I recently shared these thoughts on my Instagram page and I am bringing them to you here on my podcast. As someone who has been speaking and teaching about nervous systems for over 10 years, I've been anticipating the inevitability of social media influencers oversimplifying regulation tools as a cure-all. Not only does this perpetuate the cycles of bypassing that leave clients feeling broken or even more stuck, the sacred medicine of nervous system work is being exploited as yet another cure-all to sell using harmful marketing techniques.
Deep bow of gratitude to the wise women who lent their voices to this conversation on Instagram:
Kat HoSoo Lee is a trauma-informed Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Rooted Business Podcast. She uses the tools of somatic and emotional alchemy to guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. This allows them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, ethical marketing and purposeful service.
Connect with Kat:
This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.
I recently shared these thoughts on my Instagram page and I am bringing them to you here on my podcast. As someone who has been speaking and teaching about nervous systems for over 10 years, I've been anticipating the inevitability of social media influencers oversimplifying regulation tools as a cure-all. Not only does this perpetuate the cycles of bypassing that leave clients feeling broken or even more stuck, the sacred medicine of nervous system work is being exploited as yet another cure-all to sell using harmful marketing techniques.
Deep bow of gratitude to the wise women who lent their voices to this conversation on Instagram:
Kat HoSoo Lee is a trauma-informed Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Rooted Business Podcast. She uses the tools of somatic and emotional alchemy to guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. This allows them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, ethical marketing and purposeful service.
Connect with Kat:
This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.
Hi friends, I want to come on and talk to you about something that I'm seeing in the social media world around oversimplification of the nervous system and it's something that I've been expecting, because I've been talking about nervous systems for so long, and I find it incredibly troubling, which is why I want to come on here and talk to you about bringing nuance and context back into nervous system regulation work. This is something that I've been wanting to talk to you about for a couple of days now, and I sat down to just like briefly write out an outline for our conversation and I went a little bit overboard. So before I I get started, I want to show you my notes. Okay, so this is what I've been doing for the last like 45 minutes is just like free form writing, trying to map out all the things that I want to say, and you know that when I come in with notes like this, it's gonna be a little intense, so I hope you're ready, okay. So, as somebody who has been talking about nervous systems before it was a trendy hashtag I also worked with nervous systems a lot as an acupuncturist, so when I was an acupuncturist for 12 years, I had my hands on bodies, really feeling into the energetic spaces of people's nervous systems and how they're holding stress in their bodies and what their nervous systems are actually doing. And now that I've been doing this work virtually for four years, it's really fine-tuned my muscle in terms of tracking nervous systems and so I want to just bring that into the conversation and, as somebody who's been doing this work for a while, I have some real, real concerns.
Speaker 1:So a little bit of context of why I'm having this conversation with you is that I am being sent reels from my community from a very specific account and this person talks about the functional freeze and this person has over a million followers. A lot of these um reels are being sent to me in the context of hey, I feel this way and I'm kind of curious about it, so can we have a conversation about it? So, um, I'm having this conversation with the broader community here because it's come up enough times where I feel like there's a pattern, and anytime there's a pattern, I like to talk about it. So, um, speaking of patterns, I'm not going to call out this account. Um, I, whenever I see something like this, I want to really talk about the pattern of what I'm seeing, instead of um calling certain people out.
Speaker 1:I do not participate in call-out culture or cancel culture, and that's a really, really hard boundary that I have, but I also just want to like address that the nervous system is turning into the very thing that I was really hoping that it wouldn't turn into. So I want to start out by saying that nervous system work somatic healing is just sacred medicine. It's been the backbone of what I've been doing since 2011. And the more and more I learn about the nervous system, the more layers get peeled off and the deeper I'm able to go with it, with myself and with my clients, and the more I learn about traditional medicines. Actually, I can see that nervous system work is just bringing western language to something that traditional people have been doing all along, and so it's deeply rooted in how we relate to nature. It's deeply, deeply rooted in how we relate to our own animal bodies, and so I just want to say, first off, that nervous system work is sacred, sacred, sacred medicine, and so what I was expecting to happen, um is at some point I knew, because there's so many people talking about this work now, there's gonna be an oversimplification of it at some point, and it's here. I'm really sad that it's here, and what I mean by simplification is it is akin to how allopathic medicine treats disease and talks about disease, and we talk about disease in really compartmentalized ways in allopathic medicine. I'm speaking as somebody who was also part of the medical industry I was a fertility acupuncturist for many years and what we do in that space is we label the body as something that is working against you, and then the doctor or a medication comes in to rescue you from your own body, and it is so counter to the sacredness of the nervous system, to the sacredness of the nervous system.
Speaker 1:What I believe, and what I know to be true in my experience, is that the body is always trying to work with you, and signs and symptoms are communication from your body. And, you know, let's contrast that with allopathic medicine that says, oh, here's an uncomfortable thing that you're feeling, here's a painful thing that you're feeling, here's a painful thing that you're feeling. Let's not ask these deeper questions of why. Let's just try to shut that down as quickly as possible for you so that you can go back to living a quote-unquote normal life. And so we are bypassing an entire conversation that we could be having with our bodies in that space, because, when we think about it, signs and symptoms are communication from our body and the body doesn't have any of the language to speak through. It's going to speak through signs and symptoms. It's going to speak through pain so that you actually pay attention to it. And so the questions that I like to bring into a conversation with somebody when they're talking to me about some of these uncomfortable things that are happening in their life and they may be body oriented, it may be experiential I want to start asking questions around why is your body trying to communicate to you in this way and what is the context and that is going to be a big word in our conversation here is context matters, so so much.
Speaker 1:So here is what this particular account says about a functional freeze response. I'm just going to read you the list of things this has directly taken off of this person's account minimal facial expressions. One word answers self-isolation. Constant overwhelm. Sensitivity to light, sound and touch. Unexplained pain in the body. Slumped posture. Can't cry. Able to handle tasks but crash. Exhausted but stay up late. Successful but feeling empty. Brushing your teeth in the morning but not in the evening. Trying to eat healthy but ordering delivery food in the evening, trying to eat healthy but ordering delivery food and binge watching TV.
Speaker 1:Now, now, of course, after listing out all these signs and symptoms of a functional freeze, she then comes in with the good news is that you can get out of shutdown in 60 days with somatic exercises, and to me, this is the definition of unethical marketing. This is by definition. This is pain point marketing. Here's a list of signs and symptoms without any context for why this is happening in your life, and somebody might read through that list and be like, oh, I see myself in four out of those 10 things, or six out of those ten things, or all of them, and I want to just note here that, like, of course, there's a resonance there. Nobody wants to feel this way. I completely understand that you don't want to feel stuck, you don't want to feel like you're in a functional freeze and again, this is where context matters a lot. So I did a little bit of light sleuthing and looked through just briefly through some of the comments and I saw multiple comments from people saying, hey, I did the 60 day program, it was great, but now I'm back in a functional freeze.
Speaker 1:Response what am I supposed to do, and her response to that is oh, you have to finish the three course bundle in order to complete the program and then you can be out of the freeze response. And I just have this like big giant, like no, no, what you need is integration. And before I talk about integration, I just want to like take a pause here and note that nervous system work is sacred medicine and it is also something that can be used to manipulate people. So what I like to think about when it comes to nervous system regulation and marketing is that, yes, we want people to take action and, in particular, we want people to take action, and, in particular, we want people to take action to move towards us. Right, but the intentionality of what that can look like is so, so different when it comes to unethical marketing versus relational marketing. With unethical marketing, you are actively activating somebody's sympathetic nervous system, getting them to move into a fight or flight state, so that then they are motivated to move towards you. Versus with relational marketing, you are helping them feel understood and, in that understanding, tapping into their own curiosity about their own inner wisdom and moving towards you from a regulated and from a more secure place. So, yes, the action looks like the same on the outside, but what you do in that space of how you work with that person's nervous system, even in the space of marketing, where you aren't having these like face-to-face interactions with people and working with them and talking to them in real time, you are conveying all of that through your own messaging. So that's a little bit of a sidebar.
Speaker 1:Okay, so back to integration. The irony is that this person's somatic exercises again, I didn't do like a deep dive on this person, but I did sort of like briefly go through her reels A lot of her somatic exercisers are actually really, really good, but the difference there is. The intention is about hacking the nervous system so you don't feel uncomfortable and you are trying to get your nervous system to change into just feeling the good feelings, and I think of it as being like you're trying to like exercise, like you're exercising a demon. You're exercising dysregulation by using the sacred medicine, and when you do that, you are bypassing, and to me it's less about the tool and more about the intentionality. So how are you using that somatic exercise? Are you using it to help you integrate or are you using it to help you bypass?
Speaker 1:And I feel like it's important to note that what integration is is that you understand the context of where that functional freeze is coming from and then you are able to assess and see if that's an appropriate response in context of the situation that's happening in your life. And so if you look at that functional freeze you know that list of functional freeze some of them made me kind of like roll my eyes, but a lot of it actually did make sense, right. If you are looking at that list and you're like, yeah, actually it totally makes sense that I'm in a functional freeze response right now because X, y and Z things are happening in my life, or because I'm processing A, b and C things from my past, then absolutely your role there, if the response is appropriate to the situation, is to actually feel the feelings and sit in that functional freeze and allow your body and trust your body that it knows what to do in that moment. That's actually asking you to slow down for a second for a reason, and we're going to talk about some of those reasons in just a moment. If you are able to like objectively, look at the situation, you're like this freeze seems like it's not an appropriate response for what's actually happening. So, then, this is where you are being invited to do the work, and by doing the work, I mean going in and doing some of those somatic exercises, going in and doing some of that inner child work, going and asking for some co-regulation from some trusted people.
Speaker 1:Talking about your story, journaling, writing, doing all these things that will help you contextualize and understand why you might be projecting a past experience onto something that's happening right now in real time, and why that response is actually a much bigger response than is actually being called for and is appropriate, actually being called for and is appropriate. So, again, context is the thing that tells us if that functional freeze is appropriate or not. And context is situational, it is environmental, it is individual and, by the way, I read through that list of the functional freeze signs and symptoms and a lot of those signs and symptoms are actually oh, this is going to be a much longer conversation, but, um, it's quote-unquote normal for those of us who are really sensitive, some of us who are neurodivergent, some of us who have autism or are introverted, because, quite frankly, our cultural environment is kind of fucked up and the water that we swim in is in an activated state, and sometimes it's hard to even understand that we're in that activated state. For me personally, I don't think I even recognized how dysregulating the world was until I was able to purchase my land and spend so much time in silence in nature with animals, being with the weather and really finding my rhythm in that space. It's really hard for me to think about. Oh my gosh, once upon a time I used to live in Vancouver, a bustling city, where I was working 60 to 70 hours a week and, you know, trying to be healthy and trying to do all these things and feeling shut down in the process, and so that shutdown was actually an appropriate response to what was happening in my life back then. Another example that I can offer in terms of context and why context matters so much is that I'm pretty sure that the owner of this account would look at my behaviors and my emotional state and my nervous system regulation in my life for the last three months or so and diagnose me as being as having functional freeze, and I would say, technically, yes, this this is true, but this is where context matters so much. Back in November, we moved into my friend's basement. This is where we're at right now. We decided that we were going to be pet sitting through the wintertime while we were shopping for a condo to move into. While we were shopping for a condo to move into.
Speaker 1:And when I say that these dogs are difficult, I love dogs. Y'all know how much I love animals. I've been pet sitting since I was 16 years old. These are the most difficult dogs I have ever dealt with. First off, one of them is blind and deaf, and so he has difficulty even finding his way to the doggy door. The other one is incredibly anxious, is on a ton of anxiety meds and behaviorally, physically, they've been incredibly hard to deal with. And I've been living an hour away from the farm and I go out to the farm every single day and I have to navigate this schedule of like. Okay, I can't leave these elderly dogs for too long, but I also need to go to the farm and be with my animals and make sure that their needs are being taken care of. And so you know what I've been.
Speaker 1:In a functional freeze, I'm able to get everything that I need to do technically done, but when it comes to the time that I have for myself, I am. I have binge watched the entire series of Big Bang Theory in the last couple of months and it's been. It's been difficult, been difficult, functional freeze. Context matters when I look at that. If I were to look at this objectively, as somebody just listening to my story, I'd be like, yeah, of course, of course you're in that state, and for me it's like presence is an infinite. Sorry, presence is a finite resource and I only have so much presence and I am consciously choosing where I am distributing my presence, and so I'm choosing to be completely present when I'm with my clients, because that is my happy place. I'm choosing to be completely present when I'm with my animals because, again, happy place, when I'm with my husband, when I am on the phone with my friends, and so in those moments that I have to myself, yes, I am choosing a functional freeze. And, again, history and context matters here as well. What I would have done in the past is I would have gone into a complete fight mode and overdone and overextended myself and over committed myself.
Speaker 1:I actually made a conscious decision to pull away a lot of my marketing as well during this time because, again, presence is a finite resource and if there's something that I can drop off of my plate. It's going to be my marketing. I'm never going to um compromise the quality of care that I deliver to my clients, and so for me to deliver the level of care that I deliver to my clients, and so for me to deliver the level of care that I present and that my clients expect from me. I had to pull away from my marketing quite a bit these last couple months, so it's been an improvement for my history, which is to overdo turn on my fight response, fight F-I-G-H-T response. Then I would go into burnout and then I would do a complete collapse.
Speaker 1:And so I share this story because I have no shame around the functional freeze, because I understand and I've integrated the context of why that is happening. And so I look at my functional freeze freeze and I don't even look at it as something that needs to be changed. It is not broken, it does not need to be fixed. It is actually helping me preserve my sanity and it also represents because of what I used to do, it represents the work that I've done to really have a flexible nervous system. So when we lose sight of context, we pathologize what is perfectly normal and perfectly designed for our nervous systems and for our bodies. So Other aspects of context that might resonate with you.
Speaker 1:If you're considering a difficult conversation with somebody that you love, a functional freeze is appropriate because your nervous system is asking you to slow down and bring your wise self into that conversation, that it is completely misaligned. A functional freeze is appropriate because without that discomfort you aren't going to change. It's asking you to change something about your life and to consciously choose something different in a way that feels empowering to you. If you're feeling an emotion that is unfamiliar and uncomfortable for you, I know that when I went through a bit of a spiritual awakening, I had all this anger come up and anger was not an appropriate emotion for me to feel. In my family, in fact, in the Korean culture we have a word called hwabyung, which means anger disease. The Korean culture we have a word called hwabyung, which means anger disease.
Speaker 1:Anger is seen as such a bad emotion that they consider the expression of anger a disease, and so when I was going through the first few layers of my own sort of emotional and spiritual journey, I had so much anger come up and I would definitely say that if I look back on that time in my life, I was in a functional freeze, because what my body was asking me to do is hey, here's a thing that's coming up, let's set, let's sit with this, let's set the yin intention of what this anger is. Can we place it in the right place? Can we place it with the right person? And is that the appropriate way to really tell the story? And then, through that aligned intention setting, you're going to hand that off into your yang aspects of yourself so that you could take aligned action. So maybe there's a hard conversation that you need to have, maybe there's an expression, maybe you need to go slam some boxes or go pick up heavy shit and move that anger through your body, right.
Speaker 1:And so this is where, if we lose context, we start to pathologize what is actually good and perfect and true about our bodies and our nervous systems. So I know that I say this a lot here, but I think it's worth saying again and again and again and again which is the healing journey, the personal development journey, the journey to be closer to your Tao, is never about banishing dysregulation. It's not about never feeling really bad again, because life is going to happen. You also have a history, and history has a tendency to resurface, because our lives tend to evolve as a spiral. And when that happens, if we're just running away from dysregulation, then we'll never be able to integrate what that experience is truly like for us on these deeper levels.
Speaker 1:To integrate what that experience is truly like for us on these deeper levels, and when you find that integration, it means that you get a little bit closer each time to living a life that is more aligned with your soul. Living a life where you are able to hold boundaries. Living a life where you are able to see oh, this is my responsibility and that's their responsibility. Living a life where you're like I choose these things and I choose these people. Living a life where you are able to step even more deeply and unapologetically into your desires. And to me, that is what true integration is. It's not about, oh, I never feel angry again, or I never feel grief again, or I never feel sad again, or I never feel frozen or shut down again. It's about welcoming all of those experiences in within the context of your life and being able to look at it and be like, hey, is that an appropriate response? And yes, if it is, then permission to be in that space and, yes, if it is, then permission to be in that space, permission to feel those feelings.
Speaker 1:Now, objectivity is hard. It is so, so hard, and this is where I think coaches are so important. Whether it is you yourself reaching out to a coach or a mentor or you holding space for somebody is one of the main roles of the space holder is to have an objective lens on what's happening, because you don't have the projections that this person has, and that's why we do this personal development work for ourselves as space holders. Right is because we don't want to be bringing our own projections into a space, and so, because objectivity is so hard, I really recommend bringing somebody in who can help you by listening to your story and being like, yeah, I can see why you're angry right now. I can see why you're in a functional freeze right now. I can see why you are full on in sadness right now. I can see why you're collapsed right now. Those are actually appropriate things to feel in this moment or, in contrast, like that seems like a really big response Can unpack that together. Where does that story come from? How old is that feeling? How far back does that story go, and can we help that little one feel safe again so that it's not having to sit in the driver's seat and manage your life when, when things get really scary. And I also think that this is why I just like love this work that I get to do.
Speaker 1:I look at my client list whether they're in BAM or they're a one-on-one client and I look at these beautiful, sensitive souls who have been through so much, souls who have been through so much. They have googled things that haven't worked for them. They've looked at, hey, how do I fix my insomnia? And like, tried to google that or how do I? You know, why do I feel anxious all the time and googled that? And then the generic hacks that are given in that space, like, of course it's not going to work because it's not individualized and and understands the nuance in the context of what your life is about. Right, and I also get a lot of folks who I'm going to call them practitioner wounds, where they have tried to do these deeper layers of nervous system regulation work with a practitioner, a therapist even, and it's been really hard because that space holder is bringing their own stuff in and they're getting triggered by their own client in and they're getting triggered by their own client, and then it reinforces this wound of like I'm too big or I'm taking up too much space or I'm not enough, and so, to me, this is where choosing is so important. You have a choice when it comes to both the content that you watch here on Instagram or the people that you choose to support you.
Speaker 1:So the first thing I want to ask you is how do you feel when you watch someone's content? Is there resonance there? And I can say for sure this person with this account, because they have over a million followers. There's a ton of resonance there, and so, fair enough, if you feel that resonance, right, you might look through that list of signs and symptoms and be like that is me right. I feel that way too, but there's one layer deeper to that. How do you feel when you feel that resonance? Do you If you consume their content and you receive this message and this resonance of there's something wrong with me, I need to fix that.
Speaker 1:And then they're offering you this like magical potion that is going to miraculously heal your nervous system? I would watch that. Or, in that resonance, do they incite or inspire a bit of curiosity about your own inner wisdom? Do they ask you these layers of questions that take you deeper into your own process? Instead of outsourcing that power to somebody else, because that's ultimately what this kind of marketing does is it asks you to give up your own power, to give up your own wisdom and to replace it with somebody external to you. So I guess, in short, I'm going to wrap this up in a second If there's a takeaway is your nervous system is not broken. Even if you're experiencing a functional freeze, it is not broken and you have choice when it comes to how you would like to receive that support. And please, for the sake of not just you, but for the collective, because we're all in this together, we're all on this healing journey together, and the more of us that are on this wave of choosing practitioners who market ethically and practitioners who don't pathologize your body and your nervous system. That is going to make such a huge difference in how our culture moves forward. So, yeah, that was a little bit longer than a TED Talk, but thanks for listening to my TED Talk. Bye, hello.
Speaker 1:My friends, it's been a couple of days since I posted on Instagram about the oversimplification of the nervous system and, in particular, this whole concept around a functional freeze, and I've been in really lovely insightful conversations in my DMs with other folks who are doing this work and doing this medicine and bringing it to your people, and that's one of my favorite things about this community is it's not just a one-sided I am teaching sort of a conversation. You all bring so much more depth and nuance to these things and you add to the flavor of what this work looks like, and so I thought I would share. Of course, these are being shared with permission, and so I thought I'd share some of these insights that you all are bringing. So the first thing I want to address is that I had a couple folks asking me if I would share the Instagram account that I was talking about in my stories, and the short answer is no, I will not share, and I also wanted to give a longer context of why I hold that boundary. So the first piece is that I am about talking about patterns rather than individuals, and so to me, it is less important that there is this one specific account that people have been sending me, and more so the fact that there is a particular pattern that we're seeing when it comes to this nervous system work and the oversimplification of our work, and so, you know, since I posted, I've had other people share other accounts of other folks who are doing this, and so to me it's about addressing the pattern. The second piece is that this person doesn't know my account and so they don't have the ability to defend or really hold up this part of the conversation. And so to me for me to share that, even if it's in my personal DMs for me to share that feels really gossipy and doesn't feel aligned in terms of how I want to talk about people, even when they don't know that I'm talking about them.
Speaker 1:And then the third piece is the whole conversation was really about how can you lean into your own intuition and your own wisdom when it comes to the content that you're consuming. You know I had somebody reflect back to me saying like, oh, I didn't realize that. You know I'm following several of these kinds of accounts and it makes me feel like I need to fix my nervous system, and so that was a really, really big sort of aha click moment for her. So that was a really, really big sort of aha click moment for her, and to me it's really about this. It's instead of looking at me and saying, hey, kat, you seem to have observed these patterns, it's like, hey, thanks for pointing that pattern out for me and this is how I'm going to apply it. This is the work of my own intuition. Of looking at some of these accounts and looking at some of this content that's being put out there, and saying I would like to make my own sovereign decisions about, talk about in my stories and in my content, is because it really all points to bigger patterns. It points to patterns of your own intuition.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I want to bring attention to Nicole's work here. I'll tag her and I'm just going to read her comments straight off of the page here. I'm looking at them right now because it's just, oh my God, so juicy. So Nicole says we're talking specifically about that pause, that quote unquote functional freeze. So she says it's like the sacred pause we see in physiological birth, but the mainstream maternal system sees as something wrong and dangerously intervenes. Society can't hold space for slowing down, pausing and resting. And I replied and said, oh my gosh, please tell me more. And she replied back oh gosh, I don't even know where to start.
Speaker 1:So first thoughts are reorienting to the truth that we are nature and like nature, specifically other mammals that give birth, we generally give them space to do so. They birth somewhere safe, quiet and dark. Humans are told to birth in a bright, loud, unfamiliar hospital setting full of interventions, because you're put on a clock. In a natural birth, after a woman slash mammal goes through what's called transition, she gets a sudden burst of energy, comes back to reality out of labor land and contractions slow down. This is intentional, purposeful and by nature's design. Mainstream medicine intervenes at this slow down and disrupts the process when actually it's a sacred pause that's been pathologized, obviously loads of nuance.
Speaker 1:Here I'm talking about a low risk, slash, healthy pregnancy, but I see this closely related to the pathogen pathology. I can say this word. I promise Pathologization. We see around the freeze response and oh my gosh, as somebody who has not given birth before and I've been present at several births. But to me the place that I'm more familiar with is the death process. I was a vet tech for several years and I have witnessed many, many deaths, and this is the same exact thing that happens in natural death. There is a natural slowing down and then we see a big burst of energy where the animal seems to rewind that clock back several years and that lasts for a day or a few hours, and then death settles in Our bodies, whether it is through the birth process or through the death process.
Speaker 1:They transition through these yin-yang phases and to me there's this like obvious correlation of you know, death and birth feel like really, really obvious transitions. But we have so many transitions in life between birth and death that require that same sort of energetic fluidity of being able to shift between yin and yang. And I think, in this world of modern fluidity of being able to shift between yin and yang, and I think, in this world of modern day hustle, in this world of modern day go, go, go, and you always have to be making linear progress. We don't allow for that yin slowdown to happen. And so thank you so much, nicole, for bringing in this beautiful example of how things are not actually a freeze state, it's actually a healthy expression of yin, it's a healthy expression of a sacred pause. And by labeling something as being a functional freeze, instead of being able to like sink into the feelings that come up in that sacred pause, we resist it, and by resisting it we then throw interventions in that actually are not helpful to this whole concept of a cycle.
Speaker 1:Now, this next comment comes from Emma, who is a play coach, and she said that she's shared this concept so many times to clients. Again, reading straight off of the page here, that makes sense that you are and insert one of those activities you were listed, and one of those activities might be some of these things that people are labeling as being a functional freeze, because you're feeling X, y and Z, so of course you're going to lean into those activities. That doesn't mean something has gone wrong and I love that we are able to, as coaches, grant this permission to our clients, to our family members, and oftentimes and I can just sort of speak to myself in this moment of like it's so hard to have that compassion reflected back in words. Right, and so when we allow for that sacred pause, for that quote unquote functional freeze for yin states to be just a natural part of the cycle, we are able to hold deeper capacity. When somebody else comes into our space and says, hey, I've been binge watching Netflix, and instead of you being like, oh, we need to fix that, you can start asking questions around hey, does this make sense? Is this an appropriate? That's one of the questions that came up is this an appropriate response to what it is that you're experiencing in this moment? So I had somebody ask a question about the appropriateness of responses, and how do we know when we're doing something that's appropriate to the situation or something that feels like it's inappropriate?
Speaker 1:And I think that this is where a lot of nervous system, nuance and, um, I want to say like skill comes into play here. So the first thing I want to say is, when I talk about appropriateness, it's not about, hey, you're never going to feel triggered, you're never going to feel activated again, you're never going to feel collapsed again. It's really about looking at the situation, for what's happening right now, in this present moment, and when you are looking at the story of what's happening in now, in this present moment, and when you are looking at the story of what's happening in this moment, doesn't make sense. The reaction or the response that you're having right now. So, um, you know, versus something is happening and it is triggering something that happened in your history. A inner child is rebelling, a inner child is feeling shut down, it is rubbing up against an old story or a narrative that your family might have placed upon you. It's rubbing up against a condition that society has placed on you, and in that case I would say that that is likely a situation where you might be having an inappropriate response.
Speaker 1:You know, we've all had those situations happen where you know somebody might say something that feels really triggering and instead of being able to like hear those words in that moment as just something that that person is saying, as just something that that person is saying, you are suddenly overlaying your aunt's face, who has judged you for your whole life, onto that person's words, or you are overlaying, you know, an old teacher's voice or your parents, and you know, in those situations it's really important to lean on your nervous system tools and to say, hey, this might not be the most appropriate response to what's happening right here. How can I get closer to the truth? And to me, that's where that deep, underlying work happens. I'll say that this is so much easier when you have other people in your corner who are well versed in being able to do this, and Oftentimes this is when I personally will go to a mentor, if there's a coach that I'm working with at the moment, but most reliably those people are gonna be my husband, my besties and a Few of my trusted colleagues who I work with regularly. And so, you know, if I'm able to share this outside of my own experience and bring it to a third party who has an unbiased opinion about what's going on, they're able to reflect back to me and say, like, oh, that actually seems pretty understandable. Or, hey, like, have you considered that maybe this is a story that is persisting because it's your father's voice or it's your mother's voice? And you know, all these people that I just outlined have a concept of what my history is and what I get triggered by, right, and so they have a little bit of a roadmap to until what, where my you know own inappropriate responses might be coming from. Um, I'll say, too, that by sharing it outside of myself um, I think it's Brene Brown who talks about shame gremlins, but it really helps me reinforce that, that messaging of I don't have to be ashamed by this, you know, by by me talking about hey, I binge watched a bunch of Netflix shows in a moment where I was in a functional freeze. I have no shame about that, versus, you know, if I were to keep that inside, there's a potential that that shame might mutate into something that I feel really like. It feels like it needs to be hidden. So hopefully that helps in terms of like being able to gauge what an appropriate versus inappropriate response is.
Speaker 1:And then, the last little observation that I want to bring into this conversation is from Nadine. I absolutely love Nadine. If you don't know her, um, you definitely need to check her out. She has been on this podcast a ton. She is a BAM alumni. She's also been a coach for BAM, and so she's somebody that I just I absolutely adore her, and her observation is that, as a manifesting generator and there's a lot of us out there she's a manifesting generator. I'm a manifesting generator as well. She was just sharing with me that, like a bunch of her clients, a manifesting generator, I'm a manifesting generator as well.
Speaker 1:She was just sharing with me that, like, a bunch of her clients are manifesting generators and she was positing this, this theory, that you know, perhaps this is just part of our mani-gen cycle. You know, if we are in that generative mode, it's so easy to be in that space because we've been validated for being generators, for getting shit, for being able to, like, look at a to-do list and say boom, boom, boom I know how to do this versus when we're in our manifesting phase, which is a lot more yin, which is slow, which is about holding intentions. We have a tendency to resist that, and so for some of us, that might be. Our natural design is to float in and out of these yin states, not just because we are part of nature and this is what nature does, but I would say that my own personal observations about who I am and how my sort of work cycles are like is I am less consistent and I am a lot more up and down when it comes to creating and um being in the like generative versus the manifesting phase, and so I love all these observations. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me.
Speaker 1:I love being able to have these conversations and, you know, one of the things that I really just want to like finish out this conversation with is oh my gosh, how many times can I say conversation in a row? But anyways, um. So instagram everyone says instagram is about short form content. Everyone says that it is about holding someone's attention for like one minute at a time. Holding someone's attention for like one minute at a time. I posted a 30 minute video on my stories and was like hey, like I kind of don't care if any like nobody sees this. I just feel like I need to get this off of my chest and I just need to like say this thing out loud, otherwise I might go a little bit crazy. And so I did that thing, and I had so many of you watch this 30 minute video on Instagram all the way through, and now, if you are listening to this second part of this conversation, we are probably, I want to say, like 45-50 minutes into a conversation that, um, you know, other business coaches, um, other folks who advise about how to promote yourself on Instagram, would say this is the opposite of what you should be doing to me.
Speaker 1:It's always come back to relationships and my own sort of way of being is that, like I don't know how to just like dance on a reel and create like a one minute thing. I always have these like long, deep conversations with people, whether you are meeting me in person, um, or even if we're just like running, like I don't know how to do the small talk thing you guys like, even when I was a bartender, um, I would have these like long, in-depth conversations with people, and so I don't know how to be short-winded and I thank you for being here and thank you for really just being in relationship with me and being in relationship in the ways that feels really good to me, and to me it's like you know what? Fuck the algorithm, fuck the ways that um people say you need to promote yourself on instagram, fuck the short form content. Guys. Um, do what feels good. That is like the if. If you need any sort of like marketing advice, like, do what feels good, because when, like the if, if you need any sort of like marketing advice, like, do what feels good, because when you're speaking from your heart, when you're speaking from this place of authenticity and from this place of, like, genuine care for the world, the people who want to listen are going to listen all the way to the end. So, again, thanks for being here. Uh, love the crap out of you guys and we'll chat soon.
Speaker 1:This part of the conversation comes from lauren. Um, her instagram handle is nest and nourish and she responded by saying I'm playing with the idea that maybe my functional freeze is part of my creation cycle, and I just was like oh my gosh, tell me more. I'm so curious and, um, my own curiosity stems from me wanting to work on my own relationship with creativity. And so she says I guess I've just realized that maybe my cycle of procrastination and what feels like functional freeze and maybe it's not actually and I only think that and I only think it is because of unethical marketing, and then the thought and creation is all part of my creation cycle. I love that concept. I just want to like go through that again.
Speaker 1:What she's saying is there is a cycle of what she has previously called procrastination and there's a thought and a creation and an unfreezing. That's all part of this creation cycle. And I think it goes right in line with what we were just talking about with um, this uh, sacred pause, right. And she continues and says it's almost like I need that slowing down to let things percolate in my mind and body before I really let something be fully created. And I responded with all the um exclamation marks because yes, yes, yes, it's almost like we need an autumn and a winter cycle for spring to come.
Speaker 1:And the pause and the slowdown allows for the intention to crystallize so you can take aligned action on the thing.
Speaker 1:And she continues and says and when I don't shame myself or attach to labels to it like procrastination and freeze, it moves through with so much more ease.
Speaker 1:And it's definitely a delicate balance and I have to be very aware of my own internal thoughts, my inner critic, the somatic experience of it throughout, or it can really turn into almost using it as an excuse to not take action.
Speaker 1:And I think that this is such a beautiful, insightful way of like the self-awareness that it's that's needed in order to do this nervous system work.
Speaker 1:And so, uh, the first thing I want to just like highlight, underline asterisk the less you shame yourself, the less you attach labels to things and call it procrastination and you call it freeze, and the more you're able to sort of like accept this part of the cycle, the easier it actually becomes to move to the next part of the cycle.
Speaker 1:It's almost by saying, hey, like I'm fully into this yin mode and I'm gonna just really accept it and be in it for as long as it needs to be.
Speaker 1:That's when the spring comes a little bit sooner and, of course, um, to me the body always leads the way right. And so what is that somatic feeling of a sacred pause versus what is the somatic feeling of true freeze, and that's going to look really, really different for different people. It's also going to look really different in terms of, perhaps, the stories and the narratives that come up around these two things. And so, instead of just looking at the external thing and being like, oh, that person is binge watching a bunch of Netflix shows, you can be like, okay, so what does that feel like in your body when you are binge watching? What does that feel like and how is it different from when you have binge watched Netflix shows in the past? And to me, that's where we start really threading through a lot of this self-awareness and stop labeling and demonizing and shaming these aspects of us that are actually just incredibly wise.