AwakenHer with Corissa Stepp
"AwakenHer" is your beacon of hope and strength, focusing on turning the pain of past relationships into the power of self-discovery and renewal.
Hosted by Corissa Stepp, this podcast serves as your guide through the complexities of healing and personal growth. Each episode unveils the stories of women who have triumphantly navigated their way through life's storms, alongside actionable advice from experts in the field. "AwakenHer" is not just a podcast; it's a movement towards self-love, resilience, and a joyful new beginning.
Join us on this transformative journey, and embrace the empowered woman you were always meant to be.
AwakenHer with Corissa Stepp
Healing and Thriving: The Power of Nervous System Regulation for Overcoming Complex PTSD
Ever wondered why therapy alone may not help you fully recover from Complex PTSD? Buckle up, as we're about to unlock a profound understanding of trauma, its impact on our lives, and a life-altering tool that played a vital role in my recovery from cPTSD.
In this episode, we'll unravel the intricate differences between PTSD and cPTSD, delving deep into the common symptoms and additional signs specific to cPTSD, including a negative self-perception, over-reactivity, and a looming sense of despair.
Transitioning from understanding trauma, we learn the power of regulating your nervous system. Discover how mastering this vital skill can stabilize emotions, boost resilience, and increase productivity.
Not just beneficial for you, but this knowledge is crucial for parents too, offering a roadmap to co-regulate their children's nervous systems. Don't miss out on this transformative conversation, designed to shift your perspective on trauma, healing, and forging meaningful relationships.
Send us a Text Message to let us know what you thought of this episode!
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Corissa is a Holistic Trauma-Informed Coach & Narcissistic Abuse Specialist™ who empowers women after they’ve endured narcissist trauma to rediscover who they are, reclaim their power, and find the clarity and courage to move forward and live a life they love. Corissa is also a recovering people-pleaser and codependent who has endured way too many narcissistic relationships to count! She coaches not only from her knowledge and training but also from the wisdom she has gained from her own healing journey.
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Website: www.corissastepp.com
Book: The Savvy Girl's Guide to Thriving Beyond Narcissistic Abuse
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Free Quiz: Is My Partner a Narcissist?
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Welcome to the Stepping Into Meaningful Relationships podcast. I'm your host, carissa Stepp. I'm a relationship and human design coach, and this podcast is designed to help you create a stronger connection to yourself so you can transform the relationships around you, whether that be with your partner, a friend, a parent, a child or your business. We'll be looking at relationships through the lens of human design, and my guests and I will bring you the tools, tips and tricks to create deeply meaningful connections with others. But first, let's start with you. The most important relationship you have is the one with yourself. Thank you for tuning in. Now let's get to today's episode. Hey everyone, i hope you're all doing well. Before we jump into today's episode, i just wanted to share with you a special that I have ongoing for this month. I am offering 30-minute human design or intuitive reading sessions for only $45. Now, i never put my services up on a sale or a promotion, so this is kind of a big deal And I don't have many time slots left. However, this promotion is ongoing for this month, only that we're in July of 2023, in case you're listening to this at a later date. So if you are interested, please feel free to reach out to me, i don't have it published on my website, so it's something that you might want to reach out to me directly through my Instagram account, or you can email me, carissa, at CarissaStepcom, and we can set that up, so I just wanted to put that out there real quick. Today I'm really excited because we're going to be talking about the number one tool that helped me recover from complex PTSD And, honestly, it's something that I believe we all need. That would literally make the biggest difference in our world right now.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure most of you are familiar with PTSD, right Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and you may be wondering what in the world is complex PTSD, or sometimes referred to as CPTSD, and how is it different from PTSD? So PTSD usually occurs after a single or short-term traumatic event, for example, being involved in or witnessing a car accident, a burglary, a natural disaster, experiencing some sort of assault or some other form of what we would call acute trauma. Now, complex PTSD occurs after having experiencing chronic, prolonged or long-term trauma, such as being an abusive relationship, childhood trauma, war or frequent violence, and it can also occur if you have experienced multiple traumatic events over a period of time. So, for example, for me, i experienced working downtown in New York City on 9-11, followed by a home invasion just a month later. I was home alone and someone broke into our home And then watched my father pass away painfully from pancreatic cancer just a couple of years later. So this is not to mention the ongoing emotional and psychological abuse that I endured in multiple narcissistic relationships So complex.
Speaker 1:Ptsd Has the same symptoms as PTSD, such as nightmares, flashbacks or reliving the experiences when memories are triggered, as well as being very hypervigilant, feeling constantly on edge or reactive. You may experience, if you have PTSD, mood swings or sleep disturbances, depression, rage or anxiety, and so for those suffering with CPTSD, they may also experience some other symptoms, such as a negative sense of self, which involve feelings of shame, guilt, failure or worthlessness, excessive reactivity, which may appear as flashes of anger or rage or aggressive behavior, and they may even experience a sense of hopelessness or they may have a hard time feeling happy Now. All of this can impact their relationships and, in the case of abuse, can make it really difficult for them to trust other people and be able to maintain meaningful relationships with others. So I think you get the gist. The often recommended course of treatment for PTSD or CPTSD is therapy And while I believe that therapy absolutely has its place and it is very important with helping you be able to talk through your experience and help you process the trauma mentally, it sort of falls short on helping your body release the trauma. So your body is going to react to anything that it perceives as a threat or danger without your mind getting involved. If any of you have ever heard of the book title The Body Keep Score, that's kind of where this comes from.
Speaker 1:When you experience some sort of event that causes a stress response in your body, it happens subconsciously through your neuro receptors. So when your body again notice I didn't say your mind perceives a potential threat, the neuro receptors in your body send a signal to your sympathetic nervous system to activate. And when it sends that signal of activate, what's happening is the blood flow in your body starts moving away from your core, away from the heart and out to your outer extremities, your arms and your legs, so that you can either fight or flee whatever it is that your subconscious mind or your body is perceiving as a potential threat or danger. When you suffer from PTSD or CPTSD, your nervous system is constantly on high alert And it may actually be stuck in fight or flight, or if you subconsciously perceive imminent danger constantly, then you may actually be stuck in a freeze response, which is when you feel like you're shut down or you're numb, you're not really feeling your emotions. It's safer and it's easier for you to sort of completely dissociate and not feel any of your emotions and you just disconnect Your mind and your body, kind of disconnect from one another.
Speaker 1:So what is the number one tool that I'm talking about that really helped me in healing from CPTSD and for me it was also healing from these very toxic relationships? Well, it was learning how to regulate my nervous system. It was learning how to increase the flexibility in my ventral vagal breaking system. And so what does that mean? It means that I can now increase the gap between a perceived threat of danger and my reaction towards it. I can more effectively down regulate my nervous system so that I am not constantly reacting to the world around me.
Speaker 1:And you know, if you're a parent and you have children, you know that they take up a lot of energy, right, they take up a lot of space, take up a lot of energy and you need to have a lot of patience sometimes, especially with really young children And if you're constantly perceiving that everything is a threat or a danger, you know, even your young children, even though you know consciously that they're not dangerous, right, and they're not threatening you in any kind of way. Your body doesn't understand that. It just feels like it's under attack And so it could cause you to not have patience to deal with them right. It can cause you to start snapping at them, to start yelling at them, and you know, obviously, as a parent, that's usually not how we wanna behave around our children. And after the fact, if we do behave in that way, then we might actually start to feel like a lot of guilt, a lot of shame around all of it, and that just sort of exacerbates all this whole problem of, you know, having this guilt and shame. That is keeping us from really knowing our true sense of self.
Speaker 1:Okay, so now that I'm able to down-regulate my nervous system and I'm able to increase that gap between the perceived threat or danger and my response to it because now I'm not reacting to it right In that gap I can ground myself and get back into what we call a ventral, vagal state so that I can thoughtfully respond to what's going on around me. Now there isn't a simple trick to all of this. You know it has taken a lot of work, it's taken time and it's work that I continue to do actively, because living in a state of high stress and being reactionary all the time is not the way that I personally want to live my life And that's not the way I wanna show up in the world for those around me. So it was impacting my relationships and it made me nearly incapable of handling any additional stress or challenge that came my way when I was in this very hyper-vigilant, hyper-reactive state, because my system would be so completely overwhelmed that I would be thrown into this freeze response right And being stuck in a numbed out, shutdown state really kept me from being present with my children and enjoying the little things in life. It robbed me of experiencing joy and happiness in those precious little moments because I was so busy just trying to literally survive. Does this sound familiar to you? If so, let's walk through why learning how to regulate your nervous system is so important.
Speaker 1:One stress management right. The nervous system plays a crucial role in the body's stress response. When you experience stress, your sympathetic nervous system activates the fight-or-flight response, leading to an increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure and heightened levels of stress hormones like cortisol. By learning to regulate your nervous system, you can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps to induce relaxation and counteract the stress response right, and this can have overall significant benefits for your wellbeing and your mental health. Next is emotional regulation right. The nervous system is very closely linked to your emotions. When your nervous system is dysregulated, you may experience heightened emotional reactions Sorry, you're hearing my dog in the background Difficulty controlling your emotions or mood swings. By developing skills to regulate your nervous system, you can better manage your emotional states, promoting emotional stability, resilience and a greater sense of control over your reactions. Resilience is so underrated and yet it is so incredibly necessary to live a peaceful life.
Speaker 1:It's also important to regulate your nervous system to have improved focus and concentration right. When your nervous system is dysregulated, it can be really challenging to maintain your focus and concentration. You may easily feel distracted and find it difficult to stay engaged in tasks right. It can feel very much almost like ADD. Personally, and this is just my opinion, i truly believe that a lot of mental health diagnoses could probably be eradicated if we just looked and treated the trauma that is stored in the body and the impact that it has on the nervous system. Now there's been a lot of research around this as well, so it's not just really my opinion. It does come from somewhere, but that's a whole other topic for another day.
Speaker 1:But by learning to regulate your nervous system, you can promote a state of calm focus, allowing you to improve your attention span, your productivity and overall performance. So just think about the positive impact on your work, your career, your business. It also enhances your physical health, right? We know that chronic stress and a dysregulated nervous system can have really negative effects on our physical health. Prolonged activation of the stress response can contribute to various health problems, including cardiovascular issues, weakened immune system function, digestive disorders and sleep disturbances. By regulating your nervous system and reducing stress, you can improve your overall health and reduce the risk of stress related illnesses, which we all know there are plenty. You're also going to experience better and improved interpersonal relationships. Right, your nervous system can impact how you interact with others. When you are dysregulated, you may be more reactive, more irritable and more prone to engage in conflict. Conversely, when you learn how to regulate your nervous system, you can approach social situations with a greater sense of calm, empathy and understanding. This leads to a healthier, more positive relationship with other people. So, overall, learning how to regulate your nervous system empowers you to manage stress, control your emotions, improve focus and concentration, enhance your physical health and foster positive relationships. It is so highly valuable and, i think, so underrated. And again, it does promote overall well-being and can significantly contribute to a higher quality of life.
Speaker 1:Some of the most rigorous and important work that I do with clients is an extensive mapping of their nervous system, providing them with effective grounding tools and to help them regulate their nervous systems after being triggered. And it is truly incredible to see how their awareness of their nervous system and their triggers can make such a big difference in their lives. It helps them get out of that mere survival state and move them into a state of thriving, enjoying and being right, just being present. You know, after all, healing isn't all about doing right. It's about finding the safety within us to be who we are so we can consistently show up as ourselves. When we don't feel safe being who we are because of our past trauma, it's really really hard to show up that way right, to show up as your true self and to be present in the moment, and being you is who we need you to be, because you have incredible gifts and experiences that need to be shared with the world so that you can fulfill your purpose and have the impact you are meant to have on those around you.
Speaker 1:Also I just want to mention this as a side note If you are a parent, then this is something you may want to learn how to do, because, as parents, we actually co-regulate our children's nervous systems. So if you notice that you have children who are and I'm not going to say like, if your child is diagnosed with like some sort of you know, with being hyperactive or having ADD or ADHD, you know I'm not going to sit here and say, oh no, they don't have that. It might be that their nervous system just isn't regulated. They don't know how to regulate their nervous systems, but I do want to say that I think it can be hugely helpful in minimizing some of those symptoms. If it's not, you know, clear whether or not that's something that they have, okay.
Speaker 1:So If you did not learn how to regulate your nervous system as a child, right, and you feel like, oh gosh, is it my fault that my child is so dysregulated. Don't feel bad or guilty. Okay, i'm not trying to say that you know this is your fault or to shame you in any kind of way, because this is not something most people learn, right, most people did not learn as children how to regulate their own nervous systems, right? They they weren't taught this because a lot of our parents did not know how to regulate their nervous systems. This is not something that was talked about regularly, so don't go blaming your parents either. Okay, the good news is that it is never, ever too late to learn, and it's never, ever too late to teach your children, or even your partner, how to regulate their own nervous systems. So I truly believe that if we all learned how to do this, the world would be a much different place. We would be able to be more grounded, clear, focused, accepting and responsive, rather than reactionary, aggressive, angry, distracted and accusatory.
Speaker 1:And as an additional side note, i'm going to say I strongly believe, with a passion, that this needs to be taught in schools everywhere. We need to teach our educators how to regulate, and then we need to bring awareness and educate our children how to have a healthy nervous system and how to down regulate in times of stress. So if you are an educator or an administrator in a school system, let's work together and figure out how we can bring this into the curriculum, or at least as a workshop for the administrators and the educators. Okay, i'm sorry to go off on a tangent, but I'm just like, really passionate about this. And even if you're not an educator or a school administrator, if you're interested in learning more, i invite you to schedule a free clarity call with me or DM me the word regulate on Instagram, at churrisastep, for more info.
Speaker 1:It, honestly, may be the best gift you ever give yourself. It has truly, truly been a gift in my own life And I believe that this is the linchpin we all need to experience to have the deep level of healing that we need to have so that we can have a massive ripple effect on the world around us and create something different than what we have already experienced. Okay, with that, everyone. Until next week, be well. If you're hearing this message, that means you've listened all the way to the end, and for that I am truly grateful. If you enjoyed this episode and found it valuable, would you mind leaving us a review wherever you listen to podcasts and sharing it with others. If you'd like to connect with me for one-on-one coaching or human design reading, you can find me on my website or on social media. Also, if you have a topic you'd like me to discuss on a future episode, please DM me. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of stepping into meaningful relationships.
