Finding Regulation in Intensity
Overwhelm can make us feel paralysed, and our world can feel increasingly overwhelming right now. Looking after yourself and not being in chronic overwhelm is paramount, not only for your own health but for the wellbeing of those around you. Numerous studies have shown how stress and regulation levels of those in close quarters to us strongly impacts our own regulation, particularly in leadership dynamics in the workplace or at home (i.e. parents). Think, what and who do I help by staying in an anxious or overwhelmed state.
We need each other to find a sense of safety and co-regulation in times of intensity. One present, regulated and conscious person in a room has a massive impact on spreading calm to others. Safety from an evolutionary perspective was so often found in collectivity, in numbers. Let’s use this along with some tools below to find more regulation through the intensity. Let’s stay in connection with those that help us feel safe. Let’s find each other and find presence through it all.
10 Regulation Tools:
☀️ Go outside when you wake up in the morning.☀️ Walk around the block and get some sunlight in your eyes. Set up your circadian rhythm with this signal of safety to the body.
🌲 Nature! 🌲 Put your feet in the earth, sit by a tree. This is so soothing for our nervous system.
🌊 Feel your feelings! 🌊 Overwhelm comes from a high amount of energy swirling through our body without an exit route. Acknowledging the feeling without judgement provides a route out. Perhaps make time to journal about what you feel, and actually let yourself feel it. Even going for a walk with the sole purpose of feeling your feelings along the way can be helpful.
🌀 Shake your body! 🌀 Put on your fav track, or not, and let yourself really shake for 1-2 minutes. Don't think just move, the more you think the harder it will be to really shake it out. When there’s a lot of pent up energy sometimes we need to discharge some of it before finding some presence and calm. If we try to calm too quickly it can have an opposite effect of building more tension, like holding in a cough.
🎙 Tone! 🎙 Let out a handful of juicy audible sighs. Let out an “Ahh”, “Ooh” or “Omm" for 5 seconds. Our vagus nerve, which is in charge of managing our internal bodily functions relative to survival, works on a range of tones that signal levels of safety. Vibrating through audible toning stimulates the vagus nerve and increases the tone, or sense of safety in the body.
🫁 Coherence breathe. 🫁 A scientifically proven practice for relaxing the nervous system out of the stress response. For 5-10mins breathe in for 5 seconds and out for 5 seconds. Gently breathe in and out through the nose expanding into the ribs and belly.
🫂 Hug! 🫂 Boosts oxytocin, strengthens the immune system, lowers the stress hormone cortisol, and so much more!
❤️🔥 Get held by heat. ❤️🔥 Sauna or a warm bath soothes the body like a hug.
👀 Orient intentionally. 👀 Look around the room and out the window slowly, even behind you. Mentally name a few things you see, thereby consciously telling your body where it is in space and that there is little to no threat present.
🚦 Listen to your body signals. 🚦 Hungry? Eat. Tired? Take a nap. Thirsty? Drink water. Need to pee? Go do it. I know, its ridiculously simple. Being in tune and responding swiftly to what our body tells us, however, builds more safety in the system. We feel further away from survival mode.
Find a space where you can be in real connection, where emotions can be shared and processed without increasing overwhelm in the collective nervous system.
