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Before you Speak, Resource Yourself like this · Radiant Voices

• Jeremy de Tolly: What we're looking for from a nervous system point of view is to bring in the influence of the ventral vagal nervous system. The ventral vagal system where oxytocin pumps, our whole body begins to regulate itself, we ground ourselves, become more open, our brain switches on, so we're in the threat states, we might have been more amygdala-oriented, in other words, scanning for danger and really threat detection systems on. When we're When we're in the threat system, our brain doesn't remember particularly well. It's hard to structure sentences. We can't actually access our working memory. So all those beautiful things that you wouldn't, shouldn't, could say, all gone. Welcome everyone. I want you to imagine you're in a group environment where you need to speak. Perhaps it's a meeting or you need to do some public speaking or presenting. Or maybe you're just waiting for your turn to speak and you're feeling kind of triggered. There are feelings in your body that might include anxiety, mounting anxiety, or overthinking, or you might be triggered and feeling a bit irritated with someone. Or you might feel yourself freezing, shutting down, becoming a bit dissociated. Unable to think clearly and so you're not in an optimal state to use your voice. What do you do? The first thing that you're gonna do is take a deep breath. Let's do that all together. Create some space around the situation and begin to do some work. Because there's something very specific that happens to most people who have these kind of things happen. This kind of conditioning arises, they don't feel so good. In nervous system terms, they've either entered into a fight state where they're irritated and pushy and a bit angry, or a flight state, they want to run out of there, they're anxious, maybe sweating, their voice is shaking, or even a freeze state. Where they start to become numb, dissociated, can't think, shut down, and really unable to communicate at all. Their voice shuts down and potentially their whole nervous system. These are not optimal states, but what they often breed in someone who's had a lot of it happen is a sense of helplessness. In other words, as it starts to happen, anxiety will arise about the anxiety. ⁓ no, here we go again. It's gonna happen to me again. And that helplessness is what helps it begin to resemble some kind of a trauma, an ongoing, you could call it a vocal trauma. And of course, getting stuck like that then just reinforces the pattern. It happens again. And so then after it happens, we then go into a bit of a spiral, what I like to call a shame hangover, of self-recriminations, a bit of embarrassment, lots of internal review and self-criticism. And that is not a good spiral, you could say a downward spiral to be stuck in. Where this conditioning then just reinforces itself. And the best thing is, is with a bunch of tools we can kinda hack our way out of these states. So as I say, we first just take a big breath and then we start using tools. Let's just take another deep breath. And begin grounding ourselves. Today we're gonna look at a pretty simple tool. It's really a a toolkit, but the term for this is resourcing. Resourcing is a term that emerged over the last, let's just say, 50 years within trauma therapies. And it has come to mean different things. It means finding stabilization inside in the nervous system. And the weird thing is that there are lots of different methods to find stabilization. In EMDR, eye movement desensitization. Before doing intense trauma work, they'll be resourcing via, let's say, imaginative resources or using your memory to imagine or remember an angel or a pet or a loved one or a safe place, any number of things that will be used on an ongoing basis to create safety inside. That's one example. In somatic experiencing, which is much more body-based, we begin to look for places of safety in the body. There are a number of ways to resource ourselves in real time that work rather well. And today we are going to do the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, which allows us to use our senses to stabilize when things are starting to become unstable and we're getting taken over by a pattern. Or a reactive part. For a moment, let's talk about some objectives here. We're going to resource, we're a bit triggered, things are not feeling good, and this could snowball and get worse, so we're going to resource ourselves to stabilize and feel better. From a nervous system point of view, what might this mean? Okay, our trigger mobilizes us or immobilizes us, mobilizes us into fight or flight, immobilizes us into a freeze response. Either way not optimal when you're trying to communicate. So as we work with our nervous system, we're looking to bring in the influence of the ventral vagal nervous system where that oxytocin pumps through. So our ability to relate and connect and communicate switches on. We're socially engaged. And the brain in the prefrontal cortex, where we want to be able to remember what we want to say and string fancy smart sentences together, and wisdom comes from, those come back online. I'm going do a little side quest into internal family systems, a very popular modern psychotherapy technique. From an IFS point of view, when we move into these threat states, we are moving into parts of ourselves. You could call them conditioned parts, but in in IFS they're called parts, that are then either trying to protect us, get us away from danger. Adapted parts and they're important parts of ourselves, but they're not necessarily so helpful in that moment as they try and get us to leave and run out of the room, but we need to present our ideas in the corporate boardroom. That having that part take over and move to the forefront is not necessarily ideal. It's doing what it's doing to try and protect us, and it probably started trying to protect us like that when we were a child. And then potentially it snowballed as we got older. That for most people is is how it goes. Some develop this much later. But what we're looking from an IFS point of view, as we're working with these threatened parts of ourselves, as we're kind of captured and inside them, like, ⁓ my gosh, I'm scared, or I can't think, what am I gonna do? This is so humiliating, or I feel so triggered, why did they say that? I'm really angry, now bleh I'm gonna blurt and hurt afterwards. We're inside these parts that are just trying to protect us, but they're not optimal for communicating. From an IFS point of view, we're looking to bring forward self-leadership. And this is self with a big capital S. The big capital S in IFS is really our wise, mature leadership aspect. I'll give you some qualities. I can't name these offhand. So Richard Schwartz, the founder of IS, describes self through the eight C's. Calm, curious, compassionate, confident, courageous, clear, creative, and connected. And of course that's how we want to show up when we're communicating and in an environment where we want to use our voice. When we get caught in one of what might be called a sub-personality, in IFS, they're called managers, firefighters, protectors, and so on. And they're really important. We're not looking to shun them and and isolate them and exile them. But we're looking forward to bringing self-leadership to the forefront, a sense of safety, perspective, connection. Let's take another deep breath. And the subtlety of that leadership is a move that sounds a little bit like I'm absolutely terrified to a part of me is terrified. That's okay. Not all of me. So there's this sense of perspective and wisdom and leadership, maturity, presence. And with resourcing, and we're going to get through the technique of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 in a moment, we are looking to bring forward this sense of presence. Being in the present moment. Because when we're triggered like that, often we are not really in the present moment. We're caught in what in complex PTSD terminology is called an emotional flashback. In other words, we're scared in that boardroom, too scared to speak, but we've really been carrying that same emotion since we were a child. And so we're not even really in the present. The people in that boardroom are not scary monsters that want to eat us, but our body is pretending they are. So we're wanting to come into the present, to be present, and to really see this moment as it is and to feel safe in it. I've done a lot of research into the subject matter, and I've recently been looking at scores of books about public speaking and ones that include the term anxiety in the title or the subtitle. Invariably, and these are all good books, this is not about me dissing or knocking them. But invariably the techniques shared are very surface level, often mindset-oriented. And you could say they're trying to bring people into the present. Like one very common technique is: okay, cool, we know you've moved into overthinking, you're in your head, you're making it about you. Move out of that and make it about the audience. Make it about your contribution to them. You could say that that's useful in the sense of we're trying to move out of the shrunken, highly mobilized, very scared part. into a sense of perspective. But the trick is is we've got a an extremely triggered body, a nervous system that is ringing alarm bells, and a brain that is essentially barely working functionally at that moment, aside from the fact that it's just trying to get us the hell out of the room or just get us to freeze and shut down. If you're watching this video and you've been let down by mindset tools and those kind of easy, quick fixes, then I want to put forward the kind of work that I like to do, which is much deeper. The deeper aspects that we want to focus on are one: the body and full nervous system. This is a full body and nervous system event. The second huge aspect is to look at the conditioning, which is, in other words, the life history of where did this come from? Does this have deep roots? Did I learn to feel this afraid or have this kind of a reaction as a child? Because if you just try and use a mindset approach, just change your mindset, think about the audience, make it about them, be generous in your delivery, that's not going to help when part of you is in, in a sense, mortal terror. So this combination of embodied nervous system work with deep deconditioning, I think, are essential components. From there where you've taught the whole being to feel safe, and you've released the conditioning that just arises to hijack you, and you've taught it to that you're now safe in the world, then you can layer on amazing skills, beautiful speech writing, amazing social skills, and ⁓ the ability to do small talk and all the kinds of fun skills. I'm gonna add on other things like working with eyes and eye contact or heart-centeredness. Or deep emotional authenticity and the ability to really connect with your emotions and speak in a way that touches hearts and minds. All of these are useful and powerful when added to a deep foundation of inner safety. So, this is not the deepest tool in the world, but it's a very, very good one. And I'd love you to explore it. The 5-4-3-2-1 technique. So here's how it goes. So using the 5-4-3-2-1 technique. We are resourcing ourselves by using our senses to become deeply aware of the environment around us. A bit like an animal scanning for danger or a bird at a birdbath or pecking on food that then looks around to assess safety, work out if there's danger. You're using your senses to come into the present to find out what's really here, as opposed to the kind of imaginary monster of. All the scary people that you're about to talk to who are actually really lovely humans just waiting to hear you speak. So, how do you do this? How do you become this present using 54321? The first place to start is with our eyes. So you might scan your environment and you want to find five things in your visual field to look around and find things that you can name that feel safe and comfortable and relaxing. So why don't you do that? Look around right now. Try and find colors that look soothing. Notice the light. Notice textures. Shadows or movement. You might also try and use soft gaze. In other words, stop looking with highly focused eyes, but soften your eyes. And just take in your surroundings and take a deep breath as you count out five things in your visual field that are real, here, present. And allow some kind of relaxation. And of course, you're going to try all five senses, so be patient if you this hasn't worked for you yet. Next up is to use touch and find four things that you can touch and find texture in. You might start with your palms, or you might touch your heart here. You might feel the fabric of your clothing. You might just touch your skin, taking a breath between each, but try and find four things where you just feel the texture, really actually feeling the physical sensations of it. Slow down and find these four things. Next up, find three things you can hear. It might be your own breathing. Some of us can even hear the sounds of our own body. But listen to the environment around, perhaps their birds or the gentle hum of air conditioning. Or it might be your tinnitus like me. Or you can simply tune into the silence too. But just taking a breath and settling down. Tuning in to these three things you can hear. We're presencing ourselves. We're arriving here. We're introducing or supporting self-leadership with that big capital S. Second last is two things that you can smell. For some of us, this is a trickier one. Perhaps it's just the smell of the air in the room. Perhaps can smell some moisturizer or aftershave or perfume or a smell your dog made. Just tuning into it and it could also be the temperature of the air as you breathe it in. Just paying attention as you breathe in with me. Finally, find one thing you can taste, or just engage with the taste in your mouth. We don't pay attention to it very much like this, do we? We're just dropping in, taking a deep breath and feeling that. If I was to add in a last thing, is just to tune into the body in the chair, your body all the way down to your feet. Take a few breaths and just allow your awareness to drop downwards into feeling your body. So we'll make this a 5-4-3-2-1 with the bonus zero, and the zero is just tuning into this. still quiet presence of the lower body. And within this, the key to this is not just to do the noting and feeling and seeing, but to also notice what happens in your body and how it feels as you tune into these. Do you notice any softening or relaxing or presencing? Do you notice that parts of you wake up that are more present, more capable, a little wiser, less afraid? More able to communicate, more able to be present, more able to just enjoy this moment as it is. It seems that this orientation system is built into us. This ability to scan our environment, see it safe, and then feel safety inside us is such a simple, perfect key to introducing safety. I'd recommend using it when you walk into a meeting or as you're waiting to speak. Start Dropping into safety. Scan your environment. Sometimes it's even useful. Look for exits. Notice where you could run if you had to. And then notice other things that you can see that feel safe. Notice the colors and the textures and how the light moves on the wall. Become more present, feel more safe. I'd love you to give me some feedback. Experiment with this out in the wild. Let me know how the video felt. Did it feel nice to slow down like this? Did the podcast start feeling boring and slow as we did that? Or did it feel yummy? It felt nice for me as we were doing it, but I know that this is supposed to be entertaining. So was it unentertaining as we did this? I'd love your feedback. Experiment with always regulating your nervous system and finding safety when using your voice and finding yourself around others. This continual process of grounding and calming and Introducing ventral vagal support of just connection. I feel good in me. And doing that as an ongoing discipline, I think, is one of the gifts to feeling tremendously good around other human beings and being able to use your voice at will and to be able to just trust it to come out and say what you want to say with very little effort, with huge amounts of trust. Thank you so much.