This is part two of the article, Ever Feel Like Your Nervous System is Short Circuiting?
Healing the short circuits in the nervous system is possible. At the very least, one can learn how to cope with them better and with the right treatment, I believe one can heal them too.
Here is my experience with this. Keep in mind, I am not a professional. I am someone going through this the same as you.
The pause and the presence
Likely my most important and used exercise with short circuits. Often called, mindfulness, I have taken it a step further to clarify and deepen the experience.
When I am experiencing a short circuit, I literally pause everything I am doing. I stop moving. I stop looking around. I stop fighting it. I stop everything. I find a position that I feel most comfortable in and I become present with the feeling of the short circuit.
Then, I let my body and my short circuit tell me what it needs from me. To make it physical rather than just a mental connection (because physical grounds it and allows it to flow where just mental usually makes it stuck), I add in sensorimotor practices: I describe it, I let my body move how it wants to move, I find the emotion associated with it, I orient to places in my environment where I feel more grounded with it.
The next step involves bringing my environment to the short circuit. Find something or someone in your world that helps you feel grounded, more whole, and more present. Connect that energy to the feeling of the short circuit. You can touch one hand to where the short circuit is and the other to the object in your environment. Allow the grounded feeling to come into the short circuit feeling.
I have created a journal exercise on this. It can be used for multiple experiences that need to be mindful, including feeling like you’re short circuiting. It outlines pause and presence in detail and provides space and examples of how to do it. I also have another step to this process; how to be with the hard stuff itself.
Work with Mother Nature
She is our creator and healer. Trauma to our nervous system deviates us from her healing and instead puts us into short circuits of looping, numbing, and hollowness. Returning to her brings us back our own power:
- earth brings us back to our roots to feel strong and capable of experiencing storms
- water cleanses us from traumatic blockages and teaches us how to let our emotions flow to release
- air brings us newfound freshness in our thoughts and dreams
- fire burns all that we ingested that isn’t ours and feeds us our power and passion
- spirit is the life force itself, guiding us to our peace and purpose
I am always attuning to Mother Nature, especially with strong dissociation. She is how I rewire my neural pathways on a day by day, hour by hour basis. Mother Earth is the root where I build all my other resources.
I created an exercise using the elements of Mother Nature to return us to our deep, whole, embodied self. These questions get us out of our mental rumination and into our nervous system to rewire it.
Is your nervous system short circuiting? Part Two. Healing is possible.
constitutional Homeopathy
This practice involves in depth work with a classical homeopath to determine overall deficiencies and excess qualities in a persons mental, emotional, physical, and energetic state. Constitutional homeopathy works with minimal dosing and intensity to produce a stimulation of the life force to treat the distress in the individual. Unlike allopathic treatment where symptoms are looked at in singular and multiple doses are used in broad prescriptions for everyone, constitutional homeopathy looks at the entire individual and makes minimal prescriptions based on their energetic capacity to make a change. Less is more, change is optimized rather than feared, and success is determined by individual needs rather than generalized ideals.
I have found constitutional homeopathy to be helpful when other tools are not working. It works at our most base level, energy and frequencies that make us, and shifts blockages that otherwise are resistant to change. The quality of the therapist and right remedy are essential for effectiveness.
I will be honest and say that this is not easy work. It will bring up aggravations and traumas you have suppressed but with the right dosing and therapist, these can be managed well.
I am listing it here for those that are looking for something new to try. This facebook group discusses it in detail and has qualified practitioners.
Is your nervous system short circuiting? Part Two. Healing is possible.
Somatic self Holding
Often, a nervous system short circuit is our body telling us we are in need of some sensorimotor connection. Sensorimotor is the communication between our sensory systems and our motor systems. It is a very important part of the brain and deficiencies can lead to feelings of overwhelm.
As mentioned in the first article, a short circuit feeling is like jammed communication. Too many neurons firing at once or looping over and over. Perhaps it feels like you cannot link ideas or parts of you are fragmented from other parts and the communication is blocked.
I find somatic self holding the head and body gets the sensorimotor back on board and more soft flow happens in our nervous system rather than franticness or resistance.
How to do it
Hold the part of you feeling like a short circuit
Place your hands on the part of you feeling like a short circuit. Gently hold or caress the area, whatever feels good to do. Pay attention to the sensations of the hands and the energy it brings to the area. It is grounding? Comforting? Something else?
Is there an underlying message coming through? A suppressed emotion? Another sensation? A story? Keep in mind that this can be overwhelming. Do it is short bursts, seconds, at first. Even better is to do it with your therapist. The idea is to find what the need behind the short circuit feeling is. When we address the needs, the body responds by creating new neuron pathways and in time, the short circuit becomes less and less as the nervous system follows the newer passages instead. It takes many repetitions for this to happen so practice is key.
Send this part love. It’s simple yet hard to do for some. Love in action is being present with the feeling and witnessing what it is saying without an agenda. Letting it know that you are here and are open to supporting it. I find this to be hard to do when I let my “fix it” mindset overrule me. It is a practice to let that go and surrender to the practice. Keep practicing. Take your time. When one is not used to self love, it feels weird to do at first.
Is your nervous system short circuiting? Part Two. Healing is possible.
Embodied partnership
Often, we must find a path to healing with others that have peaceful nervous systems. If we did not receive the proper mirroring with our parents while growing up or have spent time in abusive relationships, our nerves become trained to be stuck in behaviours that keep it in survival instead of peace. The presence of a safe other can understands what you are feeling and can hold space for you to rebuild is important to show your nervous system what it can be like.
I offer this as a service. I know what it feels like have a chaotic nervous system and I’ve spent years undoing mine. I offer myself as a safe system you can be with. This is not professional therapy but peer support with unlimited contact through texts.
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