Take Control of Your Life: A Toolkit for Healing

Jesse (00:27:29):

Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a very happy, healthy home and never associated myself with having trauma again. I never thought of myself as needing to talk to anybody about therapy or trauma. I was like, I don't have, everything was fine. I was healthy, happy. But hearing all this, the little t trauma, absolutely, but I don't have a memory of a specific day, a specific time, a specific person that might've caused that. So can I just leave it as all these emotions come from a little T trauma?

Jesse (00:28:23):

I think there's a lot. It just instantly makes me want to cry, get emotional. I also resort to shutting down. But again, I don't know where that's coming from. Why am I so emotional about certain things? I don't have a bad memory associated with it.

Mel Robbins (00:28:48):

Well, here's what I want you to understand, and this is really good news. You don't have to know when it began because this is a very familiar thing that happens to you. And all you have to know is that now here you are in your adult life. You don't want this to be the automatic reaction to situations that are overwhelming. You just don't. And so that's all you need to know. And here's what's really cool about this. If you start to identify all those moments during your day where you get either emotionally overwhelmed or you feel emotionally triggered, that's your map to healing. And you can begin the work of repairing your nervous system response to situations where you think you're in trouble or you think you're overwhelmed or you think you're going to screw up without knowing where this all started. And as you start to do that and your nervous system starts to repair itself and you start to feel more steady and you start to be able to tolerate waves of uncomfortable emotion and you're able to scoot through difficult situations at home, at work, with friends, whatever, like a boss, you will start to remember your past differently because I also believe that a lot of this stuff happened before we were five years old and we could describe it for ourselves.

(00:30:10):

And so the only narrative that we have about our childhood is the ones that we've been told. And that doesn't mean that your childhood was bad. It just means that there were moments when you were really little that somebody's tone of voice scared you and that was it. And your nervous system remembers that and you got really emotional because nobody comforted you. That's it. And it doesn't mean your parents are bad. It doesn't mean like anything about the adults around you because remember, it's personal. It's not about what the adults are doing. It's about how your little baby body experienced what was happening. And so it's a great question, and I just want to make sure you listening get this. You don't have to remember any originating incident, and it's not required that you do that in order to start the process of repairing your nervous system, which is basically repairing the way you respond to difficult emotion and to situations that are triggering.

(00:31:10):

That's what this is. That's number one. Number two, this works beautifully with talk therapy or without it. So I love talk therapy because I love having somebody objective and trained to help me think through situations and get strategic and framework out conversations. And it's been invaluable for my marriage with Chris to help us really understand one another. But the interesting thing about nervous system repair is you can talk till you're blue in the face about what happened to you and about what you want to do moving forward. But I find oftentimes I can talk through it, but if I get into a situation that's emotionally triggering, I still have the same fricking emotional response, which for me is not shutting down. It's lashing out. And it wasn't until I realized that this is not something that's happening from your neck up in your thoughts. This is something that happens in your body as a feeling first.

(00:32:19):

And because it is remembered in the nervous system, your response to these situations, Jesse, is to get really well up with emotion. Mine is to get welled up with anger, and I don't even know where it comes from because like you, I don't remember anything but the positive stuff. You can also go and do this kind of work everybody and not feel like you got to blame your parents because it's not really about all the things outside. It's about your body's reaction to it. And now the opportunity to reprogram your nervous system and your wiring so that you have different responses now as an adult. Does that make sense? Yes. Awesome. My husband didn't think he had trauma either. And in our marriage counseling, one of the things that we've talked a lot about is that Chris does not express his needs. And you can tie the fact that he does not express his needs.

(00:33:16):

He shuts down like you do because of small t. I don't even like the smaller large T because I think trauma is trauma and it's personal how big it feels to you. And I think when you call it little T, it makes you feel like you're deficient if it seems like an insignificant thing, but it's had a residual effect on you. And that was that way for Chris. He was basically a latchkey kid. His dad was always working, his mom also was working, and he was the youngest of three. And he came home every single day to an empty house, and he woke up and got himself to school and walked to school two miles. And I'm not trying to tell some sob story, but there was nobody there. There was nobody at his baseball game. And so he was trained as a kid to feel like his needs didn't matter because even when he asked somebody to be there, oftentimes they couldn't be or they wouldn't be.

(00:34:11):

And so that feeling of shutdown, that surge of emotion that you feel walking into the house, and again, nobody's there walking onto the baseball field and everybody's parents are there, but yours, that surge of emotion that you feel that you don't matter. That's his lived experience. It doesn't mean his parents are horrible people. It just is what happened and it's how he experienced it. And now as a 53-year-old man, here we are in couples counseling talking about the fact that I lash out and I'm addicted to being busy when I get emotionally overwhelmed and he shuts down. And these are all things that have been markedly improved because we both take the steps to take care of our nervous system. So what is the nervous system? I used to think that the nervous system meant the nerves in your body. 

(00:36:15):

And so I love my metaphors. So let's use one here on this topic of trauma and nervous system repair because that's going to keep this very visual and it also makes this less heavy, okay? Because in the repair zone, we're not in the reliving the trauma zone. When I think about my nervous system from this point forward, whenever somebody says nervous system, I want you to think about electricity and the wiring in your home, whether you live in an apartment or you live in a house, there is wires in those walls and there is power and electricity coursing through them, and it all connects to the light bulbs and the fire alarms and the smoke detectors, and it connects everything those wires, it powers it. And when the wiring in the building works properly, you know what happens? Easy breezy, you flip a switch, it's like magic.

(00:37:07):

The lights come on, things are smooth, they're predictable. You can even dim them up and down whenever you want to. You're in control. They're steady, they're bright, they glow. Isn't it wonderful? Electricity and the smoke alarms, we love our smoke alarms. Alarms are important because when they're working properly, when the batteries are charged, they're silent, which means we can sit in our beautiful, bright, wonderful, glowy apartment and we can enjoy our lives and they stay silent unless there's a real emergency and they need to sound the alarm. Your nervous system is the wiring in your house. That's what it is. It's powering you. It's connecting everything. And it is designed to be reliable. It's designed to be consistent. It is designed to dim up and dim down. It is designed to come on and to come off trauma. And these experiences that you and I have lived through, it's just any experience that puts a nick in the wiring, that's it.

(00:38:08):

Like a little mouse that has chewed through the wire. Oops, the light went out. Or maybe you have something big happen and I don't know, you're doing some demo and you knock down the wrong wall, somebody knocks down the wrong wall and next thing you know, boom, the whole thing is blown. Or maybe it's a circuit breaker that gets overwhelmed and it just flips off and it's no longer working. Or when the batteries run low in your fire alarms and in the middle of the night it's like beep, beep, beep. Even though there's nothing wrong, it's going off. It's so annoying. That's what it's like to live with a nervous system that needs repair. When your nervous system needs repair, it's because the wiring inside you has damage to it. That's it. That's all that it is. And it's like the lights are blinking or they don't turn on when you need them to turn on, or the fire alarm is going off and nothing is wrong.

(00:39:10):

And what I'm here to tell you is when you recognize that trauma is what caused this issue, but you have within you the power to find the little break and to repair it so that the energy inside of you flows freely and is steady and is bright and is reliable, holy cow, your whole life changes because you don't feel on edge anymore. You can relax, you can be at peace, you can let love in because you're not having the energy in you not work, right? I love this metaphor so much because when I visually see the simplicity of how you repair things and how you get the lights back on and working again, we can apply that to the tools you're about to learn. And I'm not trying to downplay the trauma you may have experienced. I'm trying to lift up and highlight the power that you have inside you to heal this.

(00:40:10):

And so let me give you an example. In the last house that we lived in outside of Boston from the very day, 15 years ago that we had bought our fridge, the person that installed it nicked the waterline and the ice maker never worked. And because the fridge was jammed into a cabinet, we couldn't pull it out to fix it. And so for the last 15 years, I have had a refrigerator that does not make ice. I personally love ice. I love ice in my drinks. So this has always been a big pet peeve of mine. And so when we moved to Vermont, the number one thing on my wishlist was an icemaker. Like not just the icemaker in the fridge, but a real true icemaker with a scoop. Like this was the thing I really wanted. And so here's what's happened. I don't know what's wrong with our icemaker, but our ice maker constantly overwhelms the electrical circuit in this house.

(00:41:07):

Honest to goodness, three to four times a week, I go to open the thing up and it's either drained of all the ice or the light is off, and it's because the circuit could not handle the surge. And so what did it do? It just shut down. That is the exact same thing that happens to you in some situations. There's a situation that triggers something and you have this surge of emotion that you can't handle and you shut down. And so several times a week, I have to go down in the basement, I got to open up the circuit breaker panel, and every time I go down there, I'm like, why have we labeled this thing in pencil that I can barely even read? I need to get a sharpie and I have to line up the label with where the breaker is and find the breaker that is flipped off and count the numbers down the left hand side and then count to where I think the thing is.

(00:42:02):

And then I finally find the little switch and I flip it back on and boom, electricity is flowing again. And I'm using that example because I do this three or four times a week. That icemaker it is overwhelming the circuits. It is a fact. At some point we might have to replace the actual, I dunno, wiring or I dunno, the thing it plugs into. Not sure what's going on there, but I can find the switch and I can flip it and it works again. And in doing that, I'm repairing the connection so that everything runs smoothly. And so when people talk about nervous system repair, it's exact same thing that there are deliberate things that you can do to basically notice when the lights go out or they're blinking or there's an alarm going off or there's a surge of emotion that overwhelms you. And when that happens, you find the fuse box, you find the switch that got flipped and you simply flip it back and things will run smoothly.

(00:43:10):

And the more that you do this, the faster you'll repair your nervous system. And what happens when you repair your nervous system is that situations that typically trigger you to feel a flood of emotion and either shut down or snap at people or get frustrated or whatever your version of that is. When that alarm comes on, the anxiety that you feel that when you start to practice the tools and it begins with awareness, honestly, you are doing the work to repair your nervous system. And the more that you do this, the less triggered you get, the less overwhelmed you become When you're in difficult situations, the more you can tolerate and handle emotions that are uncomfortable, and that means you feel more capable, you feel more in control, you feel proud of yourself. 

(00:45:09):

The problem is now 30 years later, it's six o'clock. You're fine. You don't live with your father, you're safe. You've been in therapy, but it's six o'clock and you can't explain. Why do you feel on edge at the end of the workday? Why do you feel on edge when somebody pulls into the driveway? Why do you feel on edge when the sun starts to go down? I'll tell you why you feel on edge. You don't remember this. Not consciously, but your nervous system sure does. So that's why you can't put your finger on it. I want you to consider this is an example of trauma. This is an example of why repairing your nervous system. That's how you change your experience of life when six o'clock rolls around. Because just like I didn't want to continue to wake up every morning and feel like something was wrong, repairing my nervous system is how I am now able to wake up every morning and feel okay.

(00:46:06):

I don't even feel nervous or anxious about it. I feel perfectly fine because I have repaired the trauma that I experienced in fourth grade. Or here's another example. Maybe you weren't the greatest student when you were younger. So walking into a classroom or being asked to read something out loud when you were seven years old felt like a life-threatening situation to your little brain because you stuttered or you couldn't read very well and your friends laughed. And so now let's fast forward 20 years and you're wondering, why do I keep getting passed over for a promotion at this consulting firm that I work at? I work hard. I put in long hours. My clients all love me. I'll tell you why. It's because you're not vocal or visible at work. And you can blame trauma for that because every time you walk into a meeting or you've got to advocate for yourself or you've got to present something to your boss, guess what happens?

(00:47:03):

Your nervous system remembers what it was like to be called on when you were seven years old, and you feel this wave of emotions just like my icemaker sends this wave of energy at the breaker, and then you shut down. You don't speak up as much. You don't advocate for yourself. You're not as aggressive as you need to be, and that's why you're getting passed over. You have the same response as an adult like you did as a kid. Now you know what to do. And here's where it gets interesting. This is not about what's in your head, it's what's remembered in your body. This is all about the surge of emotion and feeling. Now, I know that this is a lot, but I want to underscore that there's really good news. There's really good news because when you spot this, you can fix this.

(00:47:47):

You can repair your nervous system, and when you do, you will be able to feel more relaxed. You'll be more in control, you'll be more competent, more capable. You'll put yourself out there more, you'll take more risks and you will experience more joy. And I want to remind you one more thing that I think is really encouraging. I didn't know any of this four years ago. Four years ago, I was still waking up feeling like something was wrong and I was still running around like a lunatic, super busy. You want to know why? Also trauma, because if you think about what happened to me, I was sound asleep when I woke up and found that kid on top of me. I had been in a safe, sound asleep situation.

(00:48:35):

So of course I don't feel comfortable being still. If I'm busy, nobody can catch me, nobody can hurt me. And I didn't trace that addiction to busyness back to that fourth grade incident until literally a couple years ago. And so I'm telling you all this because that's a relatively short amount of time, and it's a relatively short amount of time for me to completely transform what it's like to live in my body and in my mind and how I'm showing up in relationships. My old friends will tell you I'm a completely different person today, and it has to do with repairing my nervous system. If you lean into what I'm talking about, this is liberating because I realize there's nothing wrong with me and there's nothing wrong with you, you and I, we just have a nervous system that needs a little attention. Maybe you need to tighten some screws.

(00:49:26):

Maybe you need to replace some wiring. Maybe you need to flip a switch and check the circuit breaker. No problem. You can do all that. And so my goal today is to make you think differently, completely differently about your own power and to really see your nervous system as a source of your power and as a source of peace and of confidence that you can tap into. And so for me, what happened when we did this project back in 2019 is I started to get really serious about the connection between past trauma and traumatic experiences and situations where my nervous system is like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding and healing it. And in the past four years, boy, I've done just about everything. I've been in therapy. Chris and I have been in therapy. I have done this EMDR, which we'll talk about more in other episodes, which is this kind of eye movement therapy.

(00:50:25):

Again, a trauma modality. I have incorporated cold exposure, ice baths, that kind of stuff as a way to train my nervous system. I've done several guided psychedelic therapy things with psychiatrists that have been profoundly moving and helpful. And I am here to tell you that it is possible to heal the disruption that you feel in your body. Even if you're sitting here listening and you're saying to yourself, I really don't think I have any trauma, Mel, that may be true. I doubt it. But here's what you do have. You have a nervous system, and if you're tired of getting irritated when somebody cuts you off in traffic and then you can't shake, how rattled you feel if you get completely worked up about the dumbest things or you just cannot stop worrying all the time. I want to tell you something. This all comes back to your nervous system too.

(00:51:36):

If you want to be successful in business, get your nervous system in repair. I have had more success now that I have a nervous system that is working with me and that keeps me confident and calm and cool headed than ever before. And so this impacts everything. And I'm going to talk about this because I'm getting a lot of questions about those of you that can't focus, that you're having trouble prioritizing the business that you want to launch, and I want you to truly consider that the nervous system repair is a really critical piece to you being able to operate on all cylinders, to do your best thinking and to achieve the results that you want. Check out this question from a listener name, Uske.

Uske (00:52:24):

HeJllo, Mel. So the biggest thing I'm struggling with is my new mindset. I want to keep up with, I want my mindset be out of survival mode because right now I feel like I'm standing in my own way, which sucks a lot. Thanks a lot for your hard work. I'm sending lots of love from Germany.

Mel Robbins (00:52:47):

I don't mean to laugh, but that part at the end, which sucks a lot. I mean, that was just so cute. Anytime anybody says survival mode, that to me is code for past trauma. 

(00:53:55):

I can't do this. I'm getting triggered every day. The reason why you can't focus is because when your nervous system is triggered like that, it overrides the prefrontal cortex and the cognitive region of your brain. You can't focus because your nervous system is in control and repairing your nervous system. So you're not going through your day-to-day life in survival mode, feeling triggered, feeling untethered, feeling like something is about to happen. Repairing your nervous system is what will improve your focus, because you can't focus if your nervous system is in control. This isn't just common sense, it's science. It is possible to go from being a person who feels on edge, waiting for the next shoe to drop, like everything is wrong, triggered to being calm, cool, and centered. And I have come to believe based on my own experience, my husband's experience, the research that we've been doing, the research that's out there, that all mental health issues do not begin in the mind.

(00:55:11):

They begin in your nervous system because the truth is that you feel a sensation in your body first, and that sensation in your body then triggers your mind to try to make sense of it. If you're still listening to this and you're like, this isn't me. I got 55 people I'm going to forward this to because they need to hear this, just stop. Absolutely everybody, particularly after the past three years, just think about what you just lived through. There's not a single human being that can sit on 50 hours of zoom calls a week and work for home while your kids are underfoot and the dog is there and nobody knows what's going on and masks and all of this. We're not built for this. Of course, the lights are blinking. Of course you cannot focus. Of course, you're having trouble with procrastinating and stress and anxiety, and it's not just documented in the research.

(00:56:11):

This is fricking common sense. We have lived in a state of uncertainty, sustained for three years. The alarm system in your body has gone off, and it's not just you. I've given over a and 50 presentations in the last year about the research related to productivity, to stress, to mindset. Whether I've been talking to Microsoft or Starbucks or JP Morgan or Biogen or Compass Real Estate, absolutely everybody including you is having trouble focusing and being productive. And it's because of our nervous system. We have not gone into our fuse box and found the switch and flipped ourselves back into normal operating mode, and it's time we do it. This is not a conversation for losers. This is a conversation for winners. I don't want to operate with blinking lights. I'm sick of this crap. So I'm going to show you that there is a treasure inside of you in your body, that you have within you the ability to heal your nervous system.

(00:57:15):

You have within you this incredible switch. It is literally like a circuit breaker fuse that you can locate and you can flip on and off in moments where just like my icemaker, there is that surge or just like those situations where you don't know why, but you just suddenly feel overwhelmed or triggered or on edge. And what you're about to learn, this is it. If you want to achieve your goals, if you want to knock it out of the park this year, if you'd like to make more money than you ever thought possible and also enjoy it while you do it, are you interested in being more confident, more present, happier content? Well then take this next part of the conversation seriously, because when we come back, I am going to bring you back home into your body. I'm going to show you simple ways that you can settle your mind, your body and spirit when life triggers you.

(00:58:07):

And I want you to get serious about this. So now that you understand what the nervous system is, we got to go a layer deeper because we are not going to be screwing around with the wiring unless you really understand what's going on. I don't know if you've ever had a situation where somebody in your family's like, oh, I'll just repair the light. And you're like, no, we better make sure that, don't you dare. You got to turn off the breaker. Make sure you're safe. And so let's go a layer deeper here. When you start to do nervous system repair, I want you to understand that nervous system repair is your ability to switch between the two nervous systems that you have. That's right. You have two nervous systems. 

(00:59:12):

That's the one we want to flip on. That's the nervous system that allows you to relax. It allows you to tap into your confidence. It allows you to focus. It allows you to do your best work. It allows you to let in love and experience joy. I love, love, love the parasympathetic nervous system. Now, the other nervous system is the one that we need to deal with, and that's the sympathetic nervous system, which is a really weird name because sympathetic is what researchers call the fight or flight nervous system. Sympathetic is the alarm bell. It's the part of the nervous system that got turned on during traumatic situations. It got turned on as you were experiencing discrimination or poverty or teasing or abandonment or any of the various things that we've talked about that could trigger a traumatic experience. And here's the thing, if that sympathetic nervous system gets flipped on, it can get stuck there.

(01:00:13):

And what you have to repair is you've got to repair it by turning it off. When you get triggered, I am telling you that part of the reason why we're having a hard time reclaiming our confidence and our focus and our presence and our contentment in this world today is because we are all in a state where our fight or flight or fawn or freeze nervous system is still on. And we're going to turn it off today. And here's how we're going to do it, because you've got this wiring right running through your body just like electricity runs through the walls of a house, and the electricity's always there, nervous system, and wiring is always there, but in order to turn the lights on and off, you flip a switch and there is a switch inside you. This is so cool. I wish they taught this to kids in school.

(01:02:11):

This is your nervous system revved up. This is you living on as if something's wrong. This is like when you get a text and you immediately feel like you've done something wrong and then you rewrite the text 15 times and you throw an emoji. So nobody's mad at you. You want to know why you do that. You're nervous system, you're on edge, everything's a threat. Everything makes you triggered. And so when I got serious about this, I discovered the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is our secret to changing this. It is a light switch that helps you turn the light on or off. And I believe that in some way your life or the last three years or the uncertainty that you have come through or the issues in your life that you have survived, have left the light switch on your nervous system is in a state of alert.

(01:03:15):

That annoying light bulb is blinking in the background and it's time to turn it off. And so we're going to turn it off using the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve runs from your seat all the way through your body, through every major organ, through your vocal cords and all the way up to the top of your head. And the technical term when you flip the switch is your quote toning the vagus nerve. That's what researchers and neuroscientists say. I just say, let's just flip the switch. Let's just use the vagus nerve. And there's lots of ways that you can do this. So the vagus nerve, when you hum, you sing. I think one of the reasons why so many of us love singing, whether you're singing in a religious ceremony or you're singing with friends or you're singing in the car as you're driving, you don't realize this. But in addition to just music's awesome is that when you are singing, you are flipping the switch on the vagus nerve in your vocal chords. Another way that you can flip the switch is high fiving your heart. So we wrote about this in the high five habit. You just take your hands and let's do this together right now. We're going to put our hands right in the center of our chest, put one hand right on top of the other. Okay? And then we're going to take a breath together. Here we go.

(01:04:41):

And I want you to just push in because I really want your vagus nerve to know, okay, we're going to turn you on and we're going to take another breath in, and then you're going to repeat three sentences with me. I'm okay. I'm safe, I'm loved. And I bet even just in those 15 seconds you felt yourself come back home into your body. And if you can hear yourself even thinking those three things, I'm okay. I'm safe, I'm loved. It's true in this moment, and it's a way for you to signal to the vagus nerve that you've just pressed on that you're okay right now. It's okay. We can flip the switch off. We can back into our body. And one of the cool things about this high fiving your heart is we did a study with 164,000 people in 91 countries. So a study with 164,000 data points.

(01:05:50):

And this worked for absolutely everybody that tried it as a calming tool that a lot of kids started using it in school. You get picked on, you go into the bathroom high five, your heart, you can come back to your center, you can flip off the alarm that got triggered by some kid picking on you and you can flip the switch and come back into your confidence. People at work, you do a presentation and everybody stares at you like you got four heads and nobody says Good job. And you get triggered. Of course you get triggered. Put your hands on the heart, come back into your body, flip the switch off, regain your calm confidence self. This is available to you and I want you to use it because I don't think you realize how much your nervous system getting triggered when somebody cuts you off in traffic.

(01:06:45):

There it goes. See, everybody's out to get me. No, they're not. Hands on the heart. Come back into your body, turn the lights off, flip the switch, get your power back. Another way you can do this, take a warm bath, just go soak in a tub. It's amazing. I love doing that. Absolutely love doing that. And another way that you can do this, you see this all over the internet, cold exposure therapy. Now I have a tub that I climb into. I hate it, absolutely hate it. But this has been transformational because when you put yourself in a situation, whether you're jumping into a lake or you're sitting in a cold bathtub or whatever, standing in a cold shower, just end your shower with 30 seconds of cold water. It sucks. And what you're doing is you're exposing your body to a situation where your nervous system turns on the lights go on baby.

(01:07:47):

When you climb into 34 degree water and it freaks out, and then you calm yourself down by breathing and you are training yourself that even in situations where I get triggered, even in situations that are awful, like 34 degree water that I'm sitting in, I have the power to flip the switch and calm my ass down, breathe through it, and know that I'm going to be okay. That's a freaking, and I know what you're thinking. You're like, are you shitting me, Mel Robbins? You're telling me to deal with trauma by taking a fricking bath. You're telling me that I can handle abuse from childhood and poverty and all this crap that I've had to deal with my losing my spouse by taking a cold shower. What is wrong with you woman? Yeah, I am telling you that because this is not about the shower. This is not about the bath.

(01:08:49):

This is about you and your nervous system. This is about you training yourself, that you have the power to be okay no matter what's going on around you, that you are bigger than the things that you survived. That yeah, by standing in a shower, you're training yourself for confidence, for the capacity to feel something and get triggered and not let it hijack your life. That's what this is about. And when you do that, you take that new you into your life. You take a person who has the capacity to have shit goes sideways in your life and not get hijacked by it. You become the kind of person that could have survived horrendous trauma and be able to heal yourself over time. 

(01:10:17):

And don't even get me started about what a nightmare spouse I am when I'm nervous and on edge. I make the people that work for me nervous and on edge. I am a better leader, a better parent, a better wife, and I am a way better Mel in terms of what I'm experiencing. And so I've already explained the therapy, EMDR, the guided psychedelic therapy that we have done both as a couple as individuals. We've recently done something guided by therapists as a family, which was extraordinary and high fiving your heart, humming, chanting, all of these things that tone your vagus nerve. But there are two other things that you can do that are free that will help you dip a toe in the water of exploration. One is audit your day. Just keep a notebook, this is free. And just notice when the wave of emotion comes.

(01:11:13):

And all you have to do is just kind of write down just what happened and what triggered it. Was it a particular thing somebody said? Was it a look on their face? Was it just a feeling that you got? And just become curious about it. Not like, oh, something's wrong, but just like, oh, interesting. I wonder where that faulty switch is. I wonder where that little nick is. Where's that little mouse that chewed on something that's making, that's a blinking light. That's all that is. So get curious about it and then start to ask yourself when you get home tonight and you sit down and it's kind of quiet, go, when else have I felt like this? When else in my life? Or who else have I felt this around? What situations, where did I have a similar thing? And you'll start to be able to trace back.

(01:11:51):

And that is a pattern of responding to a certain type of situation a certain way. So you can do this free audit and that will help you become more self-aware. That then helps you to apply the tools you just learned in those moments when you feel the surge coming. It also helps you avoid those situations. It helps you talk to somebody about those situations. And one other thing that you can do is journaling is an incredible way to either start or end your day and start to forge not only new neural pathways but new stories and new awareness around these things. And so one prompt that you can use that we've talked about is how can I make this easy? Another thing that you could do if what you're seeking is peace is you could write, how can I make today peaceful? How could I make myself feel safe today?

(01:12:45):

Those are all prompts that you can use to cue your mind, body, and spirit and your nervous system that this is something that matters to you and to really just gain awareness around it because you are able to be in control of your emotions. You are able to repair your nervous system and you can take control and not let this response that has been with you for a very long time continue to control you. And that's the opportunity here. That's really exciting. If you feel like there's big things that you can't access, that there's this missing piece that happiness is evading you that you just can't quite put your finger on why you're in this cycle of relationships. I'm telling you, please take your nervous system seriously, please start to investigate more about the vagus nerve. And this is one of those topics where I was going to pull out studies and do all this stuff, but there's so many studies on this.

(01:13:52):

It's sort of like meditation. Which meditation study do you cite? There's so many. The vagus nerve is incredible. The new research coming out about out the therapeutic modalities that are helping trauma and depression, all going back to nervous system regulation, incredible. And your kids are experiencing situations that make their nervous systems sound the alarm. And so you can teach them these tools too. 

(01:15:00):

I can find my power. There are going to be plenty of people that tell me no in business. And I get bummed and I get rattled and I go down the rabbit hole. I'm not good enough and I can soak in my misery and wallow for a little bit and then I can locate the switch inside me and I can turn the alarm off. And so can you. And when you do, you'll discover that not only is there a whole different world out there waiting for you, but there's a whole different you waiting inside of you that will allow you to experience happiness and presence at a capacity that you can't imagine. If you've ever gotten a puppy or a kitten or you've ever had a baby or you've ever fallen in love, these experiences make you realize you have a capacity for love that's greater than you realized.

(01:15:56):

And doing the work to locate the vagus nerve and flip the switch on and off and settle my nervous system from disruption and dysregulation and on edgeness to calm, cool okayness. It's been the single biggest change I've ever made in terms of the impact that it's had on the quality of my day-to-day life. And so we're going to do a shitload of shows on this and I'm going to introduce you to all kinds of things you can do over time. We are just getting started on this, but I think that particularly this time of year, whenever it is that you're listening to this as you're thinking about ways to be happier and healthier, this is a huge component of it. And so please, please locate that switch and start flipping it off and you'll be shocked. I mean, it's just awesome. Alright? And I'm telling you all this because I love you and I'm going to tell you that in case nobody else tells you that today. I love you. I believe in you. I know that switch is in there. I know you can locate it. I know you can calm your nervous system. And when you do, holy shit, will you experience a better life? And I so want that for you. Alrighty, I'll talk to you in a few days. I got to go take a bath.

(01:17:37):

Oh, one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, bye. God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.