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94. Healing Mode vs. Fight or Flight: Navigating Your Nervous System through Divorce Trauma · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Dawn Wiggins: Hi love, nervous system is all the rage these days in the conversation about mental and physical health, and there is a reason for that.
• 0:56
  Dawn Wiggins: It's because your nervous system controls whether or not you're healing mentally, emotionally and physically.
• 1:04
  Dawn Wiggins: And most people, including you, because of what you've been going through with divorce, are living chronically in a way that their nervous system is not operating in a healing mode.
• 1:14
  Dawn Wiggins: To oversimplify it, your nervous system has two modes.
• 1:17
  Dawn Wiggins: We'll talk about that later.
• 1:18
  Dawn Wiggins: Hi love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence.
• 1:34
  Dawn Wiggins: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 1:40
  Dawn Wiggins: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 1:45
  Dawn Wiggins: In today's episode, we're going to make the very complicated nervous system very basic for you and go over what it is and what it does.
• 2:01
  Dawn Wiggins: On a basic level, I'm going to teach you how you can perceive your nervous system and diagnose which mode it's in.
• 2:09
  Dawn Wiggins: And I'm going to give you three steps that you must take in order to optimize your nervous system so that it is spending more time in healing mode than not.
• 2:18
  Dawn Wiggins: And finally, we're going to do our Getting Unstuck segment, where we take a listener's submission about where in her life she's feeling stuck and we unpack it for her.
• 2:26
  Dawn Wiggins: Let's get started.
• 2:28
  Dawn Wiggins: Ok, the basics of your nervous system, love.
• 2:33
  Dawn Wiggins: Your nervous system consists of.
• 2:35
  Dawn Wiggins: Well, first let's talk about this, the nervous system.
• 2:38
  Dawn Wiggins: I want you to think of it like an interface, right where it is the part of your body that senses, that integrates with the other parts of your body.
• 2:48
  Dawn Wiggins: That does so.
• 2:49
  Dawn Wiggins: The nervous system is like the sensing part of your body that takes in the information and then it gives that information to your body parts, like your muscles and your organs.
• 2:59
  Dawn Wiggins: So your nervous system basically is your brain, your spinal cord and the nerves.
• 3:05
  Dawn Wiggins: This is oversimplified and I am not a neuroscientist, so I'm giving you the information the way that I would a client in my practice to help them understand their body, mind and how healing works.
• 3:15
  Dawn Wiggins: This is not meant to be like a deeply scientific educational piece, but I want you to have the basics so you know how it works and you can empower yourself with that information.
• 3:25
  Dawn Wiggins: So your brain, your spinal cord and the nerves that then branch out all over into your body, into your muscles and your organs, and tell those parts of your body, whether or not, to move, or breathe, or beat, or pump or whatever all the basic functions of the body are.
• 3:45
  Dawn Wiggins: So the nerves are constantly sensing the environment for pain or not and the brain is sensing, good Lord, all the things in your environment.
• 3:57
  Dawn Wiggins: And the spinal cord is like the main information highway in your brain that then the nerves kind of sprout out from weird spaghetti arms.
• 4:07
  Dawn Wiggins: Have you seen that very cool meme that floats around the internet that shows this creepy alien thing?
• 4:12
  Dawn Wiggins: But it's actually a picture of your nervous system and it looks so disturbing.
• 4:15
  Dawn Wiggins: Anyways, so that's your nervous system Now.
• 4:20
  Dawn Wiggins: It has two modes, basically, and that's oversimplified again, right.
• 4:24
  Dawn Wiggins: And these two modes, they function on a spectrum, meaning it's not completely black and white on or off.
• 4:31
  Dawn Wiggins: But you want to make sure you're spending more time than not in the healing mode, right?
• 4:36
  Dawn Wiggins: So the one mode is healing mode, or often referred to as rest and digest mode.
• 4:44
  Dawn Wiggins: So this is a mode where you have a felt sense of safety and security, both in your body and in your mind, and therefore the nervous system perceives its environment as safe and secure and sends the message to all the organs and all the various parts of the body that it is safe to get busy healing things and detoxifying things and rejuvenating things and resting Right.
• 5:09
  Dawn Wiggins: So this is why we call it rest and digest, because when the nervous system says all is well, you can literally go into relaxation mode and you could properly digest your food and your cells can properly optimize their little jobs.
• 5:21
  Dawn Wiggins: The other mode is often called fight or flight and this is considered a nervous system activation mode, and by activation we mean it is extra vigilant, it is powered up in a way that it is scanning the environment and it perceives a threat.
• 5:37
  Dawn Wiggins: And because it perceives a threat, it shifts the functionality in your body away from rest, away from digest and away from healing and it tells your body and all its organs and all its muscles and all its bodily functions that it needs to be on high alert and it needs to keep you safe from danger.
• 5:58
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, when we spend a lot of time in fight or flight mode, what goes on right?
• 6:04
  Dawn Wiggins: We're not properly digesting, we are constipated, we're not getting in the proper nutrients.
• 6:09
  Dawn Wiggins: Therefore we don't have the proper energy.
• 6:10
  Dawn Wiggins: We are dumping stress hormones into our body, things like cortisol, which cause belly fat and intense levels of stress in the body.
• 6:20
  Dawn Wiggins: We are dumping adrenaline into our body, which is taxing our adrenals, which is what leads to the disease process.
• 6:28
  Dawn Wiggins: You've probably heard of adrenal fatigue.
• 6:30
  Dawn Wiggins: This process, when it's prolonged, of being in fight or flight, is what causes or contributes to a lot of chronic diseases.
• 6:41
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, as a society, we spend way more time in fight flight than we realize, and there are a lot of reasons for that.
• 6:49
  Dawn Wiggins: We are inundated with data all the time, right, we are overstimulated because of how technological our society has become and because our bodies have to scan all the time for all that data, when we're not giving it enough time in nature or doing nothing.
• 7:07
  Dawn Wiggins: The body is perceiving this as something it has to stay really vigilant towards, and it is doing that whole adrenal response thing because it's perceiving that it has to analyze all this data all the time.
• 7:20
  Dawn Wiggins: We also have a lot of subconscious conditioning that we have not adequately addressed, meaning we have a lot of negative beliefs that we're not safe, that we can't trust the environment we're in, we can't trust the people around us, we can't trust our ex, we can't trust, maybe, the government, we can't trust our food sources, and so when we perpetuate all those beliefs and we don't address them underneath, the nervous system feels that threat.
• 7:47
  Dawn Wiggins: It's getting this message from the subconscious mind that we are not safe, that our environments are not safe, that the people around us are not safe, and then it has to remain hypervigilant.
• 7:54
  Dawn Wiggins: So when we don't do this work, the brain and the spinal cord and the nerves are integrating with the organs and they are sending this message that we can't heal.
• 8:05
  Dawn Wiggins: And so what does that mean for you as you're addressing recovery from divorce and grief and trying to be less anxious and address your attachment style and move through this process without falling apart every two seconds?
• 8:20
  Dawn Wiggins: Well, what it means is that understanding the basics of your nervous system, in which mode it's in, is going to dictate how long your healing process takes, how thoroughly you heal, how fast you recover from stressors like interactions with your ex and various things right, how long you experience divorce, depression and various things.
• 8:40
  Dawn Wiggins: Right, because not knowing which mode you're in means you're probably more in fight or flight and therefore you're delaying all of that process.
• 8:49
  Dawn Wiggins: So let's talk about well, let's give you an analogy, right for what that looks like in the body.
• 8:58
  Dawn Wiggins: So have you ever had an alarm in your home, especially post-divorced?
• 9:02
  Dawn Wiggins: Right?
• 9:02
  Dawn Wiggins: Like.
• 9:02
  Dawn Wiggins: I rarely use an alarm any more.
• 9:05
  Dawn Wiggins: Maybe when we're traveling we use an alarm.
• 9:07
  Dawn Wiggins: But post-divorced I was like the alarm lady, right, and anytime I would come home and it would be dark, I would be looking behind shower curtains.
• 9:13
  Dawn Wiggins: Do you do that?
• 9:14
  Dawn Wiggins: I feel seen right now, do you?
• 9:16
  Dawn Wiggins: Also, having a dog helped a lot.
• 9:20
  Dawn Wiggins: So if you think about how an alarm system in your home operates, you like program in the code and you hit away when you're leaving, right, and it activates the alarm and the alarm starts scanning the environment for a threat and when it perceives a threat the alarm goes off and it triggers to call the police and the police come and when the police, you know, solve the problem in the home, whatever the intruder is, then the home becomes safe again.
• 9:47
  Dawn Wiggins: Right, and when you're home you disarm the alarm and the alarm is no longer scanning the environment, looking for threats.
• 9:56
  Dawn Wiggins: It like presumes that you're home and all is well and you're safe and you know your doors are locked and whatever.
• 10:02
  Dawn Wiggins: And you've got it.
• 10:03
  Dawn Wiggins: You can handle this right.
• 10:04
  Dawn Wiggins: And so the nervous system is much like that alarm system that's scanning the environment and it's either tripped and the alarm is going off, or it's not tripped and it perceives that all is well and it is safe.
• 10:18
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, when your nervous system is chronically in fight or flight, it's like the alarm going off all the time and maybe the police come and maybe they're banging on the door and maybe there's intruders, but like nothing, you know it's not getting resolved right.
• 10:33
  Dawn Wiggins: That message keeps pumping, that there is an intruder and there's danger and there is something wrong.
• 10:37
  Dawn Wiggins: Now I think what has happened for a lot of us and this has been conditioned for years and years and years is, even when the alarm goes off and there is an intruder and there is legitimate danger and the police come and they remove the intruder and your home becomes safe again, the alarm hasn't been shut off and it's still blaring, and there's a number of reasons for that that we'll get into, but that's really what we have to look at is how we can help our nervous system learn to switch into the home mode, get that alarm turned off so that we can get into rest and digest and we can heal on a fundamental, fundamental functional level.
• 11:16
  Dawn Wiggins: Okay, awesome.
• 11:17
  Dawn Wiggins: So talk about how to perceive your nervous system, why you probably aren't perceiving your nervous system, so that you know which mode you're in and you can do something about it.
• 11:27
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, the most important thing you can do to perceive your nervous system is to get into your body, or your soma.
• 11:35
  Dawn Wiggins: Have you heard the word somatic healing a lot lately?
• 11:38
  Dawn Wiggins: That's all the rage also, right, and so what somatic healing means is just healing in the body and being able to perceive what your body sensations are and what your body messages are, and to follow those cues.
• 11:50
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, most people are not body aware.
• 11:53
  Dawn Wiggins: They may be hyper vigilant of their body, they may sense a lot of pain and complaints, but they're not connecting the dots of what the body is saying to them, the mind and what the mind is saying to the body.
• 12:04
  Dawn Wiggins: And, fun fact, in our current medical model we are told that our bodies are broken and damaged and don't know how to heal themselves.
• 12:15
  Dawn Wiggins: And boy that.
• 12:16
  Dawn Wiggins: It could not be further from the truth.
• 12:17
  Dawn Wiggins: Our bodies are in a constant state of attempting to heal themselves and they know exactly what to do.
• 12:24
  Dawn Wiggins: They are so beautifully designed by an intelligent creator that our bodies know what to do to heal.
• 12:31
  Dawn Wiggins: The planet knows what to do to heal itself.
• 12:32
  Dawn Wiggins: Right, it's when we intervene and we block healing that it doesn't happen.
• 12:37
  Dawn Wiggins: I promise you love your body knows what to do.
• 12:40
  Dawn Wiggins: There's just energetic disturbance at, for many of us, at very deep levels.
• 12:44
  Dawn Wiggins: That needs adequate, appropriate intervention so that it can get on with its business.
• 12:50
  Dawn Wiggins: So, how to perceive your nervous system?
• 12:53
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, in the 21 day journaling program that I have guided journaling immersive journaling program the very first week we basically spend on perceiving your nervous system for this exact reason, because if you can't perceive your nervous system and switch it, then you're not healing right.
• 13:09
  Dawn Wiggins: Journal prompts, gosh, are just so strategic to help you get into your body and to have that felt sense of safety and security and to move forward in a healing journey.
• 13:18
  Dawn Wiggins: So some of the things that we do in those initial week of journaling prompts is to close your eyes, to do a minute of deep breathing or box breathing that's something you can YouTube, that's very basic breathing to get into your body.
• 13:34
  Dawn Wiggins: And to start to do a body scan.
• 13:36
  Dawn Wiggins: And I typically encourage you to set a timer for a minute or two you don't need to do this for too long but to really do a body scan and observe what is your head feel like, what is your throat feel like, what is your chest, feel like your stomach, your pelvis, your legs, your hands, your feet, your extremities.
• 13:58
  Dawn Wiggins: What are the sensations you have on your skin?
• 14:01
  Dawn Wiggins: What are the sensations you have in your body?
• 14:03
  Dawn Wiggins: Is anything buzzing?
• 14:06
  Dawn Wiggins: Is anything aching?
• 14:07
  Dawn Wiggins: Is anything twisting, burning, racing, clenching?
• 14:11
  Dawn Wiggins: Is it hot, is it cold?
• 14:14
  Dawn Wiggins: Is it throbbing, is it pulsing?
• 14:15
  Dawn Wiggins: These are beautiful words that use to describe sensations in the body.
• 14:20
  Dawn Wiggins: I often ask clients to think of weather patterns or colors in addition to sensations.
• 14:28
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, if you do this exercise where you spend a minute or two breathing and scanning and you don't know what you're feeling in your body, practice is the answer and more breath work is the answer.
• 14:40
  Dawn Wiggins: Very often we're in a neck up space and it often just takes a few breaths and practicing awareness in order to connect those dots between the mind and the body.
• 14:55
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, for some people, it's gonna take a little longer.
• 14:58
  Dawn Wiggins: If you give up love, that means that alarm system is going off in your body nonstop and you're not helping it, which means you're actively blocking or interrupting healing, which means prolonged suffering.
• 16:01
  Dawn Wiggins: We have what a time to be alive, where we know all of this and we know what to do about it.
• 16:08
  Dawn Wiggins: The trick is is it takes consistency.
• 16:10
  Dawn Wiggins: Consistency is always queen and that is the answer.
• 16:15
  Dawn Wiggins: That is the most significant indicator between women who build a life that they want and women who don't and suffer a long time.
• 16:23
  Dawn Wiggins: Right, that's it.
• 16:23
  Dawn Wiggins: It's consistency.
• 16:24
  Dawn Wiggins: Love Awareness was consistency right.
• 16:27
  Dawn Wiggins: And so for you to be able to perceive your nervous system, you've done some breath work, you're doing a body scan and you ask yourself do I have a felt sense of safety or security right now, or am I perceiving some sort of threat or distress in my body and it's kind of one or the other predominates.
• 16:56
  Dawn Wiggins: It's not black and white, it's not all or nothing, that it's all one or all the other, but there's one that is going to be more predominant.
• 17:03
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, some common ways that my nervous system sends me, the message that I am nervous system activated, that I'm on the way to fight or flight is my heart races, I feel heat.
• 17:20
  Dawn Wiggins: It used to be headache, it still is sometimes, but so for me, those are my cues that my nervous system is moving from rest and digest into an activated, vigilant response.
• 17:33
  Dawn Wiggins: Those are the body sensations headache, heat, heart racing.
• 17:36
  Dawn Wiggins: Other people are gonna have very different responses.
• 17:40
  Dawn Wiggins: Notice what yours are.
• 17:41
  Dawn Wiggins: Your best indicator love is when you get a text message from your ex.
• 17:45
  Dawn Wiggins: What does your body do in that moment?
• 17:48
  Dawn Wiggins: That will tell you everything you need to know about what your nervous system is doing.
• 17:52
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, some problems with how we live and us perceiving our nervous system.
• 17:58
  Dawn Wiggins: Okay, what this is is it's a communication feedback loop between our brain, our spine and our nerves to our organs, and vice versa.
• 18:10
  Dawn Wiggins: The nerves in our body are communicating things back to our nervous system, our nervous system is communicating things to our organs, and so on and so forth, and that conversation is supposed to be happening all the time in our bodies and our minds.
• 18:22
  Dawn Wiggins: We do so many things to act like we can't hear.
• 18:30
  Dawn Wiggins: The alarm.
• 18:30
  Dawn Wiggins: It's going off, and so we use, give or take earplugs.
• 18:36
  Dawn Wiggins: Rather than learning how to shut off the alarm, we basically use earplugs to pretend it's not happening.
• 18:42
  Dawn Wiggins: Brinay Brown calls that a beer and a banana nut muffin.
• 18:45
  Dawn Wiggins: In her famous TED talk right from 2010, or whatever it was where she went viral, she says we all numb ourselves using a beer and banana nut muffin.
• 18:53
  Dawn Wiggins: So what is your version of beer and banana nut muffin?
• 18:55
  Dawn Wiggins: It's probably Instagram and wine.
• 18:57
  Dawn Wiggins: It could be coffee.
• 18:59
  Dawn Wiggins: It could be shopping.
• 19:01
  Dawn Wiggins: It could be gossiping.
• 19:04
  Dawn Wiggins: What, dawn?
• 19:06
  Dawn Wiggins: Gossiping is one of the ways I regulate my nervous system and put your plugs in and try to pretend it's not happening.
• 19:10
  Dawn Wiggins: Yep, like a lot of behaviors that we use to try to blow off steam, is us trying low key to regulate the nervous system without realizing that that's what we're doing, but not doing it in a meaningful way, meaning not doing it in a way that shuts off the alarm.
• 19:28
  Dawn Wiggins: Gossiping or bitching about our exes is actually perpetuating that alarm going off because it's continuing to reinforce that something dangerous and bad is happening, right, even though the police have already come and cleared the scene.
• 19:42
  Dawn Wiggins: The more we rehearse all the shit that the ex is doing, it's like we're keeping that alarm going, actively blocking our bodies from getting the message that the mode is safety mode.
• 19:52
  Dawn Wiggins: But it's helping discharge some of that frenetic energy, just enough, so we're not feeling like panicky, right?
• 19:58
  Dawn Wiggins: Okay, so there's so much problematic about the fact that we're using earplugs versus shutting the alarm off.
• 20:03
  Dawn Wiggins: I want you to really get honest with yourself about all the ways that you're using earplugs in your life to numb out from the fact that that alarm is blaring in the background.
• 20:15
  Dawn Wiggins: Now there are three steps that you must take in order to optimize your nervous system for healing versus alarming, and the first one we've already covered.
• 20:26
  Dawn Wiggins: It's perceiving which mode it's in and becoming willing to do something about it consistently.
• 20:33
  Dawn Wiggins: This is where you're like crap, dawn.
• 20:35
  Dawn Wiggins: You just really ruined my day.
• 20:36
  Dawn Wiggins: Thanks a lot, cause I think you just took all the things that are enjoyment for me off the table, and that's not true.
• 20:42
  Dawn Wiggins: That's not what I'm saying.
• 20:43
  Dawn Wiggins: I'm not saying you have to give up your beer and banana nut muffin, as Brene would say, but you do have to learn how to shut the alarm off, in addition to those things that are giving you some pleasure.
• 20:53
  Dawn Wiggins: Right now, pleasure is essential.
• 20:55
  Dawn Wiggins: I want you to experience pleasure, but I also want you to be in rest and digest mode, okay, so first step is you must perceive and become willing to shut that alarm off and learn how to do it.
• 21:06
  Dawn Wiggins: The second step is you have to be doing the subconscious reprogramming.
• 21:12
  Dawn Wiggins: Meaning what does that mean, dawn?
• 21:15
  Dawn Wiggins: It means you have to change the negative beliefs that you've internalized into positive beliefs.
• 21:20
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, this is where I see most people get really, really hung up.
• 21:23
  Dawn Wiggins: So if you've gotten past the hurdle of willingness and perception, right Now we're at the hurdle of changing negative beliefs, and this is the one that people miss most and struggle with most.
• 21:34
  Dawn Wiggins: Because if I tell you you're safe, and you've been perceiving that you're not safe, or I'm telling you that you can learn how to trust, and you've been perceiving that you can't trust anyone for a very long time, changing negative beliefs is a process.
• 21:48
  Dawn Wiggins: But here's the thing if you don't change those negative beliefs, your nervous system and if you've heard me talk about the reticular activating system is actively scanning the environment for threats, more often than if you have changed your views and your beliefs into positive ones.
• 22:05
  Dawn Wiggins: Beliefs are passive.
• 22:07
  Dawn Wiggins: Once you've got them locked and loaded, they're passive.
• 22:09
  Dawn Wiggins: They're the predominant program that's running in the background.
• 22:12
  Dawn Wiggins: If you have a prominent belief running in the background of your operating, your brain, body's operating system all the time that says you're not safe, it is very hard to disarm that alarm.
• 22:21
  Dawn Wiggins: And so, first step you got to perceive and you got to get willing and you got to get consistent.
• 22:27
  Dawn Wiggins: Second step you've got to work with yourself and maybe a healer in a way that reprograms those negative beliefs.
• 22:34
  Dawn Wiggins: I advocate for things like EFT, tapping and EMDR.
• 22:38
  Dawn Wiggins: There are lots of ways that you can reprogram negative beliefs so many those are.
• 22:43
  Dawn Wiggins: My two favorite is EFT and EMDR and then oftentimes, homeopathy.
• 22:49
  Dawn Wiggins: That energy healing remedy is what I use with my clients and in my own healing and in my family's healing.
• 22:55
  Dawn Wiggins: That allows those negative beliefs to switch to positive ones much more quickly.
• 22:59
  Dawn Wiggins: Because what is homeopathy, that energy medicine, do?
• 23:01
  Dawn Wiggins: It removes the blocks that are blocking those beliefs from from being able to shift.
• 23:09
  Dawn Wiggins: And then, after the subconscious work, you have to use tools to work with your nervous system Once you've perceived it's in fight or flight mode.
• 23:16
  Dawn Wiggins: Now the tools that I'm going to recommend are not the ones you're expecting.
• 23:20
  Dawn Wiggins: Let me say that again.
• 23:22
  Dawn Wiggins: These tools are not the ones you're going to hear, because the tools that you most commonly hear people talk about for nervous system regulation are tools like cold plunges and remedies like adaptogens, supplements, cold plunges, saunas.
• 23:44
  Dawn Wiggins: Maybe you've heard about somatic things like yoga, possibly breath work, okay.
• 23:50
  Dawn Wiggins: So maybe you've heard of some of the ones that I'm going to use.
• 23:52
  Dawn Wiggins: Okay, but very often you're hearing people talk about nervous system regulation tools in a way that misses the mark on the most basic, most important ones.
• 24:05
  Dawn Wiggins: Get to them Dawn On with it.
• 24:07
  Dawn Wiggins: Most important nervous system tools are feeling your feelings.
• 24:12
  Dawn Wiggins: So much of us.
• 24:16
  Dawn Wiggins: Earplugging the alarm means we are trying not to feel what we need to feel the sadness, the grief, the love, the anxiety, the doubt.
• 24:27
  Dawn Wiggins: Right, we need to feel them all the way and let them pass through.
• 24:32
  Dawn Wiggins: Now, for some of us, they're going to get stuck.
• 24:34
  Dawn Wiggins: We're going to get stuck in a particular feeling and then we're going to need an additional tool to get out of it.
• 24:38
  Dawn Wiggins: But first we have to retrain ourselves that we can tolerate the feelings, we can process them and we can release them.
• 24:45
  Dawn Wiggins: That can't happen until we practice healing them rather than avoiding them or numbing them or denying that they even exist.
• 24:53
  Dawn Wiggins: Okay, the second thing that we need to do, once we're feeling those feelings, is express the shit out of them, and that is not the same as gossiping or bitching.
• 25:01
  Dawn Wiggins: Gossiping or bitching is not expressing them and it is not processing them.
• 25:06
  Dawn Wiggins: It is rehearsing them, it is looping them, it is obsessing or perseverating on them.
• 25:11
  Dawn Wiggins: Expressing them is a full expression of the feeling, and doing that in a journal, doing that in a way where you are allowing the heartbreak to move through you, where you are getting to the more vulnerable feelings, not the angry ones, where you are saying the things to people who can receive them from you, right?
• 25:26
  Dawn Wiggins: So last night actually I got into the time I was in the hospital and I was in a hospital, right?
• 25:32
  Dawn Wiggins: So last night actually I got into the tiniest little spat with my husband as part of a much more meaningful conversation.
• 25:40
  Dawn Wiggins: So on the whole the conversation was magical.
• 25:42
  Dawn Wiggins: There was a tiny little part in there where he got all victimy and I got pissed about it, but I didn't express my pissness in the moment.
• 25:50
  Dawn Wiggins: I could see what was going on, so I let it fly.
• 25:52
  Dawn Wiggins: It's hard to be married to a therapist.
• 25:54
  Dawn Wiggins: I fully admit that.
• 25:55
  Dawn Wiggins: And so by the end of the conversation I was like I would need to cycle back to the part of the conversation where you were being a dick and I was pissed and I said all my peace.
• 26:03
  Dawn Wiggins: And he's like and how is this productive when we've already ended the conversation and solve the things?
• 26:06
  Dawn Wiggins: And I was like sometimes I need to express what I'm feeling because there are so many places in my life where I kind of bypass and say swallow some shit, take it on the chin and then have to go process it on my own Because maybe that relationship with that person it wouldn't be productive to process it, to express it in that place, so with people who are close and safe and responsive with me.
• 26:30
  Dawn Wiggins: I need my day in court and I need to say like, hey, this pissed me off and I need your acknowledgement and your validation.
• 26:35
  Dawn Wiggins: I don't need it, but it's better, right, it's a more thorough processing.
• 26:39
  Dawn Wiggins: And then my nervous system is like, oh, that feels so good, you expressed, you felt, you got validated and you move on right and that is so beautiful when it happens.
• 26:48
  Dawn Wiggins: So feel, express, move.
• 26:51
  Dawn Wiggins: Movement is one of the most powerful ways to allow nervous system expression and that communication that happens between the mind and the body and the nervous system.
• 27:01
  Dawn Wiggins: So yoga and jumping and pounding, banging on your chest, stomping your feet, shaking it out, dancing, walking these are all things that help the nervous system move from fight or flight into rest and digest.
• 27:18
  Dawn Wiggins: They are powerful, powerful tools.
• 27:20
  Dawn Wiggins: And then the breath is so, so powerful.
• 27:23
  Dawn Wiggins: The breath, when you take deep, slow breaths, sends a direct message down that highway, that information super highway, that you are safe Now for so many of us we've been so wound up for so long.
• 27:35
  Dawn Wiggins: One of these tools is not enough.
• 27:37
  Dawn Wiggins: We need to use all of them.
• 27:38
  Dawn Wiggins: Then you can layer in really sexy stuff like cold plunges, saunas, adaptogens oh you know what.
• 27:46
  Dawn Wiggins: Another one is that you're not going to like.
• 27:48
  Dawn Wiggins: That is essential to nervous system.
• 27:50
  Dawn Wiggins: Rest and digest is eating.
• 27:52
  Dawn Wiggins: Many of us who have been in a diet culture for a very long time and are consciously restricting our calories so that we can look good, the body senses prolonged caloric deficit, or just the intention to be in caloric deficit, as a threat.
• 28:07
  Dawn Wiggins: So allowing our bodies to be well fed is another thing that allows us to move into rest and digest.
• 28:13
  Dawn Wiggins: Now I really tried to embrace that this holiday season and say screw it, I'm going to like, allow myself to intentionally gain a couple pounds this holiday season and I'll work it off afterwards.
• 28:22
  Dawn Wiggins: No big deal, I'm just going to eat and I'm not going to police the things I eat and I'm going to deal with it.
• 28:27
  Dawn Wiggins: My body didn't love that either, because my body functions optimally at, you know, like a consistent maintenance weight, and when I add foods like gluten and dairy and things, it doesn't like them.
• 28:40
  Dawn Wiggins: So there are certain things that I have to accept about my body that just feeding it super well all the time in caloric surplus, my body can't keep up with.
• 28:51
  Dawn Wiggins: And then things happen.
• 28:52
  Dawn Wiggins: Things happen that are very uncomfortable.
• 28:54
  Dawn Wiggins: So you know.
• 28:56
  Dawn Wiggins: But but how did I know that I can perceive my nervous system and when it's experiencing optimal rest and digest versus threat.
• 29:06
  Dawn Wiggins: So feeling, expressing, moving, breathing, eating.
• 29:09
  Dawn Wiggins: And then, sure, there are some beautiful supplements and things we can add on that help us heal our nervous systems, right, like adaptogens and various nervous system tonics, b vitamins, very, very good for our nervous system.
• 29:26
  Dawn Wiggins: So we can unpack all of that as a whole episode unto itself.
• 29:31
  Dawn Wiggins: So there you have it.
• 29:33
  Dawn Wiggins: This is the nervous system basics, and now it is time for our segment called getting unstuck, where we take a listener submission in a place where she is stuck.
• 29:43
  Dawn Wiggins: This is anonymous and I unpack it.
• 29:46
  Dawn Wiggins: Today's segment was submitted by Chrissy, and Chrissy isn't actually Chrissy, but this is anonymous, right?
• 29:53
  Dawn Wiggins: And Chrissy and I have a report on the gram.
• 29:56
  Dawn Wiggins: I love it.
• 29:56
  Dawn Wiggins: She and I keep in touch and we've gone back and forth.
• 29:58
  Dawn Wiggins: And so, chrissy, if you're listening, thanks for submitting.
• 30:02
  Dawn Wiggins: And if you want to submit, friend, just go to the show notes and either send me an email or send me a DM.
• 30:09
  Dawn Wiggins: Dm is my favorite, all right, chrissy says I get stuck on anger when I think that my ex is happier doing things we used to do with other women.
• 30:18
  Dawn Wiggins: I'm not necessarily jealous, but I tried so hard to make him happy for 25 years and to watch him make it look so easy and move on and to take his new relationship to do the exact things we used to do and try to insert her into my friend's lives as well.
• 30:33
  Dawn Wiggins: Well, as well.
• 30:34
  Dawn Wiggins: Oi, chrissy, I relate to this.
• 30:35
  Dawn Wiggins: This anger makes me unreasonable.
• 30:38
  Dawn Wiggins: I spin on things and I just get so emotional.
• 30:41
  Dawn Wiggins: I'm better, it's fewer and farther between, but when it happens it's exhausting.
• 30:46
  Dawn Wiggins: I also noticed this week that I still have a physical reaction to him.
• 30:51
  Dawn Wiggins: When I have to check emails, I literally brace myself and look out the corner of my eye Ooh, this is going to be good.
• 30:56
  Dawn Wiggins: That my response.
• 30:57
  Dawn Wiggins: I used to have constant aches and pains and my neck was always locked up, and that hasn't happened in months.
• 31:02
  Dawn Wiggins: And the other day I had to sit across from him at a basketball game and couldn't move my neck the next day.
• 31:07
  Dawn Wiggins: I get so angry that he still affects me in that way.
• 31:11
  Dawn Wiggins: Also relatable, chrissy wraps it up by saying the resentment part comes from feeling like I let myself get screwed financially and also at the relationship he had with his family.
• 31:23
  Dawn Wiggins: That was mine for many years too, and how they have all left me in the dust.
• 31:27
  Dawn Wiggins: I gave up so much of my own life to be part of theirs, losing myself.
• 31:32
  Dawn Wiggins: Essentially, I've come to understand.
• 31:34
  Dawn Wiggins: I was in an abusive situation, although not physical, it was insidious the way it snuck up on me so well said, chrissy and I feel so angry that I let it happen and let my spirit get crushed.
• 31:45
  Dawn Wiggins: Aww, love friend.
• 31:48
  Dawn Wiggins: Okay, let's take it from the top.
• 31:49
  Dawn Wiggins: So the first thing is get stuck on anger and you become unreasonable and you spin on things and get emotional.
• 31:58
  Dawn Wiggins: Okay, I love that this segment is happening in the nervous system episode, because when you get emotional and you're spinning, I want you to now ask yourself how many of the nervous system tools feel, express, move, breathe are you using in those moments.
• 32:15
  Dawn Wiggins: If you're using all four, then great.
• 32:20
  Dawn Wiggins: I would say give it time, right, just give it time.
• 32:23
  Dawn Wiggins: You're not stuck, you're just in process and the process is not maybe moving quite as fast as you would like.
• 32:28
  Dawn Wiggins: But when the fact that you're getting exhausted by it tells me maybe you're not fully expressing in those moments, when it happens, right, and this is relatable because I'm going to kind of jump around here a little bit the people who trigger me.
• 32:45
  Dawn Wiggins: I still have physical reactions to them.
• 32:47
  Dawn Wiggins: I don't want to pathologize that you have a physical reaction.
• 32:50
  Dawn Wiggins: That part's okay, it's normal and in fact your neck locking up is completely normal and also relatable.
• 32:55
  Dawn Wiggins: Coming out of the holidays, I went to the chiropractor and I told him I felt like Humpty, dumpty.
• 32:59
  Dawn Wiggins: I had so many subluxations Now our joints having this reaction.
• 33:05
  Dawn Wiggins: It can happen based on food, but it can also be based on emotional occurrences, and so when your neck locks up and you have these physical reactions, that's appropriate, it's fine.
• 33:14
  Dawn Wiggins: Please don't be hard on yourself for that.
• 33:17
  Dawn Wiggins: So this week being the holidays, not all the people I saw that trigger me was I going to express and feel with them.
• 33:24
  Dawn Wiggins: So I have to go back and do that work in safe places with other people.
• 33:28
  Dawn Wiggins: Right, having some feeling and expression.
• 33:32
  Dawn Wiggins: I use bilateral stimulation and EFT tapping.
• 33:35
  Dawn Wiggins: I use a lot of body movement to get this stuff out of me.
• 33:40
  Dawn Wiggins: I had a good cry in the shower to get it out of me.
• 33:43
  Dawn Wiggins: Right, these feeling, expressing, moving, breathing things are so, so powerful.
• 33:50
  Dawn Wiggins: And then the chiropractor right, the chiropractor helps me get my nervous system.
• 33:55
  Dawn Wiggins: That's what chiropractic does it removes blocks from the nervous system so that we go back to rest and digest.
• 34:01
  Dawn Wiggins: These are the tools I use for that.
• 34:04
  Dawn Wiggins: So, chrissy, out of these tools that I've mentioned, how many of them are you using when you get triggered?
• 34:08
  Dawn Wiggins: I'd really love to genuinely know so.
• 34:12
  Dawn Wiggins: But all that's normal, right.
• 34:13
  Dawn Wiggins: There's nothing about what you're experiencing that tells me there's a lot of stuckness.
• 34:19
  Dawn Wiggins: I only hear a little stuckness, and I just think that if you add some things, you'll sail right through it.
• 34:24
  Dawn Wiggins: Now the next part is the more important part the resentment that you have towards yourself, that you're angry that you let it happen and let your spirit get crushed, okay.
• 34:33
  Dawn Wiggins: That you're still angry that you let it happen basically means that you are still punishing yourself for not having done better at the time.
• 34:41
  Dawn Wiggins: And by continuing to punish yourself, what has happened is you have moved into the role of abuser of self.
• 34:49
  Dawn Wiggins: Okay.
• 34:51
  Dawn Wiggins: By continuing to not forgive yourself and not make peace with the choices you made then in the past version of yourself, you are perpetuating that cycle.
• 35:02
  Dawn Wiggins: So what has to come next, chrissy, love, and I know that, like I just sent you a zinger in the gut, I know you are feeling all the things as you listen to this right now love.
• 35:11
  Dawn Wiggins: It has to be more important to you that you not continue to be abused.
• 35:15
  Dawn Wiggins: It has to be more important to you that you love yourself well and see yourself as worthy of such.
• 35:20
  Dawn Wiggins: It has to be more important to you that you manifest this amazing life and this is actually the part where I think you are stuck is manifestation intentional manifestation of an amazing life hinges on self-acceptance and self-love and not abusing oneself.
• 35:38
  Dawn Wiggins: And when you start to put it together that you are actively blocking the goodness because you are abusing yourself, suddenly it becomes not worth it.
• 35:44
  Dawn Wiggins: Right?
• 35:44
  Dawn Wiggins: We are so used to moating, fading ourselves through anger and fear and shame?
• 35:50
  Dawn Wiggins: Right?
• 35:51
  Dawn Wiggins: Like we're so used to saying like I'm gonna use guilt and shame to motivate myself to be a good and worthy person, versus just saying I am a good and worthy person who is living an imperfect life that is supposed to be learning by doing, and sometimes learning by doing the lessons.
• 36:08
  Dawn Wiggins: Some of the lessons take longer than I would have liked, but you know, most of the time, what I find is that when people get to the other side of this exact moment is when they start to go.
• 36:18
  Dawn Wiggins: Oh, my goodness, it was all worth it and it's all fine, because this was the lesson I always had to learn and I was always blocking my own goodness by holding on to all of this shit for too long.
• 36:28
  Dawn Wiggins: So, chrissy, love, you are magical.
• 36:31
  Dawn Wiggins: Stop abusing yourself.
• 36:33
  Dawn Wiggins: Choose to forgive yourself today.
• 36:35
  Dawn Wiggins: Choose to finally surrender it and say, oh, dear God, don, I receive your permission to forgive myself and therefore I'm gonna do it.
• 36:43
  Dawn Wiggins: I choose to receive all of the love and the good vibes that you are sending me.
• 36:47
  Dawn Wiggins: I choose to receive all of the goodness that is waiting to pop into my conscious current life that I am actively blocking by abusing myself.
• 36:58
  Dawn Wiggins: I'm gonna write it on a piece of paper, I'm gonna tear it up, I'm gonna bury it in the yard.
• 37:04
  Dawn Wiggins: I'm gonna write it on a piece of paper, I'm going to burn it and I'm gonna write a new thing on my mirror I intend to forgive myself and love myself well.
• 37:12
  Dawn Wiggins: That is your mantra, chrissy.
• 37:13
  Dawn Wiggins: I intend to forgive myself and love myself well, and the other shit.
• 37:18
  Dawn Wiggins: You're gonna burn it and bury it and be done with it today, and when you catch yourself doing that love you're gonna go back to.
• 37:25
  Dawn Wiggins: I intend to forgive myself and love myself well.
• 37:28
  Dawn Wiggins: Thank you so much for your submission.
• 37:30
  Dawn Wiggins: Your courage is impacting so many women right now.
• 37:33
  Dawn Wiggins: I love you so much peace.
• 37:35
  Dawn Wiggins: ["divorce Diary"].
• 37:40
  Dawn Wiggins: ["divorce Diary"].