If Regulating Your Nervous System Was Like Baking A Cake.

Imagine it’s Sunday morning and you want to bake your signature chocolate cake for afternoon tea.

You have all the ingredients.

All the right intentions.

You get the butter, flour, eggs and cocoa powder out.

You put your apron on.

You’re good to go.

All of a sudden, you get a ping on your phone. It’s your boss sending you an urgent email on a Sunday. You park it and bring your focus back to the cake.

But you don’t fully let it go. Your mind is in two places and you’re not fully present.

You put all the ingredients together but you’re still preoccupied by this bloody email. Then you remember that stupid thing you said to your ex’s mum 4 years ago and how embarrassing it was. You get even more distracted.

You put the cake in the oven with shaking hands, a tight chest and a racing heart. But you forget to check the temperature and it’s 50 degrees hotter than it should be.

20 minutes later you open the oven to a flaming burnt mess. The cake is burnt on the outside and undercooked on the inside.

This represents fight/flight - you’re not fully present. You might get distracted, have brain fog, feel overwhelmed and your mind might start spinning into catastrophic overdrive.

Now let’s imagine you go to bake a new cake.

You start putting the ingredients together and your boss emails again. You see the notification and you’re filled with dread. You think you’ve probably done something wrong, again.

You feel defeated and collapsed and lose interest in making the cake at all. What’s the point? It’s just a stupid cake.

But no, you promised yourself you’d make this cake.

Except now, you can’t seem to remember how to make it, how to even care about it, or how to do anything at all.

The batter ends up staying in the bowl and you give up on the cake to sit on the couch. Everything feels flat and ‘meh’. You feel cold and disconnected.

You want to ring a friend but you’re not sure if they’d care anyway. This is freeze.

But then you remember you’re probably dysregulated in your nervous system.

You understand your body and brain is just trying to keep you safe and has either shutdown (freeze) or moved into action (fight/flight) because it thinks there is danger.

You spend some time, firstly, being kind to yourself and noticing the sensations.

Then you start to regulate your breathing and use the tools that work for you.

After a little while, you start to notice your thoughts and sensations change.

Hmmm.

Maybe things aren’t so bad, after all.

Maybe it’s not me, it’s just an experience that’s happening that will pass with some compassion and support.

You go back to the kitchen, feeling more empowered. You turn the oven to the write temperature, mix the ingredients together, put the cake in the oven.

And 20 minutes later, out comes a fluffy, delicious, regulated cake that you made when you were present.

If you’re sick of living in survival mode and keeping yourself small - and you’re truly ready to elevate your life and step into your power - book a FREE discovery call with me today.