Latest / Holding It Together (Kinda) / #5 Companion If You Say Calm Down, We Fight
Transcript
- 0:02Michael Mackniak: Hey everybody, welcome back to this midweek unpack for holding it together, kinda.
- 0:09Michael Mackniak: I'm Michael Maknac.
- 0:11Michael Mackniak: I want to talk to you today about an episode that we did with my friend Danielle Worthen Cullenberg that we called an off switch for neurospicy brains.
- 0:20Michael Mackniak: I love that term, neurospicy.
- 0:23Michael Mackniak: Uh talking to her during this episode was the first time that I'd heard it, and since then I've heard it used uh very often when we're discussing neurodivergency uh and just any kind of person who is what do they call that, atypical, or I don't even know what the the PC word is these days.
- 0:47Michael Mackniak: But when we talked to Danielle, we talked about neurodivergence, sensory overload, trauma, caregiving pressure, and how all these things to keep a nervous system stuck in high alert long after an immediate threat has passed.
- 1:05Michael Mackniak: Um and of course, at the time, as you know, we didn't have um these these companions, these these action companions ready, and they're ready now.
- 1:18Michael Mackniak: So I'd love to offer it to you for free.
- 1:21Michael Mackniak: Uh for instance, in in this particular episode, and one of the things that you find in the action companion is that telling someone who's dysregulated or overloaded to just calm down never works.
- 1:36Michael Mackniak: I mean, the worst thing that anybody could say to me when I'm in an agitated state uh or highly emotional is calm down, calm down.
- 1:46Michael Mackniak: I I it's like a pet peeve to me.
- 1:50Michael Mackniak: So actually mapping what triggers sensory and emotional activation is where we start building real regulation for you or for the person who's in that quote-unquote dysregulation.
- 2:06Michael Mackniak: Uh, it they're helpful tools.
- 2:08Michael Mackniak: So if you look at page two of this companion guide, it forces you to examine what happens when stress becomes the atmosphere of a home.
- 2:16Michael Mackniak: Uh, what happens when we're constantly reminding the nervous system that it needs to keep protecting against danger through vigilance and or shutdown sometimes or avoidance or control.
- 2:30Michael Mackniak: Even if, as we look at page three, we want to develop a nervous system map where we identify sort of our early signals and our uncertainty or conflicts, even sensory overload overload before we reach a breaking point.
- 2:46Michael Mackniak: The the it's it's just really cool little companion for you guys to not have more to do.
- 2:52Michael Mackniak: It's not homework, it's just if anything resonated with you in the episode, it certainly gives you a worksheet where you can put pen to paper and do that cathartic exercise to clear your head a little bit.
- 3:10Michael Mackniak: You know, sometimes different support needs are not bad behavior, they're not weakness, they're not lack of effort.
- 3:18Michael Mackniak: Accommodations uh very often make participation possible, and that's one of the takeaways from this episode that I thought was really powerful.
- 3:32Michael Mackniak: So go back, check out the episode, uh give the Neurospicy uh Brains Listener Action Guide PDF a try.
- 3:42Michael Mackniak: Check it out, and until next time, keep on holding it together, even if it's just kinda.