Navigating Isolation
Are you up for an exercise that is designed to bring some awareness to your experience of lockdown?
If the idea of the lockdown makes you feel content, open and calm then we can say that lockdown initiates in you a sense of safety …
If, on the other hand, the idea and actuality of lockdown makes you feel anxious, weary or depressed, then we can say that lockdown makes you feel, in some way, threatened …
The exercise is as follows:
For the next hour or so, go about your day and simply notice the shifts in your inner state:
- Catch yourself feeling miffed – your jaw clenching
- Catch yourself feeling relaxed – your eyes softening
- Catch yourself worrying – your brow furrowing
- Catch yourself feeling curious – your eyes widening
Jot them down under the following headings:
- Body state: (eg. stomach constricted)
- Emotion: (eg. worry)
- What happened: (eg. child fell over)
- How did that make you feel? Safe or Unsafe: (eg. unsafe)
See if you can find 2 experiences that felt ‘safe’, and 2 that felt ‘unsafe’.
The words, ‘safety’ and ‘threat’ are familiar to us all but perhaps we’ve come to know them in more dramatic ways than the way I’m intending here, for instance ‘threat’ might sound like a robber at the door.
In fact, safety and unsafety are read as responses to many varied, subtle moments throughout the day. What’s important to know is that our nervous systems are constantly scanning our inner and outer environment for cues of safety and danger. This is largely an unconscious, automatic process:
A knock at the door: unsafe (‘Who could this be?!’)
A smiling delivery person: safe
A package with files from the office to work through: unsafe (‘I’m never going to get through these.’)
An offering of a partner to cook dinner: safe
A child asking for a sweet biscuit ten minutes before dinner: unsafe (‘Why doesn’t he know that now is not the time?!’)
The same child falling easily to sleep early in the evening: safe
Now, none of these events are inherently safe or unsafe but the important thing to note is that the nervous system reads them as such and responds with emotions matched to the nervous system state.
So, the knock at the door brings fear
A smiling delivery person brings happiness
A package of files from the office brings dread
An offering of a partner to cook dinner brings relief
A child asking for a sweet biscuit ten minutes before dinner brings exasperation
The same child falling easily to sleep early in the evening brings bliss
The nervous system’s only goal is to protect us. It is charged with our survival. And, it can be the reason why, by the end of the day, we’re exhausted; why we don’t sleep; why we call ourselves ‘stressed’. Because we are in and out of safety and unsafety all day long and life can feel like it is out of control.
It can feel as though life is being ‘done to us’.
This is when it is worth spending some time on studying when it is you feel agitated or overwhelmed – what happened the moment before and what happened the moment before you felt well, easy and content?
It is remarkably beneficial to have even a small amount of awareness around our nervous system states so that we might begin to cultivate experiences that amp up the safety and diminish the unsafety.
Your body can be your wise ally here. For some however, it isn’t so easy to know exactly how you might be feeling – we can be disconnected from our body wisdom especially if we have trauma in our past.
If this is the case for you it is still possible to do this exercise. An easier way into it might be to ask yourself – what do I like right now, what don’t I like right now go – what makes you smile and what makes you want to run a mile?! Answering these questions will also give you insight into what your safety and unsafety triggers are …
If you care for a next step in this exercise, I invite you to notice which experiences from your list above gave you feelings of safety and which experiences gave you feelings of unsafety?
Now choose which scenarios you might like to cultivate to make you feel more safe and less unsafe?
Jot down your strategies for safety:
A couple of examples:
- Increase safety: If having the dishes done by 8pm made you feel organized and peaceful, write a roster for everyone in the house to do the dishes before 8pm.
- Decrease unsafety: If a phone call with an electricity company made you raise your voice and feel exasperated, plan to take a walk after stressful phone calls. Or, make stressful phone calls while walking.
What could your strategies be to …
- Increase safety
- Increase safety
- Decrease unsafety
- Decrease unsafety
Bringing this degree of introspection to our nervous systems can give us the chance to catch our responses in action so that, even if in only some small way, we are not so much blown over by our reactions but can instead bring a conscious manufacturing of what works for us, and what doesn’t …
Could this small mapping exercise be part of bringing an ‘adventure narrative’ to your lockdown experience?
Wishing you well navigating this next stage. If any of what you read here rings true for you or someone you know then do reach out and take advantage of my free initial 20 minute consultation.
Gisela
Available for online sessions – giselaboetkercounselling@gmail.com
0421 407 004
giselaboetkercounselling.com