These are tumultuous times.
Depending on where you are located, you might be facing a challenging economy, political unrest, war, natural disasters, environmental degradation, or societal exclusion and systemic barriers to safety and support.
This might be above and beyond whatever personal and professional difficulties you may currently be contending with, related to health, finances, relationships, losses, transitions, accidents, legal woes, or other adverse events or stimuli occurring in your immediate circle that impact your and their functioning and ability to thrive.
And this, in turn, might be sitting on a history of developmental difficulties and complex early life experiences.
It can feel incredibly debilitating to keep being slammed when you’re already stacked. Regardless of what species one happens to be.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this
If from an early age you learned that what goes up (activation / charge) does not come back down (deactivation / discharge), and there weren’t the necessary external supports and conditions required to support this natural process, navigating any subsequent challenges can become all the more difficult.
What goes up might stay up or shut down, which is not the same as the nervous system deactivating and restoring its normal functioning.
The more that we hold back and hold in, the more stacked we become, and the less reserve capacity we have to move through further challenges but also to enjoy life.
We do our best to manage and muscle through, efforting to keep living another day, doing the best we can. Limiting ourselves and our worlds in an attempt to ride out the chaos until some point in the future when things improve. Applying whatever short-term coping strategies we can until these seem to no longer work, worn out well beyond their intended use.
Being misjudged, misperceived, or otherwise penalized for how one functions when depleted and overwhelmed only adds to the pile.
Resilience has become a 4-letter word
Alternatively, you might have been praised for being resilient. Whether as a child, as a grown up, or as a member of a social group facing additional stacking due to living in a world where said social group’s needs are not consistently met, or at all.
You may have been told that animals of other species are resilient too. Especially domesticated ones that are part of our everyday lives.
In reality, what is usually being praised is the ability to override and operate beyond threshold in the face of conditions that were not in our control, because there was no other choice. The ability to tolerate being ignored, having one’s voice go unheard, or having one’s limits exceeded. The ability to appease, mask, or be functionally frozen, giving the appearance of doing well until it becomes evident that all is not, in fact, well.
This is not resilience.
Resilience is restoring the body’s natural ability to move through and release whatever responses are held in the queue and come out the other side, returning to a state that is more sustainable.
By which I do not mean more grounding or coping strategies to attempt to hold back the internal tides in the face of the external factors that are beyond our control. Make no mistake: These strategies are helpful and even necessary at times. But resilience is not simply about adding more tools to the toolkit in an attempt at further managing what is bound up inside the very tissues and souls of our being, waiting for an opportunity to be liberated and released.
Resilience is actually about not working harder. It is about trusting our body’s ability to surf the waves, feeling the exhilaration of aliveness as it ebbs and flows as it is meant to.
Restoring resilience requires setting different external conditions, relationally and environmentally, that support this process.
It is both an inside and an outside job.
Orienting and yielding into support
It is natural to contract in the face of such difficulty. In fact, it might feel unnatural or even risky to expand – even a little – into what is out there that might potentially be helpful. Especially when there is so much uncertainty and complexity at play.
This is even more true if there have been any experiences of what I call “thwarted find” — disrupted relational orienting, where our natural impulse to call, turn towards, or reach out for support, nourishment, protection, comfort, or connection was not met with a response that was supportive or attuned enough. Relational ruptures that have gone without repair usually involve misattunements that are waiting to be seen, heard, felt, and held.
It is when we feel held that we can let go and restore what I call “thwarted flow”.
Come explore how to restore whatever thwarted responses are wanting to move in your life in service of greater resilience to help navigate these strange and demanding times.
Check out the rest of my website to learn more about my services for humans as clients, including trauma therapy in support of relational and nervous system resilience, clinical or personal consultation, approved sessions and consultations for Somatic Experiencing® and EQUUSOMA® students, or other custom offerings.
Check out this site to learn more about how the EQUUSOMA® training program and team can support your own nervous system transformation and resilience to in turn be more equipped to support resilience in your equine and human clients. There are also lots of free resources available!
Visit our YouTube channel for informative, thought-provoking, and nourishing interviews and videos.
*And special thanks to my dear friend and colleague, Lasell Jartetzki Bartlett, MSW, SEP, for suggesting “find” in response to my request for an F-word to describe the relational call and response cycle. She’s one of our many valued herd members in the EQUUSOMA® community, and you can learn more about her work here.
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Payne, P., Levine, P.A., & Crane-Godreau, M.A. (2015). Somatic experiencing: Using interoception and proprioception as core elements of trauma therapy. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, article 93.
