# Calm shit down - Build shit up ##### Untangling Pain ---  --- ## tl;dr **Step one: calm shit down** - Calm the nervous system so the brain and spinal cord know we are safe - Reduce the fight or flight response - Think ease, presence, joy, love, peace, and rest - Women, especially in their 40s and 50s, don’t get enough ease or rest - We’ve got too much going into our cup and not a big enough cup **Step two: build shit up** - Build a bigger cup: resilience, strength, and capacity - Cope better before setting off the fire alarms **Start with calming** - Step one is step one for a reason - Activate that feeling of safety in the body **Tools that help me** - Breath work — helps signal safety to the brain - Crying — regulates the body and signals safety - Music — dancing, singing, headphones on - Walking the dog — fresh air, nature - Journaling - Hugs and heavy blankets — calm the nervous system **Calm before capacity** - Calming also builds capacity - Do more when things feel safe, without triggering the brain **Go slow** - Clients often do too much too fast — overfill the cup - The brain perceives it as danger and produces pain - Baby steps reassure the brain — you’re safe, you can do more --- ## Transcript There are two steps that we can take. Number one is to calm shit down, as in reduce the amount that is going into our cup. And step number two is to build shit up, as in build a bigger cup. So we need to calm down the nervous system. We need to make sure that the brain and the spinal cord know that we are safe, so they don't need to panic and produce pain or an inflammatory response. We can also calm the nervous system in terms of the sympathetic nervous system. Reducing that fight or flight response. So we are looking at creating a safe, regulated, calm, rested body. I want you to think ease and presence and joy and love and peace and rest. And, did I say ease? We need ease. Women do not get enough rest in their lives and they certainly do not get enough ease. I think this is especially true for women in their 40s and 50s. It might explain why this age group suffers more pain. Because we've got so much more going into our cup and we don't have a very big cup to start with. Step number two is building shit up or building a bigger cup. We are talking about resilience, all the stuff that makes us feel safe. As well as our capacity, whether that's physically, strength wise, or capacity in how much we can cope with before we actually set the fire alarms off. Now if you're in pain right now, step one is step one for a reason. We want to calm shit down. We want to do all the stuff to activate that feeling of safety in our body. This is where breath work comes in as breathing helps our brain know we are safe. We hold our breath when we're in danger. So that's where we can start. Just breathe and think about what else you could do. Make a list of what helps. Again, for me, it's breath work, it's taking that breath. I realise that sometimes even when I'm, I'm writing and typing up, and I'm doing the things I love, I realise, actually, I've been holding my breath for so long. That then is activating that fight or flight response, so I just need to remember to breathe. And when I remember to breathe, it activates that parasympathetic response. That's what helps with me. Remembering to breathe. Another thing for me is crying. I'm a serial crier. And it helps to regulate my body. I can feel the difference after I've had a really good cry. If you're in this dangerous situation, you're not going to cry, but afterwards you're like, Oh my God, that was so dramatic and it's that release, my body knows it's safe and it's okay to cry now. Listening to music helps massively, especially listening to music, headphones on, dancing in the kitchen, singing at the top of my voice. Or driving while singing at the top of my voice. Walking my dog helps massively too. Getting out into some fresh air, it allows me to breathe, get into nature, get some fresh air. Journaling helps massively. As do hugs. Lots and lots of hugs help calm the nervous system. Makes us feel safer. Heavy blankets work as well. Obviously, all of these are not just calming us, but they're also building a bigger cup, too. When things are calmer, we can do more. And then a little bit more, and then a little bit more again. We can build this strength and resilience and capacity without scaring the brain and the nervous system. They know it's safe, and they know it's okay to do that little bit more. They don't produce pain because they don't perceive that anything bad is happening, because everything's done gently and it's, it feels safe. That's what I've found with clients in the past, that they think they need to go out and exercise loads. So they jump in and they do way too much, overfilling their cup in the first session. The nervous system has no clue what's going on, it wasn't warned that this was going to happen, and so it perceives this as a threat. Even if it's not a threat, even if it's something good for you, all the fire alarms are set off. It doesn't, again, mean that you've done something wrong or that you have physically damaged something. It's literally the brain perceives it to be a danger and it produces pain to stop you from moving. Because it's trying to protect you. Whereas if we can take one step at a time, one baby step at a time, we can reassure the brain that we are safe, that all is well, and we can do it, and we can do a little bit more and then a little bit more, and that we don't need protecting. --- Next lesson → [[Untangling Pain – Module 1 Lesson 12|next lesson]] %% - [[Step One – Calm Shit Down]] - [[Step Two – Build Shit Up]] - [[Why we need to calm shit down first before building shit up]] - [[Ways to calm shit down]] - [[The Problem with Doing Too Much Too Fast when it comes to pain]]