

People need accurate explanations of their problems, explaining to them what the cause is, not what the symptom is in capital letters. From this, we can design and implement solutions and cures to solve them.

A better regulated nervous system seems to help with almost every problem we describe as a mental health problem, which suggests that the problem is not with the mind, but with the nervous system. If so, it is important to remember that this is in the body. So something that is wrong with the body is affecting our thoughts, feelings, emotions, realities, choices and relationships. So let’s fix the body and not make up problems in a made up thing called a mind!

People get delirious when they have a fever. We don’t call them mad. We treat their fever. Nervous system theory is no different.

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.

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You didn’t evolve to be happy – how to hack evolution to find your bliss

Benjamin Fry — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 11:00:00 +0000

Blog / Video #2

We can have the right reactions to things, but often at the wrong time. Sometimes we call this anxiety or depression, or a host of other names depending on how it shows up, but beneath the labelling of different symptoms, all of this has one thing in common; the right reaction at the wrong time. So why has it gone so wrong?

In a nutshell, it is because we have evolved to survive, not to be happy. It’s unavoidable, I’m afraid and here’s why. Let’s say you had two tribes and one of them was really happy a lot of the time and the other one was really good at dealing with threat, which one would do better? Well, when things were going well, the happy tribe would have a good time, and this might even make them live a bit longer. However, when things go wrong, the tribe with the better response to threat would avoid premature death, thus living much longer.

In evolution, each organism really only has one task to ensure success; to stay alive long enough to have children and then to keep these children alive long enough so that they can have children. If your species does that, then it will eventually have more and more of it on the planet, which (as measured by evolution) is success.

So organisms which are good at dealing with threat survive evolution and natural selection better. And these are the organisms which you now see around you on this planet. You are a very successful one. How did you get here?

Evolve to survive not to thrive

Imagine a shark swimming up to a school of fish and they don’t react. The shark just eats what he wants and then off he goes. Maybe that’s a good life for a fish. It’s super chilled whether it gets eaten or not, and nobody can live forever, right? But then something changed. The accepted wisdom from fossil records is that about 100 million years ago, something called a jawless fish developed a new way to deal with predators.

Randomly, one of the jawless fish did something different when a predator arrived. Instead of carrying on swimming, it just stopped dead in the water. Sharks, and other predators found their prey by seeing or sensing movement, so this meant that the fish was invisible and survived. And so it grew old and had many little freezing fish. They never got eaten and pretty soon the ocean was filled with fish that the sharks couldn’t see when they approached. They might not have been the happiest fish, but they were the most populous.

Then, randomly, a shark developed the ability to see stationary fish. This changed the whole balance of predation back in that shark’s favour, and so it started to have lots of little baby sharks and then the sea was full of these new sharks. Then the fish needed to adapt to survive, so some of them started to run when the others froze. Bigger ones even fought back if caught. And so it went on, with the sharks adapting to match these defences and the fish having to mount new ones. Next they started to get an early warning system, vigilance, when a shark was even on the horizon.

The good news is that the fish as a species survived, but it does sound exhausting. The super chill fish all died out. They went to a watery grave with a lopsided grin on their jawless faces, happy but dead. Good survivors proliferate. And the humans you share your planet with today are the direct descendants of those fish.

Going back in time

When you become aware of an escalating threat, you go through these evolutionary stages in reverse. You become vigilant, then you run for your life and/or fight for your life, and then, when it all seems hopeless, you freeze. This happens very quickly for very young mammals (like you when you were a baby), because they don’t have much capacity for successful fight or flight. So freeze is quite common, particularly when small.

If an organism survives danger even after it has gone into freeze, then later, when the danger has passed, it will unfreeze. If it does not, then it is this reaction to threat which has frozen into its system that is waiting to come out later.

So if you are anxious today about nothing, it is because you have not yet finished reacting to an earlier threat. And if you are depressed, it is because trying to finish reacting to an earlier threat is so overwhelming that you freeze again. It often surprises people that anxiety and depression are treated with the same antidepressant drugs.

I want you to understand your history. You are the result of successful evolution, designed to survive, but not to thrive. To change that you need to hack your evolution to do things differently.

Fortunately, that is very easy; you do it through education. You’ve just done part of it. Once you understand that the greatest threat you face is not unfreezing your unfinished business, you will be able to make different choices with your biology and restore yourself to health.

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.