Well, once again, you get to hear me think out loud. Okay, that’s really probably all I do on Substack! But this one is so important to figure out, and like so many tricky concepts having to do with stress and associated topics, the language is lagging. I realize that “flooding” is a clinical term and as such, means a certain technique that has mixed results. It also is a very accessible water term, that most definitely does not imply anything good. Having lived through quite a few years of “flooded” land, I have very visceral associations to the word.

So…it seemed to me a good idea to try to pull apart how I’m using this label, and maybe come up with some clarity. I am not sure I succeeded here, but maybe this podcast will generate some thoughts and questions and observations from you, with all of your lifetime wisdom and experience and leadership (in any capacity) expertise.

Pushing out limits so we inhabit ever larger spaces, without losing access to our centre, our home, our identity as worthy individuals no matter where we go or what we do…that’s one hard thing. Anyone who is engaged in this endeavour in their own inner team, or any outer team at all, is going to relate to the threat of moving from a difficult and somewhat uncertain place towards either: a greater sense of competence and self-control, OR conversely, being pummelled into the opposite sensation of helpless overwhelm by forces too large to fight.

I want to acknowledge the very good work and the very admirable intentions of people who grade challenges for others (or for themselves) such that what was formerly a vague and smoke-filled environment of anxiety or even fear, becomes clear, navigable, and possible. The work of a firehose, directed at specific sources of danger, in service of health and safety and function, is a good one.

On the other hand, a firehose can be used against people, and in that way become a weapon instead of the life-saving tool it was designed to be.

Would love to hear your thoughts on my thoughts! I think, as always, for me it comes down to the very real limit of, well, one hard thing. At a time. Because that’s really all we can do, in the real world. Sometimes that one hard thing is pretty hard, but if it’s presented with love, respect, care, and a good bit of skill, it’s probably one good thing.

Happy Friday! Stay safe, and kind, and self-aware as you climb the fences and/or think about moving them over, just a little…

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The interesting thing about using states as a way of interpreting What Is Happening, is that it creates an entirely different set of guardrails around an experience. Instead of measuring the quality of the response to my cues, I’m measuring the continued availability of my horse for sensory input, leading to an adaptive (by her), and therefore informed choice as to motor output. I want to see evidence that she’s opening up, and regulating within the challenge, not shutting down and simply complying.

I find it very meaningful to grow my skills in reading the small communications (nonverbal, but quite apparent if I pay attention) of my animals. In this walk, I’m looking for movement within the state of Just Right Challenge - and I’m actually thinking of a little dial going from 1-10, based on Tundra’s body language. 1 = super easy and almost (but not quite) Home-like in routine and expected and automatically adapted to. 10 = a very high level of attention on a possible threat, but without escalating into the very different floor of Anxiety, where those threats become all she is able to think about.

With this in mind, you can watch (along with me) how Tundra experiences this little walk together. I see her moving quite fluidly up and down the “1-10 levels” within a level, but I don’t see her escalating to a whole different floor. Nor does she descend into a state where she is not even trying (which I would designate as a relaxed and sort of self-caring attitude to the experience; like she approaches eating). The whole walk (in my opinion, anyway) was a Just Right Challenge, and mutually enjoyable. I stopped the video because of time (trying to respect your attention spans, and your JRC parameters), but she did indeed calmly and happily move with me back to the herd and the second breakfast, with a pause to let me unsaddle her. No escalation. Enough stress that she is moving her “limiters” of inexperience and lack of confidence outward.

This sort of experience where I’m not exactly co-regulating; rather keeping the experience graded so she is successful in self-regulating, is very transferable to humans. Think about your own approach to a challenge which could be fun, could be too easy, or could shoot you up into Anxiety if some variables are shifted slightly. It’s not about someone “helping you do it,” so much as it could be someone helping you stay within a space where you can do it “yourself.” That attention to the parameters of the task or environment, by watching your own small movements up and down the stress ladder, is a form of care that is (again, in my opinion) very magical.

Some people’s nervous systems are naturally robust and not so prone to escalation out of a Challenge and into the higher stories. Others are more “mobile.” This is not a weakness (in fact it is a very valuable strength), but it can be tricky for someone with this characteristic to manage all the boundaries on the experience, while also focusing on the task. Helping by holding the space, slowing down the pace as needed, and keeping distractions a little less apparent is not enabling in the codependent sense. I think it is a really precise (and very technically elegant) form of coaching, personally.

If you are a facilitator of anyone else’s learning, have a try at using this sort of observation to help them grade a new challenge (or even a moderately practiced one). It is a lovely way to engage a non-dual, or non-binary, or non-judgemental perspective. It’s not at all pass or fail. It’s all about the little dials that (limiters as they can be) can be moved just a touch, here and there, to support success.

The peculiar advantage of functioning in overwhelm is, of course, the absence of unrelenting, unbearable pain. The downside is the corollary: I can’t also feel much of anything at all. Anesthetic that it is, it does not discriminate between strong sensations, emotions, or even original thoughts. Overwhelm takes care of everything. For me. So I don’t have to. It’s a pretty good deal.

Or…?

I’m doing this podcast more or less in real time, debating internally the merits and disadvantages, and trying to find the courage to descend from the lofty height, where nothing seems to matter, down to the ground floor, where everything is Real.

One hard thing: choosing to live, which is so hard, when simple survival is so…soft.

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Playing with the skill of observing state, rather than simple obedience or response, is kinda fun. It’s kinder, too, because I can incorporate my own state into the equation. We are both in the here and now, in this video, even though I started out a little jittery. Just allowing myself to notice that fact, and tell Tundra that it’s not about her, and go at a pace that my nervous system can handle, in a Venn Diagram with what hers can handle, made for a much more ease-filled interaction.

What escalates me, or you, or my horse, is generally less important than acknowledging that the escalation happened, or is happening. If I allow myself to do that, and to actively work variables with the goal of bringing both of us (we’re both important!) back into a Just Right Challenge, then the likelihood of some nice neurochemicals being released grows. Oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine. Good, good stuff. I’m wanting to experience those pleasant feelings paired with a challenge, rather than only feeling the relief of avoidance or escape.

Some levers that I use with my animals (and myself!):

* repetition repetition repetition

* routine ("habit stacking” on successful mini-sequences)

* pausing between little tasks to process

* pairing new with good (treats, affection, attention, warmth, food, whole herd time…)

* letting Tundra follow her nose, give opinions, have a voice, be the leader, etc. but in between me having a turn at my side of the conversation - basically treating everything as a back and forth interaction rather than a top down hierarchy

* embedding a new or difficult challenge within a sequence of “easy” tasks so success is the overall feeling associated with it

* saying please and thank you (surprisingly, this really makes a difference, probably to my overall view of what kind of relationship we have)

* noticing very small tries and reinforcing those, rather than waiting for the big performative success to celebrate

* thinking about the rhythm in my walk, talking, movements, and requests - keeping the pace steady, not too slow or fast, and somewhat predictable

* supporting Tundra using her body (sensory systems on, not off), her mind (cause/effect predictions and efforts to experiment with hypotheses), and her heart (focus of attention) to communicate, and also to actively be present and learn (Note: a Just Right Challenge state will include far more “behaviour” because the person or horse or whatever is actively showing up. That’s a positive sign! Don’t worry about perfect when progress is happening!)

* being aware of signs of slight stress (ears back, more nibbling, pawing, moving away, head up, pausing in motion, eyes widening, breath holding, tension in muscles), as well as signs of releasing that stress (blowing, shaking out, relaxing muscles, licking/chewing with mouth, coming towards me, standing still but “loose,” following pressure on lead rope, nosing new things, ears up and moving, looking up/down and around rather than just off in the distance) - and responding to little signals by grading my challenge to Tundra, accordingly.

Tundra is a horse, and so this interaction shows a human/horse working together in a slightly new challenge scenario. However, this all is pretty equivalent to how a human/human new challenge can go, if you just swap out the horsey signs of stress and release with human ones. I’ll maybe leave that sort of listing for another post, but meanwhile, have a go at seeing how many of these were displayed in just this fairly unremarkable 10 minute video!

Happy Wednesday. Have a Just Right day if you possibly can (and it is something you can actively work towards, for sure).

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Once again, I’m working off the levels of the Challenge Cheat Sheet, or the tall building of stress metaphor.

However I wanted to talk further about the very different experience one might have in moving up one level between Home Base (say, after a wonderful night’s rest) and into a Just Right Challenge (say, a fulfilling and engaging job, or contributory role with others), vs. moving up one level between exhausted Anxiety (say, after a fitful sleep punctuated with bad dreams and bouts of wakeful worrying), and into the Scary storey of fight or flight adrenaline - now needed in order to accomplish anything at all because one’s stores are still not replenished.

It is the same set of behaviours. In both cases one will get up, get moving, get dressed, and go to “work.” But the effect on one’s body, mind, and heart are completely and totally different.

Mistaking one for the other is easy, even when it's my own life I’m looking at. Because I spent such a very long time in that Anxious level, and even more time in the higher levels above it (particularly gravitating to the numbing effects of Overwhelm), it is quite the revelation for me now, to once in a while notice that I feel safe, secure, and calm, even. This is, I hasten to add, entirely separate from my circumstances and situation. Objectively speaking, those have become much, much more difficult, if not downright catastrophic. And yet, by changing the story, I have started to change a great deal of my perception of life.

I’m living, these days, more than just surviving. Which is a pretty big deal to my poor battered nervous system.

Anyway, that’s the fence - more of a continued discussion of the different views, options, and sensations available in each level of this building, which I suspect too many of us continue to ascend far more than is consistent with safety and goodness.

If you are a supporter or caregiver of an anxious soul, consider the idea that they may not know there are calmer storeys underneath their current baseline. Encouraging them to “calm down” might be meaningless to their grid of reality, in that case. It’s another hard thing to work with them to create that home - that base that truly is based on a ground level foundation of true connection and security. I’ll keep writing about that, too. But for now, let’s consider how we can tell the difference between home and that edgy storey that makes us feel less, rather than more, nourished and ready to engage.

Good morning!

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On a completely side note from the content of this video: it’s so fun to experience making it (subjectively), and then to watch it back (objectively), and thereby gain a lot more information from a different angle. What I get if I look at what’s happening with the sound off (nice, because I’m talking on and on and on…!) is that Tundra is asking me pretty much the whole time, “where are you?” And I’m not really aware of this as a question, because I’m focusing on you guys.

Where I am (in my head, anyway, which is not quite the same as my body) is with her, and I’ve sucked in my perimeter to about a cm outside my warm outerwear, clearly, because all her nibbles and head butts and gentle questing movements are not registering to me as invasive. The thing is, because my attention is so directed at my phone, and at my thoughts, which are being organized as I go, Tundra is a little irritated. She appreciates (as we all do) more clarity, more consistency, and also some more attention, given that we’re in such close quarters.

However, at one point she manages to actually go through my boundary, alert me to her real life presence, and get my full attention. Finally, I answer the question. You’ll know it when you see it. Tundra’s response, watching it back, is kinda funny/not funny to me, because her face looks so…”thanks for finally acknowledging that I was asking you something. You could have answered me a lot sooner, but whatever.” Which is a real demonstration of the work required within one’s home, as it regards the sources of energy and power and need and all that. Coincidentally, this is what I’m talking about in this post (if you turn the sound on again).

We hold so much latent growth, possibility, magic, inside that we can really scare ourselves, and end up with strategies of repression, absolute dominance over our own feelings. Even, sometimes, a sedation sort of approach to what seems like a large, beautiful, but a bit too powerful, animal. As in, our own Hearts.

So there are two major jobs I see in dealing with the arrival of significant anxiety in our vicinity. One is to correctly categorize what is in our control (very little, but still not nothing) and what is not. The second is to choose to do the work of not just containing the sources of emotion, power, beauty, strength, and even awe that are in our own interior spaces, but to tend them. Converse with them. Give them clear and fair and considerate boundaries within which they can express themselves, safely.

It’s not nothing to live with animals. But it’s also not nothing to acknowledge how much we carry inside in terms of our own stores of raw energy. Locking it down is one way to go. But anxiety tends to start to alert us (through our Bodies, usually) that this is only a temporary solution, and not a very good one, either. If there are no weather events outside, but my inside still feels like a storm is brewing, maybe there is some merit to paying attention to what my Heart is trying to be, become, and ask of me. There is work, for which we have authorization, tools, and space to operate within, in this regard, inside our Homes. Not easy work, but very, very possible.

Figuring out what that work is, as opposed to trying to control the “weather” outside, is the trick.

One hard thing!

See you next Wednesday. Stay warm in the meantime.

I think I’ve written enough words on this topic both leading up to this podcast, and continuing on after, so I’ll just say that this is one first step in staying both safe and also kind in the presence of this very destabilizing “fog.” It has helped me tremendously, and I hope it gives you the beginnings of a practical toolkit for supporting someone you love, or simply care about, who is battling anxiety. No fun, but it can be done!

This is such a tough video for me to rewatch. I find myself slowly tensing up in sympathy, or empathy, or just plain old neurophysiological co-regulation. It’s so easy to get sucked into Kyrie’s awful world where she is being “hard done by,” for obscure reasons that nevertheless become less important the longer this drags on. I start to want to do whatever it takes to get away from this source of deep tension.

And that is the thing about being with someone, in any capacity, who is anxious. It is such a contagious, destabilizing, and generally confusing state that one starts to want to just get away, or have the other person go away, or give in to demands, anything to make the anxiety STOP.

I’ll dig deeper into this skill set in this Substack, though - one I certainly never wanted to build, but have anyway.

I think for now, the first thing to really try to observe is how there is this warring set of realities whenever I or you voluntarily stay with someone (Kyrie, in this case, but her anxiety is so palpably relatable that you can sub in any human you’d like) who feels that there is danger, lurking, about to spring, requiring evasive action, now! If I look around, I see nothing but safe, calm, contentment, and even soft, warm surfaces. There is no cause for alarm in my reality. Yet for Kyrie, the whole context is terrifying.

So…I can continue to believe in my world, or I can choose to temporarily suspend my own senses, and agree with hers, and get her the hell out of danger! As she is so clearly asking me to do with her whole appealing, appeasing manner.

This is so very tricky. And, as I said yesterday, it is not something to “help,” without a very strong rapport and built up trust. It comes down to asking her to suspend her perceptions of what is going on (her “internal reality”), in favour of what I’m telling her - surely a large leap of faith. I have to have that faith myself first, which means allowing her to continue in the anxiety, while I almost “wall myself off” and then check the surroundings, objectively, for threats. If there are really none present, then I’m going to go back and let her know that we are safe to stay…

…and she is not going to like it.

If she can just hang in long enough for her nervous system to drop down from one storey (the Edgy or even the Scared storey) of the “tall building of stress,” she will begin to see what I see, and then it will be so much easier to believe that we can walk (not run!) out of here, without remembering that this was such an awful place.

So there’s a lot of stuff I’m looking at that she’s not. And I can’t judge her for not seeing it. If she could see it, she wouldn’t be anxious, now would she?

But the thing is, if she can let go of some tension, she will see a bit more of what I see. And there’s the magic. If she perceives that reality does include some safety, and less threat, she will be able to turn this whole cycle of fear feeding fear into calm feeding calm. That’s a whole lot more powerful than me just “saving” her and cementing her self-image as a victim of her surroundings.

But boy oh boy. I do not enjoy this 20 minutes!

Anyway, take a look at this video and let me know if this relates to any of your relationships.

I’m determined to stay with her until she figures out that she is braver than she knows.

First off, here are links to stories that I allude to in this podcast, by my very much admired friend, who lives far away, but is definitely a kindred spirit, Elizabeth Lamont

The Incinerator

The Neighbourhood, Fall 1976

January - July 1977

The Blackout

The Foot

Your Money or Your Life

She has more, but this is the series in order (to date). Amazing.

Anyway, this podcast is possibly approaching a bit of a manifesto, as it relates to care for each other. And care for other others (the four-legged innocents who populate our world and show us exactly who we are, Really). I hope you can join.

I am appreciative to so many people who have inspired this shift in my thinking - not least my husband, who still does not want a Cast of Characters intro, being very private and also leery of social media, even Substack. However, without him there would be no me, at least not in this safe enough form doing what I do, writing what I write.

Karen Gibson, from Gibson Collaborative Care, is a trusted person for me and has done a lot to help me clear my head and calm my heart, and then practically do something about it, in the real world. I found you exactly at the right time, Karen.

And Deborah Marshall, from Generation Farms, was instrumental in changing my perception of life enough that I don’t think it’s a stretch to say she did change my life. Thank you.

I don’t want to start with friends and family members, because this is a post, not a thank you speech at the Oscars. However, I have to say, that the work involved, the costs, and gifts and love and unconditional positive regard that it takes, and upon which I am still drawing, to get from there to here, is immense, and un-repayable.

These days I am learning, and growing, and no longer (often) in a place like “the Districts;” more often in a place like “the meadow.” (And thank you, Suzanne Collins, for that brilliant “fictional” work which I have drawn so much from as well…)

Happy Friday. May you be safe enough.

This year is going to be about the issue/barrier/experience of compassion fatigue - that recently described phenomenon that Covid made apparent to most of us, as we struggled with small bubbles, reduced access to our regular networks, and fear. Lots of fear.

Compassion is critical, and especially when disaster threatens, or when disaster (as it sadly does) happens. I tend to think of compassion as a sort of life-giving fluid, maybe stored in a reservoir somewhere in our souls, and drawn on in large or small amounts throughout each day. Usually, this reservoir is not totally emptied in a given 24 hour period, and usually, hopefully, ideally, we keep on replenishing it, also on a daily basis, and so stay in some sort of homeostasis, even with the troubles around our various loved ones.

Compassion is like oxygenating blood, or energy-providing fuel, or the catalysts provided by our hormones, or the communication of neurotransmitters. And like all of these inputs, it can do its job, do its job, do its job…run out.

And then - we experience a deep, soul-level, destabilizing and disorienting fatigue.

So I’m going to be drawing on all of the concepts that I’ve described, explored, and played with in this last fun year on Substack, towards a goal of providing some concrete, sensory, accessible, and effective strategies for me, and you, as we work to continually refill those continually necessary containers of our care. I believe all of us are care-givers, at some level. And I believe care is crucial, and taps into magic, or love, or the energy that makes this world go round (which is not power, or money, or sex, contrary to many media-driven beliefs).

We need caregivers, and we all (sigh - yes, this is true, too, Lynn) need to receive care. Probably in some sort of proportional amount.

Anyway, this “walk and talk” is an experiment in sharing one of the ways I am currently replenishing my compassion “cup.” I don’t know if it will travel through the interweb to your cup of grace and softness and space and love, but I really hope so. My animals seem to have consented to share their rich well of peace and steady contentment, and I felt my nervous system descending down, down, down to a home base, even as I simply aimed the phone at their rhythmic munching.

Welcome to my barn. If you’re feeling even a little bit depleted, maybe this is a tiny shot in the arm that can top you up, or help you find your own ways to tap into the magic all around you, which is there for our benefit, too. Even those of us working hard to care for those around us.

Even you.