From Chaos to Calm

shift your nervous system back to safe and sound

Did you notice a shift in energy ~ around May 1? I did. All bumps smoothed out, energetically. Welcome to lush, pleasurable, soothing Venus in Taurus season! Venus and Sun are both now in Taurus -a sign that offers simplicity, creature comforts and a blessed return to your senses. I recall Steven Forrest saying that after the war (Aries season) it’s time to calm down (Taurus).

I love this time of year and exactly for this reason. The past week has felt delightfully Tauruean: A dear girlfriend visited, I hosted a Goddess retreat at my home, and my innocent ‘lil baby Bean kitten went into heat (talk about weird; she is still a kitten! And, yes, I have an appointment to get her spayed).

Mother Nature is full ON right now. So, to imbibe in her earthly delights, Fern treated me to a facial at the Kahala Resort Spa, and we also spent an afternoon at Foster Garden, both in Honolulu. We reveled in Nature’s delightful oddities, like, the Cannonball tree with flowering cannonballs the size of bowling balls, and a sausage tree! The garden had exactly the affect I’d intended. After spending time with trees, butterflies, flowers, we took a dip in the ocean. I felt residual stress from hosting the retreat totally melt away.

me and the sausage tree. Nature (just like humans) can be so weird!

As we relaxed and talked, our conversations reminded me that my nervous system is light years away of what it used to feel like to “be me”. Today, I am peaceful, calm and not easily flustered, or triggered. When I do get triggered, I know how to resolve it. I did not used to feel this way!

In light of this lush season we now find ourselves in -a season with abundant opportunity to experience real peace- I decided to share a few tips with you.

1.     If you: find it hard to focus, are scattered, if your energy consistently feels anxious, racy, chaotic, confused, and you make mistakes much more than you used to; if you feel a need to control the chaos through controlling others behaviors or your environment; if you are hypervigilant -feel as though the other shoe is about to drop on your life, and so you must be prepared …you MAY have PTSD. (I’m not a doctor; this is my highly non-scientific definition.)

I want to talk for a moment about PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder is real, and quite common. Here’s how I define trauma: You once felt, or still feel helpless, alone, unsafe, powerless. This means any event that causes you to feel this way is a Trauma. Perhaps there are big “T” Traumas and little “t” traumas, but trauma is trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder is the way it continues to impact your nervous system for a long time after the fact.

I had PTSD from being empathic and living in the San Francisco Bay Area. When my sensitivity opened up, AND (plus) I was in the wrong environment to experience this, I felt all of those things that define trauma (alone, powerless, unsafe, helpless). This also triggered old childhood trauma that it was time to address. It took me a few years to recognize exactly how all of this had impacted my nervous system, and then a few more years to heal.

2.     Your nervous system deeply wants you to be in digest, relax and rest mode -parasympathetic- most of the time. If you’re not, if stress comprises most of your lived experience, you are likely *dysregulated.         

When my friend was here, visiting, I could tell I was offering her the relaxing pleasure of being around a person with a regulated nervous system. What does this mean? I’m calm all of the time. I’m not easily triggered. If I encounter a strange or anxious energy, I don’t run with it. Instead, I pull back, inward, and clear it up before proceeding. Most vitally, I NEVER ALLOW ANXIOUS OR NERVOUS ENERGY TO INFORM MY ACTIONS. Never. I made that decision long ago and this keeps me in integrity - with me.

How can I do all this? Ooooh, this has taken me years, education, and lots of patience with myself. Having PTSD taught me a bunch of tricks and tools, some of which I’ll share below. Nowadays, I receive compliments on my “great energy.” This feels amazing to hear! I love being so high-vibe.

*A dysregulated nervous system has many components named in #1.

3.     Being with pets, nature, peaceful environments, calm and healed people…all help you to heal AND restore your nervous system from chaos to calm.

The above I learned from studying polyvagal theory. Polyvagal theory identified that humans not only have an ancient nervous system, but also a social one. This means that when you are in relaxing environments and with naturally relaxed people, pets, it acts as a model for your nervous system to mimic, saying, “Doesn’t this feel good? Let’s do this, too” (called co-regulation. It’s what a healthy nervous system does for others).

If you have PTSD you desperately need your body to feel good and safe, again. You don’t need more ping-pong energy triggering you back into “danger! danger!”. This is why, if you’re recovering from trauma, it’s probably not wise to hang out with unhealed people in trauma. It’s why if you’re in PTSD in a chaotic environment, or around people with a level of chaos, or following the horrific news of the world, you are easily triggered right back into it. Yes, it’s harder to heal when you are bombarding yourself with more stress.

I have observed that people don’t like it when I suggest this to them; they want to shut this idea down. That’s okay. I’m still going to keep saying it.

Here’s what I think: I think of PTSD in energetic terms. Imagine your energy as water and it is full of soot (stress, hypervigilance, cortisol, etc.). The more purity/calm/peace you bring in, as relaxed, ongoing, good feeling body-based experiences… this peacefulness dilutes, and then WILL eventually overtake, feelings of chaos. Peace slowly replaces the other. But the more soot you interact with the more you carry, so you continue to be triggered by so. many. things. It’s a basic explanation but this is my point: All of this IS basic! The only thing that keeps you in loops of internal chaos is your unwillingness to move toward the things that cause you to feel good, because your identity is too enmeshed with the habits that cause you to not feel good.

…And that last sentence is definitely another topic for another time.

4.     Your BODY is your main ally for healing from PTSD, or trauma.

If you can only digest one piece of advice on this topic, let it be this: LISTEN TO YOUR BODY! Listen to your body, to what it likes, and what it doesn’t.

This really is the key to regulating your nervous system from chaos to calm, from bouncing around like a ping-pong ball to feeling peaceful all of the time. I like talk therapy, but I’m telling you: talk, alone, will not get the job done.

Listen to how your body feels in the presence of certain people. Listen to how your body feels in certain environments. Listen to how your body feels in Nature. Listen to how your body feels with pets. Listen to how your body feels watching shows. Listen to what calms and soothes: Do more of that!

Vitally, listen to what doesn’t feel good…and move away from those things.

5.     If life feels big and overwhelming, make your world much smaller.

I was talking with my friend about this when she was visiting. She is an activist, and she’s also survived some heavy stuff in recent years. She’s working through nervous system healing. She mentioned being triggered by the recent war protests (for obvious reasons, we won’t go into this here).

This reminded me of one more MAJOR BIG-LY thing I did to help get my nervous system back into safe, sound and cozy. I made my world much smaller. I chose to only place my Awareness on my immediate environment and how it affected me. Cooking, cleaning, keeping my house and pets and all the people in it healthy and content is a pleasure for me, anyhow. Well, it turns out those same things ALSO regulate your nervous system!

Mundane routines, the kind you think you’re “too busy” to do, or maybe sound boring to your mind… they aren’t boring to your body. They are REGULATING. Steadying things that involve both mind and body, routines that you return to, day in and out, over and over again, will gradually and incrementally build you a new nervous system baseline: A healed one.

It takes patience, and time, but if you actually do these things that I suggest here, trust me: One day you will wake up and notice that you not only feel good…but you’ve been feeling good for weeks now. Victory!

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