Latest / The Brain Dump / Slow Is Fast: What Somatic Experiencing Actually Teaches You About Feeling Safe | Episode 25

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Slow Is Fast: What Somatic Experiencing Actually Teaches You About Feeling Safe | Episode 25 · The Brain Dump

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey y'all, I'm Sandy Boone, therapist, coach, and nervous system educator with 30 years in health care and mental health.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I built two practices, got diagnosed with ADHD at 50, and learned the hard way that healers need healing too.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I help female therapists and healers regulate their nervous systems, reclaim their lives, and stop being everyone's everything.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Braindump with Sandy Boone.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want to start today with something personal.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: This week I received my SCP, my somatic experiencing practitioner certification, and I am damn proud of that.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: That credential does not come from a weekend course or a certificate program you finish in a few months.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It comes from years of training, hundreds of hours of consultation, personal work that goes places you don't always expect it to go, and a genuine commitment to understand how the body holds what the mind can't always access.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have been working towards this for a long time.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Four years.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I want to name it because I think we don't do that enough.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: We achieve things and we move right past them toward the next thing.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to pause here at the beginning of this episode to say, I earned this and it matters to me.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: A friend of mine said, when that piece of paper came across, it's kind of lackluster, right?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's no graduation.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then she said, you should throw yourself a graduation.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just might do that.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the thing about the week you receive your SCP.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: You don't suddenly have it all figured out and you don't graduate into some version of yourself that no longer needs the work.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: What you do is you keep doing the work with more language and more tools and hopefully a little more grace for yourself when the hard things surface, because they will surface.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: This week, the hard thing that surfaced was a question I didn't expect to be sitting with.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: What does support actually look like?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And more specifically, why is it so hard for me to feel it even when it's there?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you about something that came up in a somatic experiencing consultation I had this week with Martha.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Martha is my SE therapist.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Eva is one of my SE consultants.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Martha and I were working through some things, and what became clear in the way that things become clear in SE work slowly in the body before they become words, is that I brace.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not just when things are unsafe, it's also when things are safe.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: My body has learned to interpret support as something to be cautious about, as something that might not last, and something that requires me to stay ready, just in case.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So even when the support is genuinely present, and even when someone is actually showing up, my nervous system fires the brace first.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Before my brain can assess the situation, before evidence can register, my body says not yet, even when everything around me is saying now.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of you know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you learned early that what looked like safety sometimes wasn't.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the support was inconsistent, and inconsistency trains a nervous system to stay alert because you never knew which version of things was coming.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you got so good at taking care of yourself that your system stopped expecting anyone else to do it and started treating the absence of threat as the best you could hope for.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, that's not the same as feeling safe.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is just feeling less braced.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of us, it's been the ceiling.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: The most relaxed we ever feel is slightly less on guard, not actually held, not actually safe, just less braced than when we were a moment ago.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there is so much more available than that.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Eva works in a particular way that I want to describe because I think it's useful for anyone that does this kind of work, whether as a clinician or a client, or as both simultaneously.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: She slows things down to a pace your nervous system can actually follow.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not your brain, your nervous system.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because your brain can process a lot of information very quickly.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And your nervous system, not so much.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: It works at the speed of sensation, of breath, of the slight shift in your chest when something lands differently than you expected.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you move too fast, you skip right over the thing that actually needs attention.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things Eva asked me, and I'm going to share some of her language here today because it deserves to be said out loud, was this as you hear the validation, do you feel more settled or less settled?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I sat with that question longer than I expected to, because my honest answer was less settled.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Not because the validation wasn't real, it was very real.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: But my nervous system had learned that validation is something to be skeptical of.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: That feeling seen is often temporary, and that support that arrives can also leave.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes, my first response is not relief, it's weariness.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Eva also said something that I've been carrying all week, and that is to grieve is to understand what happened.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's one of the most precise things anyone has ever said to me about why this work is hard.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Understanding what happened, really understanding it at the level of the body, not just the story, means feeling what it cost.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Feeling the gap between what you needed and what you got.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Feeling the gap not as a thought, but as a sensation, as something that actually moves through your system and has to go somewhere.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: That is not comfortable work, but it's the work that actually changes things.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: The thing about SE work, and I say this as someone who is now a practitioner of it as well as a recipient of it, is that it doesn't work in a straight line.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: You don't start at the beginning, work through the middle, and arrive at the end all healed.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Also, you don't do it quickly.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Slow is fast.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: It works more like a spiral.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: You come back to the same territory from different angles at different depths with different access to what's there.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And each time you come back, you can hold a little more.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can stay with something a little longer, and you can feel the edge of something without immediately needing to move away from it.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Martha has helped me understand my own system in ways that have made me a better clinician.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you know your own brace, you recognize it in other people.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when you know what it feels like to interpret safety as suspicious, you can sit with a client who is doing the exact same thing without trying to rush them through it.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can say with your whole self and not just your words, I know where you are and I know there's another part of you.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: That too is an evil line.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably the kindest thing you can say to someone who is braced.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about the actual question this episode is built around.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: What does support look like?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And more importantly, what does it feel like?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people, especially people in helping professions, have a very cognitive relationship with the concept of support.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know I did, and sometimes still do.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: They can describe it, they can list what it looks like, they can tell you that co-regulation is real and that humans need to feel held, and that the nervous system responds to the presence of a calm, attuned other.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then they go home and they stay braced.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what Eva helped me understand about what support actually feels like at the body level.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Support feels like the chair under you, the floor under your feet, the permission to let your weight go somewhere other than your own muscles.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, it's not a thought.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sensation of something holding you that isn't you.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: For people who have learned to hold themselves, that sensation is wildly unfamiliar.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: It can feel like falling, it can feel like losing control, it can feel like the moment right before something goes wrong, because in the past, that is sometimes what it was.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Eva also uses an image that I want to share with you.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: She talks about the nervous system pressing the gas and the brake at the same time, when there's a lot of activation to make sure that the person doesn't explode.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: You are simultaneously moving towards something and preventing yourself from getting there.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: You are trying and stopping, reaching and pulling back.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is what bracing looks like when support is present.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: You feel it coming and something in you pumps the brake.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you don't want it, but because an older part of your system isn't sure yet that it's safe to receive it.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to hear this.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a character flaw.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: The question is not why does this keep happening?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: The question is what does it feel like when it's actually safe?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you can begin to let yourself find out.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Eva has a phrase that she comes back to, and it's also a foundational concept in SE work.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Orient to safety.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not perform safety, not think your way into feeling safe, and not convince yourself that everything is fine, but orient.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Which means let your senses do what they are designed to do.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let your eyes move to something stable, let your body feel the ground, let yourself notice what is actually present in this moment, not what your nervous system is predicting based on what has happened before.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Prediction is what a braced nervous system does constantly.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is always running the model of what happened last time and applying it to now, even when now is different.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Orienting interrupts that.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: It brings you into the present, into the actual data of this moment rather than the historical data your nervous system has been using as its operating manual.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Eva has also said another thing that stayed with me.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: If it's not anchored, it doesn't exist.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: What she means is that insight without a body anchor is just a thought.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can understand something completely intellectually and have it change nothing in your lived experience.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because your nervous system doesn't speak the language of understanding.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks the language of sensation, of movement, and what it actually felt like when something happened or when something was safe.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: The work is not just to understand what support looks like, the work is to feel it in your body in real time and do that enough times that your system begins to build a new expectation.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It won't happen every time, and it won't happen all at once.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: One moment of actual safety at a time.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And another Evaism, can you imagine one tear at a time?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I want to speak directly to the therapists and healers who are listening because this is particularly relevant to you.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have been trained to provide the thing you may have never fully received yourself.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know what co-regulation looks like because you offer it every day.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know what an attuned presence feels like because you try to be one.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know the language of safety, of nervous system regulation, and what the body needs to feel held.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you may still brace when it comes towards you.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: That is not a failure of your training.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a contradiction of your expertise.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is a human being who learned something early, before the training, before the credentials, before you knew what any of it was called.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the work that you do for your clients, you deserve to receive it too.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not from your clients, that's not the direction it flows, but from your own therapist, your own SE practitioner, your own supervisor or consultant, or the people in your life who have the capacity to hold you the way you hold others.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't have those people, or if you have them and you're still braced when they show up, that's information.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't judge yourself in that.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just information.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: What would it feel like to let the brace soften just a little?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do anything about it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just feel which direction you want to go.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: In closing, yes, I received my SEP this week.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And also this week, I sat in an SE consultation session and felt my own brace fire when support was offered.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I felt my nervous system pump the gas and the brake at the same time.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I sat with Eva's question about whether validation made me feel more settled or less settled, and I told the truth about the answer.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Those two things are not in contradiction.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're actually the same thing.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Becoming a practitioner doesn't mean you finish the work.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: It means you have more language for what the work actually is.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Orient to safety, not all at once, not perfectly, one anchor at a time.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being here.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: If something today resonated, check the show notes.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find a link to grab my free guide, 50 Things I Can Do to Calm My Freaking Nervous System.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're curious about neurofeedback and what it could do for your own nervous system, that information is in the show notes too.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Come find me on Instagram at the Sandy Boone.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a healing professional looking for a community that actually feels good to be in, come join us in the Rooted Kong Collective on Facebook.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a space built for support, nervous system tips, and building your best life as a healer without all the drama.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Links for everything are in the show notes.