Self regulation is such a huge piece of the puzzle when it comes to your own healing and your resilience moving forward for so many reasons. For one, it enables you to get enough resource to be able to withstand discomfort, and therefore, be able to go through the process of healing. It enables you to hold space for uncertainty so that you don’t have to make any rash decisions or extreme judgements. You are more able to sit in the middle more easily.
Self regulation is a valuable skill that we would all benefit from learning from our earliest caregivers and teachers, from a young age. Your therapist should be teaching you self regulation skills and practicing them in real time during sessions with you. Being able to find resource within the nervous system can be imagined like building a bigger boat for the sea that you are in. If you find that in your life, it feels like you’re on a door sized raft like Jack and Rose on the Titanic, in the middle of the ocean, you’re not going to be able to withstand and digest some of the content you are bringing into therapy very effectively, because it feels like you are barely treading water as it is. Therefore, we need a bigger boat. It is very worth your time to be practicing the skills you need in order to start to feel like you’re in a kayak, to then having a life vest around you, to then being in an actual boat, to then being in a yacht, to a bigger boat, to a ship! I don’t know what types of boats there are, but you get my point!
You will eventually be able to notice the distress in the body, whilst also being aware of the surrounding area of the distress, to the more neutral areas of the body, to the environment you are in, and this can feel like diluting a very concentrated substance. Like fruity cordial or you can even imagine a stock/broth cube. Imagining that very concentrated bit of flavour, slowly being diluted and distributed in the water. And the discomfort and distress can also be diluted and metabolized by the surrounding tissues, your energy field and your environment.
This is super empowering and can be an absolute game changer for your experience of life.
But it does have its limits.
For example, if a kid that I was working with was getting bullied at school and they wanted some more skills to learn how to cope with it, I would tell them: "we can do all the therapy and self regulation skills til the cows come home, but if you’re going back to the same environment that got you into therapy in the first place, then therapy is not even going to touch the sides".
Self regulation is only half the battle, and if you’re avoiding to address the stuff that is genuinely distressing for you in your life, then self regulation alone can be used as a bypass.
That being said, you still might not feel ready yet to address all the uncomfortable, distressing stuff, and that is okay! You may very well need a bigger and more robust raft before you do that type of work and self regulation skills are essential for that.
So what does it mean to heal relational trauma in real time?
For the bullying scenario mentioned above, clearly the person will need some support in preventing any further harm toward them. The environment does need to be objectively safe in order to learn healthy relational and communication skills.
Let’s say you feel super reactive to certain people or in certain situations right now, and you want to move towards a place of being able to thoughtfully respond instead, where you don’t feel triggered or anxious around these certain people or situations.
I for example, for the LONGEST time felt weird and threatened around older women. Now I understand it was due to the combative relationship with my mum growing up. But throughout my late teens and most of my 20s, I did struggle with what I thought at the time was social anxiety, around older women, especially in authority. This was problematic because I was a mental health nurse! A profession dominated by women. It makes sense to me now why I couldn’t stick around in one place and jumped from inpatient unit, back to school, to community nursing, back to school, to working pretty much by myself, which was where I felt most comfortable. I just put it down to social anxiety, an inferiority complex and imposter syndrome, and I now know it went a lot deeper than that.
It wasn’t until I moved to Canada and had to work as part of a team again that I really started to see things differently with a fresh perspective. I again worked in a team of exclusively women where I became aware of my anxious, protective parts in interaction with other women. This part of me often felt criticized, offended and activated by some of the things my colleagues did and said, but I was also making room for other parts of me who were open and curious to seeing things differently.
I worked with a professor who heard about the varying scenarios and interactions that happened at work and they invited me to consider if I were making any assumptions and if there were any alternative perspectives, to my quick knee-jerk conclusions. They taught me how to use the ‘empty chair technique’ which was something I was already familiar with, as I would often rehearse difficult conversations with myself. But there was something about speaking to an empty chair, imagining the person sitting there, that I could resolve some of the assumptions and mysteries my mind was making, before actually having a conversation with them. And if that exercise did not resolve things in my mind, I had a much better and refined idea of what I need to ask and how I could do it, which most aligned with my values, and in a way where I’m not laying awake at night afterwards with shame and regret.
My professor also introduced me to the idea of a chronological age and an emotional age. I learned that the triggered parts of myself were actually much younger versions of myself. I was able to show these parts compassion, understanding and appreciation. And I also learned to see the emotional ages of the other, older women around me, who may have also had moments where much younger parts of themselves were taking over their seat of consciousness.
And I was much more able to feel genuine compassion for those parts. This sounds like a small thing, but it was RADICAL, because before, I might be judgemental and critical and insist that they should know better and act their age.
The point of this story though is to illustrate that I could not have healed this relational wounding, if I did not have this experience. It was real time practice. I was out in the field, doing the time, doing my reps. But I was objectively safe too. I also felt more willing and able to be open and curious about improving this part of my life. Whereas before, I didn’t feel entirely safe and I was not interested in learning anything new about this. My job in Canada was an excellent incubator for me to do the real-time work of healing.
So my best advice is, if you are objectively safe, and you are willing and able to create new experiences to update your nervous system, your mind, you’re whole body, you can start healing relational trauma in real time. And as always, reach out if you want some support with this!
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