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The Survival Lag: Why Your Body Resists Peace (And How to Fix It) · The Spiritual Shitshow Podcast

• 0:01
  Hello, and welcome back to the Spiritual Shitshow podcast.
• 0:04
  As always, growth and learning and personal development and spiritual development, it's not linear.
• 0:12
  We're always coming back.
• 0:13
  We're starting again,'cause there's other things to make contact with here.
• 0:18
  And in our last conversation, we talked about that sudden breathtaking moment of realizing how far you have come.
• 0:27
  We talked about looking around at our beautiful relationships, our peace, our growth, and realizing that while our minds are celebrating, our bodies are still bracing for impact.
• 0:40
  Today, I wanna go deeper into that specific gap.
• 0:44
  I wanna talk about what I call the survival lag.
• 0:49
  If you are currently sitting in a life that is safer, kinder, more abundant, more loving than the one that you grew up in or survived, and yet you still feel this low-grade anxiety, this urge to over-explain for me, over-prove Or if there's a sudden panic when things are too quiet or too good, then this episode is for you because we're gonna talk about why our bodies take so much longer to trust peace than our mind does, and how we hold space for this messy transformation without spiritual bypassing.
• 1:33
  And then we're gonna get into three practical, raw ways to to reassure your nervous system that you are indeed finally safe.
• 1:43
  So let's dive in.
• 2:08
  Okay, so first let's define what is actually happening inside of you.
• 2:13
  The survival lag is this physiological delay between your current reality and your cellular memory.
• 2:22
  Think about it this way.
• 2:23
  Your mind operates in linear time.
• 2:26
  Your mind can look at a calendar, look at your bank account, scary, look at your loving partner or your safe apartment, your home, and you can say,"Okay, we are safe now.
• 2:36
  The storm is over," And your mind can see that and process this instantly, but your nervous system, it's a different story.
• 2:45
  Your nervous system doesn't read calendars.
• 2:48
  it doesn't see things in a linear way.
• 2:50
  It doesn't care about logic.
• 2:51
  It speaks the language of sensation, adrenaline, cortisol, and survival.
• 2:58
  If your body has spent years learning that peace was just the quiet before another storm, then to your body, peace feels like danger if you are resonating with that.
• 3:14
  Wow.
• 3:16
  Wow When things get quiet, your body can think,"Ha, this is when the bad thing is gonna happen.
• 3:25
  Let's get ready." And it grips.
• 3:28
  So when you find yourself picking a fight or overworking or spinning out in anxiety, you are literally trying to recreate a chaotic environment because chaos is familiar.
• 3:39
  Can I get an amen?
• 3:42
  And to a traumatized nervous system, familiarity equals safety, even if the familiar is toxic.
• 3:53
  And I wanna be so clear here because this isn't you failing at your healing.
• 3:59
  This is literally your body doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is to keep you alive.
• 4:08
  And it doesn't know the war is over yet I know when I was in, the throes of my healing journey, so I just left my business, everything was chaotic, I was in so much pain, I was in so much sadness, I was in such a deep, dark depression.
• 4:27
  I remember praying,"Please, God, just give me what I h- give it back to me, give it back to me," because even though I know it was so bad for me and it was so toxic, I'd rather have that because at least I knew what it was.
• 4:46
  This, I don't know what it is, and I am terrified To a traumatized nervous system, familiarity equals safety, even if the familiarity is toxic.
• 5:02
  I get that.
• 5:03
  And I love recording these podcasts because I wish I had this information when I was going through what some call the dark night of the soul.
• 5:14
  I literally was fucking learning all about it by myself And I'm grateful that I did because now I can offer the medicine to those who might need it.
• 5:24
  I am also understanding that peace does feel like danger, and it is really hard to surrender.
• 5:31
  I am understanding that because I hear like,"Oh, here it goes again.
• 5:37
  I just got comfortable and something else fucking happened." That it's not safe to be safe.
• 5:42
  It's not safe to feel safe.
• 5:45
  And I am consciously working on that every single day And now when we talk about this, there is a trap we can fall into, and it's the trap of spiritual bypassing, trying to vibe high through it, stay positive, meditate the trauma away, or pretend we're perfectly aligned when we actually feel like we're vibrating at a frequency of pure panic.
• 6:12
  Again, can I get an amen?
• 6:15
  Do you resonate with that?
• 6:16
  Wow.
• 6:18
  Okay, so holding space for deep transformation does not mean avoiding the raw, the messy, the real, the devastating, the beautiful humanness of life Spiritual maturity isn't about being calm or positive or high vibe 24/7.
• 6:45
  It's about having the capacity to sit with your chaos without trying to fix it, numbing it, or shaming yourself for it.
• 6:57
  It's being able to say,"I am terrified right now.
• 7:01
  My heart is racing.
• 7:02
  I feel like running away, and I am still deeply, profoundly okay." We have to let ourselves be human.
• 7:14
  We have to let ourselves talk shit, dance it out, cry on the kitchen floor, and and send those long-ass voice memos to our friends.
• 7:22
  The magic of a healed life isn't that the mess goes away, it's that we finally have the capacity and the community to hold the mess with grace I'm gonna say that one more time The magic of a healed life isn't that the mess goes away.
• 7:46
  It's that we finally have the capacity and the community to hold the mess with grace So how do we bridge this gap?
• 7:58
  How do we help our physical bodies catch up to our mental peace?
• 8:04
  I wanna give you three practical somatic ways to reassure your nervous system that you are finally safe, and you can do these today, right now, wherever you are.
• 8:13
  If it's beautiful or if it's messy, wherever you're at Okay, so this first one is look and see.
• 8:27
  When you feel that sudden spike of anxiety or you feel an old pattern, I think in one of the podcasts it was how old does this feel?
• 8:39
  So if you feel an old familiar sensation or feeling begin to arise, feeling that the other shoe is about to drop, you notice that your brain is scanning for threat You need to physically show your eyes that there's no threat I want you to stop what you're doing and slowly let your neck turn and look all the way to your left and then all the way to your right Look at the corners of the room.
• 9:14
  Look at your favorite plant, the art on your wall, the sky outside your window.
• 9:20
  Just allow your gaze to begin to notice, your eyes to rest on things that are here, that are real And that might bring you some peace By allowing our eyes to physically scan our environment Notice that there are no predators here.
• 9:42
  You're sending a direct biological signal to your brain stem I am safe.
• 9:48
  We are safe when I am doing this, I also love to pendulate that energy.
• 9:55
  So I notice where I'm maybe feeling tightness or anxiety in my body, and then I allow myself to rest long enough on what I see And then I bring that energy back to, okay, how am I feeling now?
• 10:13
  I notice you know what's happening in my body literally making contact with it, so I'm putting my hand on it And then I swing my awareness, who else do I see?
• 10:25
  And then I stay with that until I can literally feel a discharge of the energy Okay Number two, a double inhale.
• 10:38
  And we did this in the meditation about how to notice your triggers and how to recognize and ask yourself, how old is this feeling?
• 10:47
  The reason this is important is because you cannot think your way out of a body-based panic, but you can breathe your way out of it.
• 10:57
  And there is a specific breathing pattern used by neuroscientists to instantly down-regulate your nervous system.
• 11:07
  It's called the psychological sigh.
• 11:10
  You take a deep inhale through your nose, and right at the top, You take one more sharp sniff to completely inflate your lungs, and then you let out a long, slow, heavy sigh through your mouth You can do that three times and it immediately pops the pressure valve on your stress response.
• 11:34
  And again, it tells your body,"We are safe now.
• 11:39
  We are safe." I've had a lot of teachers and mentors in the past who before they guide us into their teachings, we have to do this type of breathwork.
• 11:48
  And I love the reminder to the why.
• 11:51
  I always like to know why I'm doing it'cause then I can apply it a little quicker and understand it more.
• 11:57
  I definitely am not a teacher who likes to have the student figure it out for themselves because that can take a fucking lifetime.
• 12:05
  So I'm gonna talk this one through.
• 12:07
  The double inhale sigh.
• 12:09
  again, breathing in all the way on your inhale, and then doing another quick inhale to get a little bit more oxygen.
• 12:20
  So it's like you're breathing to your capacity, and then a long audible exhale with a tone to it Again, this is helping your nervous system down regulate, and it's a beautiful way to signal to your body that we are safe, we are here, we're good.
• 12:41
  All right, part three.
• 12:43
  Your body needs to hear your own voice.
• 12:46
  When you feel that survival lag kicking in, when you feel yourself wanting to run or hide or pick a fight, I definitely do this.
• 12:56
  When I am revved up, I lash out at my husband, and I do come back like,"I am so sorry." This happened when I was in Dallas and I was about to go visit my family.
• 13:06
  I was like, I was acting crazy.
• 13:08
  I was completely spun out.
• 13:10
  And I was like,"Oh, I am catching myself what I am doing." And I had to apologize to my husband, I had to apologize to my sister-in-law for bringing that type of energy into their house.
• 13:19
  But the cool thing is, is I noticed it.
• 13:20
  I was totally aware of what I was doing and what was happening.
• 13:25
  And awareness is incredible because then you have something to do.
• 13:28
  You know how to create a different pattern in your body When I am wanting to pick a fight because I'm revved up and I need to regulate myself, this is the work I'm doing now.
• 13:41
  How can I make self-regulation my number one priority?
• 13:47
  I put one hand on my heart and one hand on my belly, and I speak directly to my body like I would a frightened child.
• 13:57
  For me lately, it's been coming in as a rebellious teenager.
• 14:01
  I'm literally coaching this teenager part of myself that's coming in and throwing temper tantrums all the time, and I'm literally parenting her.
• 14:13
  I say,"I hear you I know that there's something here that you're feeling that your needs are not being met And I hear you And I know that you are trying to protect me Because you are terrified of recreating past experiences that were painful And I want to remind you, us now, that we are an adult, that we are wise, that we have grown, and that we aren't there anymore.
• 14:55
  We are safe.
• 14:58
  We are supported We have to remind our bodies of where we are now so it's not going back to the stress and the survival mode that it once had to be in.
• 15:13
  And remind every cell in your body that we've got this.
• 15:17
  We've got this.
• 15:18
  We've got this And then invite in the energy of self-love, personal empowerment, excitement, curiosity, joy Spirit meets us with so much grace, doesn't it?
• 15:34
  But we also have to meet ourselves with that same grace Your body took years to learn how to survive And you may just need to give it a little time to learn how to live You are doing so beautiful.
• 15:52
  And wasn't it all worth it?
• 15:55
  The work, the healing, the therapy, the awareness, moving out of the familiar that was toxic, getting into the scary unknown, doing the hard work that it takes to align with who you are, who you've always been Love is a big job Thank you for being here with me.
• 16:21
  If this resonated with you, send it to that friend.
• 16:24
  You know the one.
• 16:26
  the one that you send those long ass voice memos to And let's keep walking each other home Until next time, breathe deep, soften your shoulders, and let yourself be right here in the center of the brilliance and the light that you are