Hey, before we start today, I just wanna remind you that I'm opening two Bridges classes this week, starting on March 4th, one during the day from 10 to 11, 30 am Mountain Time, and then one in the evening. If you're interested, go to the show notes and you can get more information about it. Welcome to Midlife with Brooke. I am your host, Brooke Oniki. I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ, a wife, mother, grandma, and a certified life coach. On this podcast, we talk about all things mothering, health and emotional wellbeing. I share practical tools and examples from my life and from the lives of my clients to help you navigate this new season of midlife. It can feel tricky and confusing and a little bit out of our comfort zone as our children grow up and they don't really need us in the same way. These concepts and principles have changed my life and I've watched them change the lives of my clients, and I hope that they can be helpful if there are things that you wanna change in your life. So let's get started. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I am so excited today to be with Leah Davidson, and I have talked about her on the podcast quite a bit because I'm in the middle of this nervous system training course with her, and she was willing to come on the podcast. And so I'm really excited to talk about. Safety and nervous system regulation with her, and she is just a wealth of knowledge and so I'm excited to get to have this conversation with her. So before I start asking you things, will you just share a little bit about you and your background and what led you to be so interested in these things?

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to be here, with you and talk all things nervous system. I could talk about it all day long. So, by way of background, I am, I'll start with where I'm located. I'm in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and I, I like to start with that because I do have my Canadian accent and, and the way I say certain Canadian words. So just put it out there to start with. I got my. Start, so to speak, with all passionate things about the brain and the nervous system. I am a speech language pathologist as well, and I've been a speech path for 27 years, and I worked specifically in the area of traumatic brain injury. Which is not what we think of typically for speech, but we work with cognitive communication and people's thinking skills and attention and memory and helping them rehabilitate after accidents. And I sort of saw that one of the, one of the blockers. In learning all the strategies is not only is there, you know, injuries and the brain is, is trying to rewire and recover, but when people's nervous systems were so dysregulated, understandably dysregulated, it was very hard for them to take these cognitive strategies I was trying to teach and integrate them. So I first started seeing you can't do anything without nervous system regulation. And then as my interest expanded and I started to go into the world of coaching, lo and behold, everybody has the same brain and the same nervous system and the same information. You can't really do a lot of these cognitive mindset. Strategies, which are brilliant and I love them, but you need to have a level of nervous system regulation to do that. And so just sort of naturally progressed and then I started teaching it. I created a training that you're part of the training now. And I have just continued. I love the nervous system. I wanna tell everybody about it. And so I've tried, I've created a, a journal line to help educate people. about their nervous system to make it more accessible. And then of course, things like trainings and groups where people can go a lot deeper. So that is where my passion started and I think it will always be, I mean, what's more wonderful than we have this amazing body and brain and nervous system that is the base of everything that we do

so good. So. How do you define the nervous system for people? If you didn't know anything about it, what would you, how would you explain it?

Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting because I think we all. We all know the nervous system, we we're taught it in school. but I think we, we never really thought of the role of the nervous system in our life and it's gotten a lot more attention because it is so important. It is really how your brain and your body communicate with each other, and it is how. We survive it is running all of the communication networks and everything behind the scenes your heartbeat and your breathing and your temperature regulation, your digestion, your reproduction. All of those things are running behind the scenes through this portion of the nervous system that we talk about in particular, which is the autonomic nervous system. So it does it automatically and its main goal of communicating back and forth. Is your survival. And so for you to be in survival, it's always asking, are you safe or are you in danger? And then based on whether it reads safety or danger, by picking up on different cues around you and internally and between you, it will either activate you and put you into a state where you need to protect yourself because your survival is threatened or. Put you into a place of connection where you are safe and you can do all the things and live the way that you want to live in accordance with your own values because you're safe. So it is the behind the scenes of everything that you do, and that's why it's so important. Because we sometimes think we're reacting a certain way or we're doing something we're, why did I do that? Why did I say that? Why am I feeling this way? Why am I not? So much of it has to do just let the simple, basic, does your nervous system think you were in constant survival mode and you're in danger? Or does it think you're okay and you can start living? In a way where you're living for more than just survival.

So it's not very good at detecting whether or not you truly are safe.

No.

Right. I think of all the false alarms.

Yes.

One of my favorite examples is being at a basketball game where my son was the coach, so he was, he was coaching a JV basketball team when he was in college, and we went to watch him do everything. Right. So now he's the coach. Yeah. Now we watch him do that. Yeah. And, and the game was winding down. His team had been ahead the whole way and all of a sudden. They were getting, the other team was getting closer and I could feel my heart racing and even my palms were getting sweaty, which is so funny. that's a pretty strong reaction. Mm-hmm. And just before the timer went off, the other team scored and went ahead by two, and I looked around and everybody seemed. Not it was a big deal and I couldn't figure out why I was, you know? Yeah. And I looked up at the clock and it was the end of the third quarter instead of the fourth quarter. So it wasn't the end of the game, but because my brain thought it was the end of the game, my body had this really,

oh, what a great

example. Wrong. Response and I thought, how fascinating that we can't discern between reality and our imagination or our, our perceived reality.

Yeah.

And so I guess that's the important part is learning how to check in.

Mm-hmm.

When am I safe?

Yeah.

Do I feel safe? those are really important questions.

Yeah.

Ask even if, even if it was the end of the game, I am still

safe. Exactly. You're still safe. Yeah. And I mean it comes from the whole point of the nervous system is to keep you alive. And so, it used to be we did have more threats that we had to worry about, so we always had to be on high alert am I safe because. Literally, I could be in danger because of the, the circumstances in life previously. But nowadays a lot of the threats that we have to our system, they're not real threats to our, our survival. Right? They're uncomfortable, we don't like them. if somebody's rude to me. My survival is not at stake, but my nervous system thinks it is because all it's doing is it's is this safe? Is this dangerous? Oh, that, that doesn't seem very safe. Anything that's unfamiliar or uncertain or a certain tone, all these things, they're not considered safe. So the nervous system is it's not safe. You're in danger. When really it's well, you're not really in danger. It just doesn't feel good. And the nervous system doesn't do a good job. It's highly sensitive and highly inaccurate. And the other thing about it is it doesn't have a timestamp. So I could have had an experience years ago and that wasn't a very good experience. And fast forward to today, and anything that is similar. To that experience in the past, maybe there was a, a certain smell, or, when I worked with, people who had been in car accidents, this was very, very common, right? That, their accident was, extremely. traumatic event for them. So what would get wired into their memory and into their body, into their nervous system might have been the smell or the noises or the location or just being in a car. So that fast forward, even 10 years later, going by that same location or that same smell would trigger the memory as if it was just occurring. They were no longer in that danger situation, but the nervous system doesn't know that. So it goes into that protective mode. So there's, there's kind of these rules about it. it's, brilliant and it keeps us alive, but it's not very good with time and it's not very great with accuracy. Your house burning down or burning toast. It's oh my gosh, you're gonna die. We need the fire department. So we have to be aware that those are some of the problems. And so we need some of our thinking skills, our CEO as I call her, those executive function skills to step in. To really evaluate, okay, what's going on here? Do I need to have this reaction because I've reacted this way, I've freaked out, or I've, you're sitting there you're sweating and, and your CEO is Brooke, do you really need to have this reaction at a game at all? And at this point in the game, that's what it's checking in with you.

Yeah. And just so fascinating that without the check-in your body just does what your body does. Right. I didn't tell my body you should start sweating. This is really, this is a really scary situation. Yeah. It just felt it naturally happened and my dad was a basketball coach, so we grew up. At basketball games so in my childhood, I remember crying when my brothers lost. I had older brothers that played and it was very emotional, so even sometimes watching sports on TV with teams, I don't even know. I sometimes feel that same heart beating, worried for the person who's behind. And anyway, so it's just a funny, a funny part of me.

Yeah. And it, it's because that is your nervous system. your nervous system has all these experiences and imprints along the way. And so this is, it's also, it's a prediction machine that we have my. Nervous system likely wouldn't predict basketball games the same way yours does, right? 'cause you've had the experience if your dad was a coach, especially from a very young age, you sort of okay, if you lose, this happens. If you win, this happens. Someone's injured, this happens this. And so you fast forward that your nervous system is. I'm gonna be so efficient and I'm just gonna predict and code things exactly the way. When you were five years old, you don't even have to think about it. You're welcome. Here's how we're gonna react. Right? Whereas Brooke, right now, once you get more in tune with going on, you can sit there, get in the present and be I am not really in danger. I, it's not necessarily the same thing that is going to happen that happened when I was maybe five years old. I'm in the present moment and I can decide how I wanna respond when I get back into that present moment.

Yeah. I also play pickleball two or three days a week with your very good friend, Tara, or,

yes. Hi Tara.

And I've noticed that it also carries over to things that are competitive because when I was growing up, we played a lot of sports and we were supposed to always, we didn't have to be the best, but we needed to try our best. Yeah. At all times. And so sometimes when I'm playing pickleball, I'll feel the same thing happen, where my heart will be racing really hard, even though we're just at a church with a bunch of middle-aged ladies, several of whom don't care if they win.

Yeah,

right. But I feel my heart racing right. But I've learned that you can actually calm your nervous system down. Yeah. So I say those thing things to myself it's okay. No. No, there's nothing at risk here, right? I'm safe.

Yeah.

Every, and then I try to take some deep breaths and just try to relax and I feel I play a lot better when I just remind myself to relax. Instead of acting it's so high stakes.

Yeah.

so what kind of advice would you give people when they feel really elevated? their nervous system is on High alert.

Well, kind of two things I wanna point out here is, is one that when you are, say, playing sports or playing pickleball. You don't really wanna be in this total zen calm state, you do wanna have an element of energy in there. So you want your system to be activated. You just don't wanna be activated to the point that it's danger. You wanna be able to add energy and remove energy appropriately. So we see this happen in, Sports. I, I often give the example of kids playing, kids playing, they have a lot of energy and they're playing and they're moving and they're having fun. And I don't know if you ever said this to your kids, but I was always it's all fun and games until somebody takes it too far and then somebody gets hurt and somebody's crying. Crying. Yeah. There's always an, oh, he did this and that. And it's kind of we have a zone where we're. Safe and we add energy and that's where we play and we perform and we do the things that require energy. But if you take it a little too far and you lose the safety, that's when we get into a dysregulated state. So, healthy nervous system is not one that is always going to be calm. You do wanna have activation, you just want to be having the appropriate levels of activation and not have it so that I'm always getting activated so that I become completely out of control. Dysregulated, you wanna have enough activation so that you're playing pickleball, but not I need to win otherwise, See, you're always sort of playing or beating yourself

up when you make a miss. Stake, right? I see different people who get kind of mad at themselves, and I don't think that helps us play better either, right? what can I learn exactly. how, how could I hold my paddle differently next time? Or what can I do to be watching better or, Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. So we, that's the first thing is we do wanna be aware that it is appropriate for us. At times to get activated or to do the opposite, to sort of lower the activation level. So a healthy nervous system is one that can move through different states and just not get stuck there. It can add energy, it can remove energy, and it can come back home where it becomes. Unhealthy is where I dip into a state of dysregulation and it's not appropriate. There's no danger or the response is not warranted for the situation. And this is what happens to us as parents. If we ever start yelling at our kids, maybe there was an appropriate level of activation, maybe something was upsetting and or you wanted to have energy. But then going all out and, getting upset or mad or frustrated or, irritated is not necessarily where we wanna be. Or maybe we have some concern, but we don't wanna go into this heightened level of anxiety. So there's always an amount we wanna play with the energy. It's when it hijacks us. And takes over because when things get hijacked and take over, we lose our thinking skills. Because remember, the nervous system is all about survival. So if everything is about survival, all resources will go to survival when you're dysregulated. So your thinking skills, your ones that can help you, reason and rationalize and be compassionate and curious, and all the things that we want, they're offline. Then we just end up riding out on these patterns that maybe we respond and react in a way that we don't want to, but it's just sort of this is what just came out. My nervous system hijacked me and I just exploded. So we wanna be aware that that's what's happening. When we see our energy rising, we kind of wanna try to catch it and we catch it. Then there's the three steps. I call it the safety sequence. So that's something that, you've probably heard me say over and over. I say it it's, it's so important. But what it is, is it's helping your system get back into the present, check into what's really happening, and then. Relax yourself and down regulate yourself so you can get back into that safe zone, into the zone of resilience, as I call it. So those three steps, should we go through them?

Yes.

All right. So the first one. Is in whatever situation you're in. And step one and two, just so I can let you know, it can be done interchangeably, but I'll start with the first one. The first one is you need to check in to see if you are actually objectively safe, because your nervous system is responding to threats and danger, and if you are in a dangerous situation, it's doing what it needs to do to get you active so that you can. Appropriately respond. So we don't wanna just shut everything down, but we wanna be able to say, okay, am I in actual danger? Most of the time we're not in actual danger. Objectively we are safe or life is not being threatened. If it is, then it's good. I'm glad the nervous system is taken care of and it's gonna go off and do its thing. But what? It was just a bad pass in pickleball. I'm not an actual danger.

Right.

So you ask yourself, am I safe Objectively, look around, get into the present moment I am standing right here. I'm talking, I can, I can touch something. I can smell something. This tells your brain that even though you may feel you're spinning, we are objectively, empirically safe. So now the brain knows. Okay. Because if the brain thinks there's any chance of real danger, it's never gonna let you relax. 'cause it, it can't, this is your story,

right? if you were in bed at night and you thought there was a burglar in your house, you're not gonna be able to go to sleep. Right? Right. Because you aren't safe. You don't feel safe.

Exactly. Exactly. So am I safe? You gotta objectively say, yes, I am safe. And the majority of the time, unless you're in that situation where there's a threat, you are safe. But the second thing is, what you just hit on is, do I feel safe? Well, a lot of us don't feel safe about a lot of things, and that's, we're not, at this stage, we're not trying to judge it. We're not trying to fix it. We're just gaining awareness do you know what your body feels like when you feel safe or not safe? Most of us don't know. Most of us are just I don't know. I've never thought of it. I, I just don't feel, and what does lack of safety feel like? It feels tension. It feels an uneasiness. Maybe there's a fluttering, maybe there's a shallow breath. So we just want to get into our body. And observe what is going on. And when we get into our body and observe what is going on, often we notice oh, isn't that interesting? I'm super tense and I've got tightness in my chest. I don't feel safe. I may know now that I'm safe. My body is yeah, but you don't feel safe. Or I said, sometimes it's the opposite where I'll feel it in my body first and I'll be that's weird. I really don't feel safe right now. And then I'll do a check. Am I safe? I am safe. And then the third step is we want to do something. Our brain is on board. Our body is in the present moment. Now we wanna do something to relax our body. And the reason we wanna relax our body is because a relaxed body can't hold on to stress, and a relaxed body will invite in safety. For just a few seconds. So it invites and safety. So now we get the sense of our nervous system is ah, this is what safety feels like and it feels good. And so we have this moment, our brain, our body, everything's in alignment and we're relaxed. So I do to relax your body. I love doing what I call the ragdoll, which is where you just sort of let your, your body go limp. But you can also just do a low and slow breath or a physiological sigh or there's so many different ways you can do it, but it's letting your system know that you are safe brings you down. So now. Your CEO, she can step in and she can say, right, what's really going on here? And she, she can start making decisions based on reason and, and your own value system. But if you don't ever get to that moment where you feel regulated and safe, she can't come on board to help out. Now, that's not to say a few minutes later, you're gonna be activated again, and that's why you keep redoing this over and over and over again. Because you're teaching the system,

tell, tell everyone what a physiological sigh is.

So the physiological sigh is, is right now the, the, the breath practice that is really supported for people who struggle with anxiety. And what it is, is you take two inhales through the nose. So you take your first one, and then you take almost a little extra sip of the next one. So it's a, and then, and then a longer exhale. The important part of that is the longer exhale, inhalations kind of activate you exhalations. Bring you back down. So the physiological sigh, you're bringing in some air, and then you're filling it all the way to the brim, but with that second sip of air. Mm-hmm. And then you're letting it all out low and slow and. That breath, that exhale gets us into a calmer state, into rest and digest. It actually activates the, the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for your safety and for that rest and digest calmer state that we feel.

So that's a really a great method to create safety in yourself.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Can we, so, so I've talked about on the podcast before that one of the things that we can do in our relationships with our adult kids is try to create safety before we have a conversation with them or with your spouse or with anyone where you're gonna have a conversation that feels potentially triggering for someone, or it's maybe about a subject that feels sensitive to you.

Yeah.

So, so we might do those things to. Before we start in a conversation that. Yeah. What are some other things we can do to create safety for ourselves or, or, I know we can't technically create safety for someone else, but are there things that we can do that will foster safety in a Yeah. In a conversation.

Yeah. Very definitely. I think in, it's always important to remind ourselves we can't control anybody else's behavior. Or their thoughts or their feelings or, we can't force them to be regulated, but we try. We try, that's often the conflict that we have is because even though we may intellectually know, The only person I can control is me. We're yeah, but I can try and I can try to manipulate different things or say different things. and that's normal. That's human nature. So if you do that, yeah, we all do that. But really the only thing we do have full control over is ourselves. And our ability to remain calm and regulated. Because another thing about the nervous system is as much as we converse with each other, through our words and our conversation, our nervous systems are talking to each other too. So if I have a heightened, activated nervous system, I'm tense. I am, maybe talking louder. Doing all the things that signify that I'm dysregulated. Their nervous system picks up on that too. So it's very hard to have a calm conversation when we're activated and dysregulated and we are gonna get activated and dysregulated. That's just part of who we are, especially when we're talking with people who, we love. Because there's a lot of things going through our mind, often we're doing it from a great place of intention, but that activation can lead to more conflict. So the most important thing we can do, and this is what I'm always trying to do with my own adult children, is I need to focus on getting myself as regulated and as calm as possible. So that I can show up the way. I really want to show up and not be as reactive, not be as defensive, not feel as anxious or worried. I need to be as grounded in myself as possible and be regulated when I am that way. The next thing I wanna do is can I create as much as possible an environment of regulation? Now, that could be hard too, because I can't control whether my kid or my partner or my friend is gonna be regulated or not. Sometimes they come into it and they're very, very dysregulated, and the only thing I can do is try to keep myself grounded. But other times what can I do is I can try to do things in my environment. I can try to have let's talk a little slower. Let's lower my tone, lower my voice. Maybe create or go to an environment that's maybe more neutral, maybe. choose the time of day where I know we have more time to have a longer discussion so it doesn't feel hurried. Maybe think twice about the words that I use. Maybe think twice about what do I already know about this person? we, we know with our kids, we know with our partners that there are some things that probably are, are gonna be topics that are more difficult or challenging. So I really gotta be. Grounding myself. Can I choose my words so they're not as judgmental or choose my words so that they are more supportive? So much of it has to do with our communication. What is my body language saying? What are my facial expressions saying? Because if we're talking about something where there's a high chance of conflict, I need to double down on my own regulation. The more regulated I can be, the more open I will be in whatever it is they're gonna share with me. And the more respectful I can be of, it's their journey, it's their life, it's their perspective. Even if they're saying things. And probably a lot of us have experienced this, where our kids will come to us with things that either they didn't like how we did, or they don't like what we're doing now. And of course your nervous system is gonna get activated, and we're gonna wanna go into defensiveness. But the more regulated you are, the more you can realize that, okay, that's their experience. That's their perspective. That's their lived experience. It's not truth. It's their truth for how they feel, but it's not the actual truth. So I can be here. Witness their experience. I don't even have to agree with it. I can just witness their experience and remain grounded with my own experience and not have to defend my experience, which is, again, it's hard to do because we're constantly gonna be dysregulated. We're constantly gonna wanna defend. But when we keep coming back down to being grounded, we can let people experience their life, their truth, the way they need to. Without it impacting our experience if we're regulated.

Yeah, I have found just learning to ask questions tell me how you wish we would've done it, and what are some things you're gonna do with your own kids? And yeah. What are some things that you've. talk to your siblings about, I'm just curious to know and also taking ownership with, yeah, there are some things that I didn't know very much about and so I didn't teach them very well or,

yeah.

we've had some claim, some complaints about how we. How Santa Claus was in our family. I didn't quite know what to do with Santa Claus, so I just didn't do much at all. we had one present from Santa, but we didn't really take him to visit Santa. I just never made any definitive, this is where Santa fits in our family. And so some people. I mean, it's not it's ruining their lives or anything. Yeah. But they have different ideas about how they're gonna do that. Right. And so it's funny when they bring things up that you haven't really thought about that deeply and you're yeah, you're right. That was probably, Hmm. I guess I didn't think about that very much. Right. So rather than, than seeing it as some critique on my parenting, I just see it as more observation.

Right,

right. And then if I can be curious, then I can stay in safety, right? Because I can just go, oh.

Yeah,

that's true.

And you can do that when you're regulated because things curiosity and compassion and, and asking questions, you can only really do that when you're in a zone of resilience and a zone of safety. You can't really get curious if you feel you have to defend yourself. And again, I wanna normalize, I think it's normal to go to. Defense because that's your nervous system. It literally feels it's under attack. So if you're human, this will happen. And I, I to think for my kids too, that, well, when you're a parent, this is gonna happen to you too. let's not fool ourselves and thinking that your kids aren't gonna come back. And even though you're doing it differently now, they'll find a whole new set of things to talk about. So. As much as you can stay grounded, giving yourself grace, then of course I'm gonna get defensive and giving yourself grace. They may have a point about some things. Maybe you should have done something different, or you could have done something different and you can. Own it. When you're regulated, you can get curious about it. When you're regulated, you can accept responsibility when you're regulated and you can not accept responsibility. Just because somebody feels something doesn't mean it's true. It means they feel it and you can allow them to feel it. And you can still have a very respectful relationship when you're regulated.

So when you're not regulated. You don't wanna speak at that point, right. So, right. So I had an experience, and I have shared this on the podcast of. Making dinner one night. It was for my husband's birthday. I made something we hadn't had before. It had a lot of complicated parts to it. I had a discussion with my daughter about rice, and I told her, I think we should make this much. And she thought she, we should make less. And so we get to the dinner table and I'm hoping that everything's warm and ready at the same time. And my son says, is this all the rice? And immediately I feel myself go. Right? there's, it's all of a sudden feels oh, I did something wrong.

Wrong.

It made a mistake. Yeah. And so you just feel this rush of shame, sort of I should have insisted that she make as much rice as I thought we should have instead of letting her decide. Right? Yeah. But there's this moment, right between stimulus and response where I get to decide do I run from the room crying? I don't really wanna do that, but I also know that I feel some, this rush of shame. Right. And so in that moment I was just alright, take a deep breath.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And he could tell that I. Was sort of crest fallen and he said, I'm not saying there's not enough rice. I just wanna know so that we know so that everyone gets some

portion it out. Yeah.

Right. So, so he could see that in me, but as I took some deep breaths, then I was able to get back online and say, okay, we have some cold rice in the fridge that I could heat up. The rice cooker only takes 20 minutes. We could do another batch. Right? All of a sudden you start. Being able to solve

problems. Yeah. And being able to think when you're back regulated, because initially your CEO went offline, right? And it's a disaster. We're all gonna die. But you were able to bring your breath back, bring yourself back down to, first of all, it's not a huge deal. We could have the cold, right? And you were able to come up with those, those creative, solutions.

But in that moment, it does feel catastrophic for just right. And so. It's not always appropriate for me to go on an hour long walk to regulate myself or Right. And so

that's right. That's why the safety sequence comes in handy.

Right.

Sorry, you, you, you

got out there. So what? So here you are, right? You're at the table. And I did these deep breaths, but I didn't even think to go, am I safe? Do I feel safe? Okay, relax my body. But that would've been really useful, but I did know to breathe. Right? Right. And so this is

actually what you're trying to do,

right? I guess the idea is there, we just need to have a handful of quick things.

Mm-hmm.

sometimes I can, when I feel dysregulated, I can go on a long walk.

Mm-hmm.

Or I can take a nap or

mm-hmm.

Or read or listen to music or,

yeah.

Baking is really therapeutic for me. Right. Lot of baking. There's a lot of things that I can do that take more time, but those shorter ones sometimes anyway. Do you have a handful of shorter things?

Well, I to say to people, that safety sequence, the reason why it's so powerful is that. Third step is where you can come up with a bunch of tools that you can just do in the moment. So letting your breath out, relaxing your body, unclenching your butt because we tend to, to pull it all together when, when we're stressed. So it's also knowing that the more you practice something safety sequence, when you do feel safe throughout your day over and over and over, the easier it gets when you're in this crisis moment of there's not enough rice, it just becomes the natural. Go-to of oh, I notice myself getting activated. that safety sequence is not a am I safe? Do at the beginning it may be that, but it can come very naturally where he makes that comment. You feel yourself rise and you're just it's all good. And you relax your body and within five seconds it's done. And then maybe somebody else will say something else. S same thing. You relax your body, the more you practice things earlier. Now, things going for a walk and baking. You wanna be doing those things throughout the day too, because you have this everyday stress that is building up, building up, building up. And so you need ways to move that energy through you. So it's kind of you've got these two sides, you have that I gotta move this energy through me on a daily basis. And I do that by my meditation, my singing, my baking, my walking. And I wanna be practicing certain breath tools, the safety sequence, relaxing my body so that in my crisis moments I can easily access those things. So those are the two things. The only other thing I wanted to say, which reminded me, when you were talking. Is regulation also doesn't mean that we're going to be calm and collected and always agreeable and gracious, and our kids will give us feedback and we'll just be I'm sorry I was wrong. Everything and forgiveness. It doesn't necessarily mean that because I think sometimes we get this idea of that's how it's gotta be, it's gotta be calm, but. Being able to regulate it so that you can get your thinking skills back on so you can have a conversation with somebody and you can stop and ask yourself, do I wanna own that right now? Maybe it's something I wanna consider. Maybe it's something that actually I don't feel comfortable taking that on. Or maybe we realize I need to set a boundary here. That's not appropriate that it's not that we're so regulated. We take it all in. Anybody can say whatever they want to us and we're just never going to get angry. Sometimes we are going to get angry, but I'm not necessarily gonna get hijacked with my anger and lose it and be throwing things and slamming doors. But I may be able to say in this moment, right now, I don't wanna have this conversation. I am upset. I am angry, and we can process that anger in a very regulated way, and maybe it will require, and I'm gonna set some boundaries and this is what I need to do to have my own back. I need to take care of my own nervous system and this conversation right now. Is not going to be helpful. So I, I wanna put that out there. 'cause I think sometimes we do feel that if I'm regulated I can take it all. But sometimes it's hmm, but I shouldn't be taking it all.

Right,

and I'm gonna either push it back or put it aside and come back to it or let it bypass me altogether. Sometimes regulation is silence or boundaries or appropriately processing a difficult emotion.

Yeah, that's really good because I do think we miss that sometimes we think, oh, a calm person just. Takes all the blame and that's not, not, yeah, and I do think creating safety also, one thing that you've taught me is that our nervous system thrives on choice.

Mm.

Right. And so, yeah, if I can say to my child or my spouse, I have some things have been on my aunt mind and I need to talk about them, but I don't wanna be rushed and they're kind of sensitive topics. Could you tell me a time this week that you'd be able to talk to me about it? And I don't wanna be tired, right? Yeah. So we may decide that we're gonna do it on Thursday night, and if Thursday night comes and we feel too tired to do it, then we'll we'll bump it to To Friday. Yeah. Or. Another time where we can have this conversation without exactly any big time restraints. Right. So instead of saying, this needs to be solved right now, or I will not tolerate this for one more minute. Right. Those kinds of things make people feel threatened. And so if we can give people choice.

Yeah.

And then even premise a conversation with, I love you. Yeah. I care about our relationship.

Yeah.

being able to communicate with you and be connected to you is really important to me. Yeah. And so I'm sharing some things with you that are gonna be hard for me to say. Mm-hmm. But I. Feel they're really troubling me and so I just need to, to ask you.

Mm-hmm.

Right. And so I think it also doesn't mean never talking about hard things.

That's right.

Right. Because if we feel well, if I have to stay calm, then I probably can't ever talk about this.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it may be that the other person doesn't agree with you. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be sometimes when we need to share something, we have to be prepared that the other person may not agree, may not understand, may not be happy about it. Can we still say regulated regardless of their response? It's hard to do, so give yourself some grace that it does require a lot of that practice, but we can't just assume that, okay, if I'm regulated now and I brought up this difficult conversation and because I'm regulated, you have to accept it or you have to agree with it, or you, no, it's really all about, I'm regulated so I have the capacity to handle whatever the response is going to be as well.

Yeah. And if we start talking and it gets too difficult, we can shelf it for a day or two. Exactly. And think about it some more. Right? Because that also creates safety. I'm not gonna force you to come to some conclusion about this.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That connection piece is so important. I want to stay as connected as possible while we sort this out, and that may mean multiple conversations. It may mean time, it may mean that we see it from a different perspective, and that's okay.

Yeah. I have people, I tell people all the time, the more honest you can be. The better it goes as well. Right. If I can say to you, I haven't shared this with you because I've been worried that it would make you mad.

Yeah.

Or I've been worried that you wouldn't like me if I shared this part of me with you. Mm-hmm. Or right, because that's the truth. Right. Is that we're afraid

Yeah.

Of how it will affect the relationship. And so oftentimes when we haven't shared things, it's not because we're trying to withhold, it's because we've had fear. Our nervous system has been dysregulated. And so to keep ourselves safe, we've decided to avoid things. Yeah. Being honest can actually, even if there's some conflict, it can create a depth to the relationship that wouldn't be there if we never had any conflicts. I don't think conflicts are the problem. It's learning how to resolve them.

Yeah, the repair is important. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

So tell me, how do you think nervous system regulation affects women in their midlife in different ways than. Somebody else that's younger or older or,

I think part of it is, by the time we hit midlife. We have spent many, many years caring for other people, taking care of other people. So our nervous system has been stretched thin. you think of all the things that foundationally support a nervous system, sleep and nutrition and movement and sunlight and connection. A lot of things as we go through life, especially as women, especially as mothers. We sort of get stretched very thin, and your nervous system can only tolerate being stretched thin for so long. So it's almost you hit midlife and it's all right, time's up. We've been doing it for too long, we're not gonna do it anymore. At the same time, we are going through so many changes. Our hormones are changing, our body is changing, and especially the hormones when. What ends up happening is, we, we start losing some of the hormones that have helped us tolerate all the stress. So we, the stress is, the payment is up. We have less capacity because also the hormones are affecting our sleep and everything is changing. And then we have our children, if we have children are growing, so our relationships are transitioning. It becomes this whole new world for us, which is also very stressful. And then maybe we're dealing with aging parents and we're also dealing with. Chronic symptoms or things. So everything sort of comes to a head at midlife where we have a lot more stressors in some ways, even though our kids are, you often hear people say oh, when your kids are younger, it's the hardest time. It is physically very demanding, but anybody who has older kids knows bigger kids, bigger problems, it just becomes different. And so that transition. Can be really hard on us. Many of us don't know where our role is anymore because we used to be very clear okay, I'm a mother. This is what I do. This is how all of a sudden we're navigating these relationships with these adult kids who are you don't have a say in my life. You did this wrong, you did that wrong. So your nervous system is really being pushed. While all our supports are low, I'm not sleeping well. I don't have my hormones, I, now I've got all these issues with my parents that I'm concerned with. So it kind of hits a peak and really this is the time where I think a lot of women in midlife have to come full circle. And it's not that we have to reinvent ourselves or it's not that we have to, Sort of change things. It's almost a recalibration. I have to get back to remembering who I have always been, what is important, even who I've always been pre raising kids, who I still am now, what my role is, and who do I wanna become in the second chapter. Of my life essentially, and how do I, regulate my hormones and my sleep, and how do I navigate all these changes and challenges while still starting to take care of me? So we start looking for different support, and that's why you'll see a lot of women in midlife they may start a business or they may reach out for new friend groups and want to do different adventures that are just for them. It's sort of a remembering of who they were before all this caretaking and, and craziness of building careers and lives took place. Now we're back to the point where're okay, where were we? Let's pick it up, and what do we wanna do for this next part?

That's so good. That's so good. And, and I feel that's kind of where coaching came in for me as my kids started to leave, you're wow, I've got a lot of time left to live and

Yeah.

And I want to contribute in ways that feel meaningful and use my spiritual gifts.

Yes.

Right. Rather than falling my kids around and

Yeah.

Hoping they'll need me. You know, I wanted to keep living a life that felt meaningful and, and I could share in the things they're learning and the things that I'm learning. And it just felt like that was a, a more meaningful route for me to

go. Yeah, for sure. hopefully we live for a very long time. You know, we hopefully live into, well into our nineties. Well, there's a 20 year period when if you have kids where you're raising them, where it is, like everything's poured into them, and then as they get older. That dynamic changes that your needs change. You still wanna be involved in their life, right. And hopefully have grandchildren and whatnot. But you think about, it's really only 20 out of the 90 years where you gotta give it the all to the caretaking piece. That's still 70 years, 70 years of focusing on being you. So we spend a lot of time in midlife where we do need to. Okay. Right. Let me come back to me. Let me remember the G, like I love that you said your spiritual gifts. Let me remember the gifts and the talents that I have that aren't associated with my kids, although those are wonderful ones. But coming back to being me, like I'm back to being Leah and Leah. One of her roles is mother and stepmother and mother-in-law and grandparent and whatnot. But what else? What else? What other roles do I have and then who am I at the core? That's what I also really wanna be exploring, like. What do I stand for? What is the legacy I wanna leave? Like, what are the things that I wanna be known for? Where do I wanna invest my time? How do I wanna show up for others and myself? These are all the things that we come back to in midlife. So you, you sort of look at it and like, what a beautiful time, what a beautiful season. We have all this. Experience and wisdom from going through all these years, even though it's not always appreciated at this stage in life. But we do have it. And what are we gonna do with it now?

Yeah. So good. Well, this has been really great to talk to you. I'm curious, like if someone wanted to work with you, what are some things that you offer people? And then if you have any last bit of advice, we can end with that.

For sure. So I run my advanced training for nervous system resilience, and that's really directed at helping professionals and coaches and people who wanna go very deep on the nervous system. So that's what you are doing and, and help integrate that into not just their own personal lives, but to help support clients. and then I also have a couple of memberships. I'm actually starting, a new program next month. I don't know when this will air, but in March I'm gonna be doing a masterclass all about midlife and it's called the Midlife Recalibration Week, where it's a free week where we're gonna be exploring different things about your nervous system. And then I have. Some, guided journals that are available on Amazon that teach you about your nervous system. And I have affirmation cards, how to create safety, and then my podcast, it's called Building Resilience, and that is where I talk about everything all together, how to build resilience, because that's truly what it's all about with your nervous system.

Thank you. Thanks for sharing all of this. I think the safety sequence is just so, such a useful tool

Yeah.

To just implement. And I have talked about that on the podcast a little bit, but I think it's something that I'm practicing.

I talked about it in my journal. Yeah. There's like even a little card in my journal that if you get my journal, that's how important it is. Um, and it, it is foundational, I think for everything that we do with the nervous system

and any last. Last parting

wisdom. You know, I think, I think the main thing is your nervous system is. Is one of your most valuable, important resources that we have been gifted, and we want to get to know ourselves on that level because it affects everything that we do. It affects every relationship. It affects our own health, physical, mental health. We didn't even talk about that, that when we're dysregulated, it can lead to illness and chronic symptoms and pain. So that nervous system piece, learning about, not just about the nervous system, but your own nervous system, it's honestly one of the best investments you can make for everything. And so really encourage you to spend some time getting to know your own nervous system.

So good. And your podcast is a great way to do that. 'cause you just break it down into so many different things. So

yeah. Yeah.

Tell 'em the name of it again.

Building Resilience.

Building Resilience.

Yes.

All right. Thank you, Leah.

You're so welcome. Thank you for having me.