I have heard this stated before, in a number of ways, but it bears repeating:
“Our nervous system doesn’t measure what’s right by what’s healthy, it measures by what’s familiar.”
~Sarah Baldwin (a phenomenal somatic coach that you should follow on Instagram).
That is crucial.
First, it’s important because if we are raised in an environment and had a childhood where it was toxic and unstable and volatile, and that was established as your norm, then your mind and body set that - it was set as your homeostasis, and then you may need help regulating your nervous system.
It’s also important because embedded in what is written above is this -
Second, it defies logic. Ie - I could have known that my parent was a narcissist or my parent an alcoholic or my parent had a mental health condition and therefore, my childhood wasn’t normal -
It may not do you much good. Unless you can train your nervous system to relax and regulate again.
Because - as the quote above states- we will choose what is familiar.
Third, our unhealed wounds play out in our adult relationships.
Especially if we don’t do the important healing work.
So often we end up choosing partners that mirror the wounds and problems of our childhood -
It seems like a cruel joke -
especially when you’re aware that your parents or family was toxic or dysfunctional and then you’re trying desperately to escape that.
However, I’ve also heard that positioned like this -
It’s another opportunity for you to heal yourself.
It’s unfinished work for you.
Often times we are healing our inner children.
Often times also - whether we’re aware of it or not - we’re met with challenges and situations that also ask us to heal our family trauma/ancestral line.
We’ll learn the lessons, or make the same mistakes and be presented with the same situations in a different form, repackaged, time and time again - until we do address them and heal from them.
Isn’t that a doozey?
But I believe it.
It’s certainly played out in my life - both from my relationship patterns, my unaddressed healing in growing up the child of an alcoholic and with a mentally unwell, traumatized, hoarding mother - and a whole other host of issues from my family line/ancestors. Some I know, many I do not.
I also share the above quote because I also think it bears repeating -
Sometimes we inherit a nervous system.
Our ‘norm’ within our family, what we have been passed down, epigenetically, can also be a dysregulated nervous system.
As writer, Maryk Wolynn, reminds us - It Didn’t Start With You.
This is also touched upon in the phenomenal book, Emotional Inheritance, by Galit Atlas.
There are others too, who explore more of the science research behind epigenetics - but it’s enough to sit with that we are often times addressing our parents’ and grandparents’ and ancestors’ unfinished crap. We’re doing that work.
Overwhelming at points, sometimes it seems like there’s enough bullshit to deal with with our own healing -
But, in my experience, I’ve found the two to be hopelessly intertwined. You can’t parse out one from the other.
We are not blank slates when we enter into this world, in this carnation.
And, as my previous post indicates, our nervous system is intimately connected to our brain parts and the four major networks; it governs how we see the world, have relationships, make sense of information and process it, regulate/address emotions or fail to do so, perceive threats, etc.
Ie - to have a fucked up, dysregulated nervous system is to really impede how you can show up in the world - for everyone - for your partner, for your kids, your friends and all of your family, your work.
And especially, for yourself - your own homeostasis, it determines how and if you can relax and enjoy life.
So many of us have dysregulated nervous systems these days.
It’s not all due to trauma or mental health conditions/mental illnesses.
It’s the constant screens. It’s addiction to smartphones. It’s grind culture and capitalism.
It’s isolation and over-reliance on faux social/emotion connection which we(‘ve tried to) normatize from technology.
It’s the disembodiment - taking us out of our bodies, as we’re always in our minds.
It’s the removal from nature.
It’s the cheap, processed, hormone and plastic and dye-filled foods that make us sick even when we don’t realize it.
It’s the lack of exercise and stagnancy, stationery existences.
It’s the substance abuse.
It’s the lack of community and social connections and emotional and support systems.
It’s the stress from cost of living and inflation and salaries that never seem to raise in proportion to the costs.
To regulate your nervous system these days, with all of that, is no small task.
And yet -
It also is very likely the best and the utmost important thing you can ever do for yourself.
To be well, to be calm. To enjoy your life. To be present. To carry out your purpose.
We choose the familiar, what we’ve known.
So, if you haven’t felt regulated or calm for a long time.
If you don’t even know what that means, because you grew up differently-
Or because you have a mental health condition -
The attention to regulating your vagus nerve, adjusting your vagal tone (see last post), perhaps by having some somatic healing, biofield tuning/sound fork/sound baths, and exercise and meditating and yoga - all the things that could calm down your nervous system -
They are really worth exploring.
Your nervous system will thank you.
Life could get so, so much better.