162 - Deb Dana: Insights from Polyvagal Theory

Welcome back to the Coaches Rising podcast. Today I'm joined by Polyvagal expert Deb Dana. She's been a guest on the podcast before so I highly recommend that conversation too. Today we're going to dive into the application of this theory in our work as coaches. We'll spend a bit of time at the start defining these key principles within polyvagal theory of neuroception, co-regulation and hierarchy and then we'll spend most of this conversation talking about how do we do this in our work with clients? How do we know when people are dysregulated? How can we map where they might be in this hierarchy and what kind of moves can we make? It's a really rich conversation. Deb is a clinician, consultant, author and speaker and a world-leading authority in polyvagal theory and how we apply that in our work as coaches. She's trained thousands of therapists around the world and how you can bring this into a clinical practice but there are clear ways we can bring this into our coaching and why it's needed. Deb was a founding member of the polyvagal institute and has published many books including anchored clinical applications of the polyvagal theory and polyvagal theory in therapy engaging the rhythm of regulation. All right, let's dive in. Here's the podcast with Deb Dana. Okay Deb, I'm delighted to be with you again and we're going to be talking about polyvagal theory and particularly in application which I think you know you've just got so much experience and expertise with and just love how are you doing festival? Doing well, it's an interesting time in the world isn't it to be a human? To be a human, right? I think it's interesting to look at the world through the lens of the nervous system as we're trying to navigate these challenging times. Part of me is really enjoying it because I get to practice all the time and part of me just wants the world to find a way back to some kind of safety so that we all can take a breath, right? Our nervous system needs a moment to take a breath and it's hard to find that moment I think. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point that you bring in actually is yeah before we can zoom in the state of the world and you know you're mentioning the nervous systems it does seem I mean I've had personal experience with this too you know we've probably we all have there like the amount of stimuli the amount of events the uncertainty we're facing maybe human beings have set this for thousands of years but at least right now it's you know people are you can really feel maybe people are in shutdown or aroused and you know how are you seeing that like this just yeah it is interesting and I have been bringing this into my my work more recently because people ask all the time how are we ever going to find our way forward and we have lots of people who are in that you know activated mobilized fight fight state and so everything is you know there's a lot of anger there's a lot of anxiety and then we have another group of people who are more in the you know hopeless place right and neither one of those energies are going to help us move forward we have to have enough people who feel regulated enough safe enough and bring that energy to the world so what I've you know been saying to people is our responsibility first is to find that place for ourselves right and then once we've found it for ourselves we can then offer that to others so you know many days I will get up and I tend to read the read a couple of newspapers every day right and not always the best idea but it is it is a ritual a routine that that helps anchor me in my day and then sometimes it can feel overwhelming it's like I don't even know where to begin right and that's when I come back here and I say I do know where to begin I begin with my nervous system and then from a regulated place I have the capacity to put that out into the world so I guess that's what I'd invite our listeners to think about when you are feeling overwhelmed and systems feel so broken you don't even know where to begin go back here begin here because as we're going to see as we you know talk more what happens here is broadcast below the level of conscious awareness is broadcast out into the world and so if I'm broadcasting safety and welcome and regulation then other nervous systems are pulled into that and we begin to see that change happen you know what you know I think I said in some book one nervous system at a time it really is one nervous system at a time at the moment and that's how I stay hopeful right I stay hopeful that way I know that I there is something I can do there is something every one of us can do and it involves a system yes but it's this system first not the big systems that need to change they will change as these systems change I think that's really helpful distinction because yeah a lot of people can feel overwhelmed and also think about well what what can I do you know like what what what role can I play in the world it's so much going on where could I begin you know I'm just one person how could I have impact but actually this is really practical and it does something so important for me and what you're saying about yeah bring it right back to like we're human beings and we we love being around other human beings and being connected and feeling safe and and regulating together and I think yeah you know just before I ask you about maybe these three principles that we'd like to introduce that you know coaches I know you maybe often maybe we could say polyvagal theory might have been applied more in therapy I mean that's for sure you know but this is a human issue and right now you know like I think coaches also they kind of just have to be informed by these kinds of theories because people are coming in and they're activated you know and if you as a coach can't see that or you don't have any you know you're not informed in any way of what to do then you know then well what's what's going to happen there's and coaches can play a really important role I think absolutely absolutely the coaching community has it has an important essential role to play because so many people go to a coach right we have a different set of people who go to a therapist but so many people go to a coach right and and you know coaches and therapists are working with the same system it's a nervous system that underlies whatever it is we're going going to do and and you know in the therapy world as in the coaching world if we go here before we have worked here nothing good comes of that and just for the people listening you point if we go to a heads first before our hearts yeah right and I know I know for me you know I'm a therapist I've been trained to work you know body and brain and and I know there's sometimes a client will come in and so much going on and my system doesn't know what to do I go right to my brain I go okay how can I convince them or what do I say or how do we create an action plan right which which you know is is my system reaching for something that will help regulate when my client's system can't take any of that in because they're too dysregulated and and I'm sure you've done the same with with clients is a common human response to say oh out what how can I fix this and I can't fix it until the nervous system invites me in right and so really for coaches therapists anybody any human who's trying to to connect with another human the other humans nervous system has to invite you in that's beautiful maybe we could introduce the three principles here and just like it maybe even speak about yeah that actually when we're regulated it sounds like we're you're saying we're accessing a different part of ourselves where like we see different possibilities the world is a different place and from that place we will probably take more effective action think you know see things more kind of in a more holistic way and so on yeah that's a lovely way to describe it that that's the principle the organizing principle of hierarchy right that when we are in that place of regulation we call that ventral which is the the top of the hierarchy we are we do see options we connect communicate I'm regulated and ready to engage here is where I put out into the world that I'm safe enough you know regulated enough for you to want to come into connection with I'm offering that queue of safety out into the world I can be be friendly I can want to you know I call this ventral place the place of both and because I can both be by myself happily and be with others I can ask for help and offer help it's all of these that this place of of everything is possible right the stories that emerge here our stories that have lots of options connected with possibilities so if if I'm working with that that pretend client we were talking about a little while ago and I can help my client have a bit of that and I bring that to it who's knows what can happen, right? But that what's happening in their brain body system is going to begin to organically change in some way. That's what we want, right? So that's the top of the hierarchy. That's a ventral. The first survival response that we go to when the world feels overwhelming is sympathetic. That's the fight and fight place that most of us are very familiar with, right? Fight, anger, flight and anxiety, those two pathways. And our nervous system just takes us there when the sense is, I can't manage in ventral, it's not safe, right? And when I go to sympathetic, then I no longer interested in social engagement, right? Not because I don't want to be, but my biology says this is all about survival, right? So what happens in sympathetic, either the fight or flight pathway is you now become dangerous to me, right? The world is a dangerous place that I'm surrounded by dangerous people. That's the feeling. Those are the stories that emerge and I can't take in the cues of safety, that probably are there. I miss them. I'm focused on danger and finding a way to stay safe. There's disorganized big energy that happens here, right? You know, when a client, you know, he's in that place because all of a sudden they feel really big and maybe a bit threatening in the fight pathway. And in the flight pathway, they may say, "I got to get out of here, I need to leave," right? Or the overwhelming worry that becomes panic, right? So those are all the hallmarks of sympathetic. Sympathetic's job is to resolve what's going on and help us come back to ventral, but it doesn't always work that way. And sometimes, you know, no matter what we do, the world keeps on being a crazy place to be. And our nervous system then takes us to the second survival pathway, which is called Dorsal, and that's a pathway of disconnect shutdown collapse, right? And it's the opposite energy. I can even feel my voice going there as I'm talking. It's the opposite energy of sympathetic. It's the draining of all the energy from our system, so that we're just going through the motions, right? And, you know, clients come in in that state and they're sort of shut down, disconnected. It's hard to get them to engage. They showed up, but they're not really there, right? And that's a very challenging place for us to help somebody, you know, come here and be present with me, right? And in that place, instead of the world feeling dangerous, and people feeling dangerous, it's like we float it away, right? People in the world don't really exist. We're alone lost, we're abandoned somewhere, right? So a very different survival response, but both of those sympathetic and dorsal are such creative ways, our nervous system was built to help us survive, right? And then this, the venture we talked about at the top of the hierarchy is the place where we can thrive, right? We can survive in sympathetic and dorsal. It's simply survival, but in venture, we can socially engage, we can thrive, we can live a life of well-being. So that's, that's the hierarchy. That's one organizing principle, right? You touched on another one co-regulation that we humans are meant to be with other humans. Right? Co-regulation is what we call a biological imperative, meaning we have to have it in order to survive, right? And we know that as babies come into the world, they have to be surrounded by other adult humans who can care for them, right? Our, our neural expectation, if we can put it this way, our nervous system expects to be met by a nervous system that's regulated and welcoming. That's not always the case, right? But we're met with a nerve, with other nervous systems that can at least provide the care we need to grow, right? It does not make for an optimal organization of the nervous system because we can't, we don't learn to co-regulate because there aren't predictably safe others around. We self-regulate. But the beautiful thing about the nervous system is it's, it's always shaping and me shaping. So if I didn't get that growing up, I can learn it now. I can co-regulate now. And that's one of the things we do when we're working with clients. We are the safe, predictable, co-regulating presence for our clients, which is often a new experience for their nervous system. So that's co-regulation. And then the third organizing principle is what's known as neuroception. That's a word that Steve Porgeous created, neuroception, because it tells us, it describes how the nervous system takes in information, right? It's not a cognitive experience. It's an embodied one. And neuroception takes in cues to say, is it safe or not safe in this moment? So it's moment-to-moment taking in cues. And there are three pathways inside, so it's listening inside our own bodies, right? All the time getting cues does this feel safe or not. It listens outside in the environment around us, which is so important for us to recognize that these environmental cues are coming at us. All the time either safe or unsafe in them between. So your nervous system and my nervous system are doing the between dance right now, right? Does it feel safe or not safe, right? And for people who can't see us, you know, I get to see your face and, you know, you have a lovely smile and your head nods and all the cues that send a neuroception of safety to my nervous system, right? But that neuroception, because we don't, we don't learn about it, it's sort of the autonomic intuition, we might call it. And then what happens when neuroception says safe, we then move to ventral. But if neuroception says, ooh, this feels unsafe, dangerous, it then activates sympathetic and then dorsal. And so neuroception is sort of the driving force that's creating everything else that happens. So those are the three organizing principles in a, you know, in a simplified go to, here's how they work. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And yeah, what I sure have said to people listening is because we've had you on the podcast before and spent longer kind of in those principles, today we wanted to kind of lay them out as a foundation to then talk about application in more detail. So, but you know, as you describe it, what I can hear is, is how, yeah, people coaching others who, you know, maybe working in organizations or in small businesses, in all parts of life, that that neuroceptive kind of capacity is just going to be a play, isn't it? You know, like you said, we read, we read the newspaper in the morning, you know, maybe there's an inspiring story, but maybe, you know, these days there's a lot of intense things going on. So there's always this kind of input happening. And so I guess my question is, you know, how can we start to help? Well, how can we start to sort of maybe see where our clients might be when they come in and help our clients begin to map where they are? Because this is kind of a map in a sense. That's why I love about it. And just to add to that, that, you know, we talked about fight and flight and anger and rage and panic and shut down. And those are, those are, those are quite big, you know, words or, you know, strong states, but maybe our clients are coming in with like the subtle versions of those, you know, and I don't know if that is more common. Yeah, yeah, how do we, how do we start to see those? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, several things just came to me as you're talking, you know, one is we're talking about, you know, as we meet our clients, you know, that they are broadcasting through their nervous systems where they are and what's happening and we are receiving, but we are also broadcasting and they are receiving. It's always a, this back and forth broadcast, receive broadcast, receive. So, so important that we know that we can be anchored in that place of ventral, right? And, you know, as we start there, I don't have to be fully immersed in ventral, right? Sometimes I'm not fully immersed, but I have enough ventral, so that I'm regulated enough, and I'm sending a neuroseption of safety out into the world. So, for people listening, you don't have to be, you know, zen all the time. There are many flavors of ventral. So, let's start there. Ventral, the neuroseption is one of safety. That's, that's the hallmark of ventral, but so many flavors I can be happy, I can be calm, I can be creative, I can be passionate, I can be productive, I can be um, purposeful, I can stand up for what I believe in, I can be strong, right? So, lots of flavors of ventral, it's that, that I'm feeling safe in the world when I'm doing this, right? So, there's flavors there, and then if we go to, to sympathetic, because yes, most of, most of our clients don't come in, you know, in a rage or in a panic attack, right? They come, coming in some flavor of dysregulation. So, you know, one of the things I love to do is, is kind of map that out with clients first, the continuum of when you first feel some of that sympathetic anger, anxiety, what would you call that? Right? For me, that, you know, it's sort of a sort of a nagging worry, you know, or a bit of frustration, right? And then at the other extreme panic attack rage, and then let's fill in all the flavors in between, right? Because there's so many, right? I can, I can be, you know, anxious, there's probably one of them, right? But worried, distracted, you know, frustrated, impatient, you know, my people around me who know me go, "Oh, cranky, when you get cranky, we know you're heading towards, you know, anger. You know, so there's lots of different flavors. And then in dorsal, the same is true. My first sort of step into dorsal is knowing that I've taken a step back and I'm not really as present as I was a moment ago, right? So it's sort of the, who not really hear feeling. And then really it is going through the motions, but I don't really care. I don't have a lot of energy. And then the energy starts to drain and I might feel, you know, down depressed, you know, despairing hopeless is probably the end, you know, for me, but somewhere along there, why bother? Why try? Doesn't matter. You know, those sorts of, and you can feel the difference in the energy because sympathetic could be a why bother? Or dorsals, why bother? Right? Same words, but very different state connected to them. So getting to know all the flavors of our own state and helping our clients get to know theirs is one of the beginning ways to sort of tease out, well, where are you right now? Right? And I want to ask a kind of follow-up on that, but just to kind of bring in, because a lot of people now as well are a bit overwhelmed in terms of just there's a lot going on, you know, so maybe they're doing back-to-back meetings or, you know, the changing economic climate, there's a lot being asked of them. So do you feel that that can also play a role here? Is that just like what you might term general stress? Someone's just a bit disconnected from themselves because they've been so busy and they haven't taken care of their nervous system, their body, or is that no? Is that actually playing a role in moving us through these different states as well? Yeah. I think when our day is so full in that way, our nervous system then responds. So I think yes, we could call it general stress, we could call it your work environment, we can call it anything we want, but really the nervous system is having the experience, and your nervous system is then going to tell you how that experience is for you, right? So, so, you know, with when I see clients, I want to make sure I have five minutes between because I got to catch my breath, right? If you go from client to client or meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting and don't have any chance to just, you know, breathe it out and be ready for the next, your nervous system is going to let you know that, right? So whatever symptom you are feeling is your nervous system trying to tell you something, right? That's the way I always look at it. Whatever it is, my nervous system is trying to talk to me, and what we know is if we don't learn to listen, it's simply going to speak louder and louder and louder until it gets our attention, either in physical illness or psychological suffering, right? And that's what brings the clients to us, right? You know, and so our job is to help them tune in and listen. So yeah, and I do think, you know, we all moved online and we're all doing, we're, you know, we talked about Zoom fatigue and, you know, all this stuff, right? It's no different when we're in our offices. We have that, we just don't call it Zoom fatigue, you know, we call it burnout or, you know, whatever, but it is your nervous system trying to tell you, you've got to change the way you're doing things. If you want to keep going, you've got to change the way you're doing things, right? And, and, you know, I had a personal experience of this last year and it was humbling because I teach this, I teach how to listen to and in listen. I don't do it well. I apparently preach better than I practice, you know, so, and I didn't listen to my nervous system, you know, finally dysregulated my physical being in such a way that I ended up in the hospital and then you have to listen, right? Because it's, it's not the medical thing, it's not the medical illness that I needed to listen to. They could treat that. I needed to listen to what had I ignored that brought me to that place. So that's really what we're talking about here that, you know, whatever cues you're getting throughout the day is your nervous system. And sometimes it says, yeah, you're doing just the right thing, right? You take five minutes and you go make a cup of tea and you sit and you look out the the window at nature, right? And, and then you're ready. And your nervous system says, thank you, right? So we have to listen both to when it says, no, listen and thank you. Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, I find that too, you know, but just looking up at the blue sky is incredibly regulating for me. And that, you know, what your comments make me think of the systems we're in, you know, that, you know, like you say, it's so easy to, you know, our whole society's built up and I kind of like this supercharged, you know, activities, you know, like work and, you know, pressure and caffeine and, you know, then shopping and so, you know, it's not, we're kind of fighting against that in a sense or, you know, it's a, it's an intense dojo to practice in and perhaps there was a systemic call for us to move back into, you know, a more natural biological rhythm with our, you know, that's conducive to our nervous systems. And, you know, being, you know, being a connoisseur of our state and our nervous systems. And, I do, yeah. And I just wanted to say, because I love that, you know, that because the world wants us to be productive and to, you know, work all the time. And if we could help the, the, the people empower, understand that when we are in this ventral place of regulation, we are far more productive, we are far more creative. And in fact, we can't be productive and created one or another survival state. And so it be who's all of us, you know, organizations, companies, you know, leaders, workers, everybody to understand what do I need to nourish my nervous system so I can be passionate and fulfill my purpose. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so much we could say about that. But let me ask this question of like, what would you say to coaches listening who, you know, we talked about helping our clients and ourselves also like mapping where somebody might be. We talked about some of these more sort of like earlier cues that we might be moving into the sympathetic. And so how, how would you, you know, say a client comes in and, and, you know, either maybe you wanting to teach them about like mapping themselves or maybe they come in and they're starting to talk about something and you can feel that they're dysregulated. What kind, what would you start to do there? You know, basically, yeah. Yeah, so I love mapping. Mapping is I think what, what we all need to do, do we have a map? We know where we are and we know how to get back to regulation. So I always do a personal profile map with my clients, right, which really helps them just understand what do they think? What do they feel? What do they do? How does their body behave in each of those three states? And so we have that as a baseline, right? And, you know, I have a template I use, but you can do it on blank paper. You know, there are lots of ways to do it. And, so when we have that map, right, then when a client is beginning to tell a story and I'm noticing it feels like they're heading into dysregulation, might say, so where are you in your map right now? Right? And it brings a bit of attention to the nervous system, you know, in a top-down way, so that I'm helping them bring brain and body together to cooperate, but where are you right now? Oh, I'm still ventral, but boy, I'm feeling a lot of that sympathetic energy. I'm the borderline of my map here. Great. Let's just take a moment, right? Slow it down for a moment because if we leave ventral, then you are going to be in the story rather than being informed by the story, right? And that's really, you know, our job is to help our clients have enough ventral so that they can reflect on, they can tell us about, we can learn from, we can even process what happens in sympathetic and dorsal. That's where the the dysregulation lives. That's where the trauma lives. That's where the suffering lives. So that's where I always start with a map and and help clients really begin to get to know their system. If clients come in and begin talking to me and and I'm noticing, oh, there's a lot of sympathetic energy here, that might be a time when I when I would introduce the nervous system if I hadn't had a chance to do it already. I say, oh, I can feel a lot of energy. What's it like for you? And they're going to tell me, say, oh, that's your sympathetic nervous system coming to the rescue to help you get through this, right? And usually when you tie it to the lived experience, clients get really curious and say, oh, okay, tell me more, right? And then I will, you know, often, you know, throw in dorsal, say, there's another system, you know, and, and, you know, if it's a client I worked with for a while, I'd say, so when you told me about this moment, that was this other system helping you out, the one that takes you away from all of this overwhelming energy, right? So you can tie it to a client's lived experience. And if you've been with that client for a while, you, you have plenty of examples to draw on, right? Because people like to see their own experience through the map in that way. It becomes personal in that way, right? So I do start with the map. I think it's a really important place, place to start. And if I haven't had a chance to do it, I'm at least holding the map and being curious about where my client is, right? Because if they're in sympathetic, if they're having that flood of energy, right? And, you know, I want to say this carefully, I don't want them to calm down. Right? Calming down does not work when someone is sympathetically well activated. Organize the energy. Don't don't tell them you need to get rid of that energy, right? We want to invite them to use that energy in a way that that comes together in his purposeful, right? So it's a different way of thinking about it because how many times do we tell our kids or we hear teachers in schools or people saying just calm down? Right? It's like, I could if I would. Nervous system won't allow that. So, and if we think about the hierarchy with Ventral at the top sympathetic and the middle dorsal at the bottom, when if I'm wanting someone to calm down, they often go down to dorsal. They just disconnect. They just shut down. That's not what we want. So if you're client is, you know, lots of energy. Can't sit still, looking around. Can't focus. Right? The nervous system is telling you it doesn't feel safe enough for me in this moment. The question is, how do I bring some cues of safety, right? And so how do I allow them to move in a way that begins to become a bit rhythmic, right? You know, I love having office furniture that moves, right, chairs that rock, that swivel, you know, big therapy balls to sit on whatever it is because nervous system wants to move. And as it begins to move, the energy organizes and you'll you'll feel them coming back. Back up. Go for a walk, right? You know, find a way to help the nervous system use that energy purposely, right? And I'm not they don't have to not be angry if they're angry, but they have to be angry from a place of Ventral where we I can hear them, right? I can I can feel that energy in a way that that is organized and I understand. You know, so, you know, and dorsal is more difficult because a client who is coming in in that collapse shutdown place doesn't have energy in their system, right? And I have discovered for most humans, it is more challenging to be around another human who is in dorsal rather than someone in sympathetic, right? For some reason, we just want to pull someone out of dorsal, right? I think that's biologically built into our system because dorsal is the the furthest away from regulation. It's that place of, you know, sort of the last resort for the nervous system. And I think we intuitively feel that we want to pull them out, right? That what we want to do that's effective is not try and pull them out right away, right? But join them. We're not joining them in that disconnect place, but let your energy let let them know that there is a human being near them who sees them, who's regulated and is not demanding anything of them in this moment, right? I'm here with you, right? And if I'm regulated and I can stay regulated, I'm sending that through my nervous system to theirs and their nervous system will begin to feel it, right? So in some ways, it's a lot easier than working with someone in sympathetic or have to be active and do with, but in other ways, it is so challenging because we feel like we're not doing anything and our nervous system can dysregulate so easily. Oh my god, I need to do something. I can't let them stay there, right? So just stay with, right? Because remember in dorsal, you feel lost and abandoned, you know, unreachable. And so the antidote to that is to simply be there with and let my client know, I see you, I'm here with you. And kind of amazing things begin to happen when you just show up in that way. So it's sort of the general rule of how you work with the two dysregulated states. It's so much in what you just shared. I just want to like underline everything you just shared, because I think for me it points to, you know, something so fundamental about the paradoxical nature of change and that, yeah, you know, there's also this thing I hear inside of what you're saying around the physiology has an intelligence, you know, and it, you know, we don't want to say to somebody, well, oh no, you're going into sympathetic. So that's bad, you know, so change that. That actually is threatening, perhaps, and even like I mean, you say that might even send them down, you know, into shut down more. So it's like actually honoring the intelligence inside of the response and kind of like helping people to be where they are in a sense, like making it okay, you know, like making it safe. And to me that that's so fundamental and in coaching in general, I see that actually a lot of change in deep transmission or coaching actually emerges when people can like be okay where they are and stop trying to change themselves and actually just kind of be with what's here and there's an organic intelligence that kicks in. Yeah, we then can become curious about what brought me here, right? You know, and we call them adaptive survival states because there's a reason the nervous system took me there wherever it is, right? And you know, I like to say we can begin to reduce the shame, the blame, the all that that we carry and move into a bit of curiosity, right down the road compassion, self-compassion, right? But that's down the road for most of us, but in the beginning, just curiosity, huh, how did I get here, right? And yeah, and honoring the wisdom of your nervous system, it took you there, it enacted a survival response because it felt it needed to, right? And the nervous system doesn't make judgments about, you know, motivation or moral meaning. It doesn't do any of that. It's simply in acts of response because it's in service of our safety and survival. So, you know, it's interesting to look at someone else, you know, you look at people in your community or on the news or you see out and go, oh, dysregulated. That's the label we can put on them rather than, you know, mean or bad or scarier, but dysregulated. That takes us to a different place. So when my client can sit there and go, dysregulated, it's a different experience than saying, oh, I am, I just, I suck at this, I am so bad, you know, with this, just, you know, give up now. Oh, dysregulated, got it. Yeah. So it's a lovely way to look at the human response, our own and others, right? Yeah. Yeah, I really feel that. It's a game changer in terms of like pathologizing people, pathologizing where we are right now, you know, oh, I need to be not here. I need to be there, where that's okay. And so, like, I'm hearing that, you know, for a coach or a therapist, but, you know, in this case, a coach, if you recognize, like, you start to see that your clients kind of, you know, stepping back from themselves, shutting down in some way, then it's important that you kind of can see that and you don't try and jump in and fix them. You've done your own deep work to recognize those states so that you don't freak out, perhaps, you're actually just able to say, okay, no, I can just be present here. I'm here with you. And I think it's also, you know, I notice a name is one of those basic practices that I teach, you know, and I think it's important to notice a name with our clients. So if I, you know, if I feel my client is beginning to go to that step back, you know, shutting down place, I'm going to say that. I'm going to bring it into explicit awareness with the two of us that say, oh, it feels like your nervous system is beginning to take you to that shutdown place, right? I notice that in whatever it is. The same with sympathetic, oh, I can feel the energy becoming, you know, a bit disorganized, your sympathetic is coming to the rescue for some reason. I wonder if we can figure out what we need to do to bring a little more ventral back, right? So yeah, it's that, you know, I call it narrating for my client's nervous system, right? It's a different story, rather than the cognitive story, you know, it's the embodied story. And I think it's, I think it's important. I think, I think it takes the work in a different direction and people begin to understand, you know, if you could have changed the way you think, you would have done that long ago, right? If you could have thought your way out of this, you would have done it longer ago. It's it's not for lack of thinking or having cognitive capacity, right? That's not where we're going. We're listening to the nervous system story and the nervous system will show us the way back to regulation. So presumably one feature here is that your clients over time can like, kind of take this on themselves. They start to become more skilled at recognizing when when they're getting dysregulated and they know, hey, you know, I'm not on my best when I'm dysregulated in terms of maybe needing to, you know, take some kind of skill for action. What I need to do in that moment is kind of, you know, either co-regulate or self-regulate, look after myself and then after that, take the next step. And so I'm just wondering, you know, what like, for example, if someone, you know, if a coach is working with a client who had a conflict with their, you know, a colleague and, you know, that was part of the coaching session. Because I guess what I wanted to add in is like, there's this meta skill of training, you know, how to regulate oneself. But I'm imagining this also or is there also a capacity here of like something like you can begin to learn about what, how can I get into conflict with this person? Is there something going on for me there that I can take care of in myself that maybe actually can be transformed in some way and then allowing me not to get into less conflict basically? Yeah. Those things happen all the time, don't they? We have these ruptures in our relationships with colleagues, co-workers, friends, family. What we look at is in what you could do in that session with your client is you could look back on that moment that he had or she had with their colleague and say let's identify what were the cues of danger to your nervous system in that moment because the cues of danger got so big that they outweighed any cues of safety and then you got into a survival response and here's the result, right? The colleague was probably also dysregulated but let's work with our own sister first and find out. I can't really concrete and have a client go through and identify moment to moment. So what happened next? What happened next and how did that land in your system? You have to be really concrete and explicit about it. I used this example and I may have shared this before but I had a colleague who was a really skilled clinician and yet every time we had a team meeting I found that I wanted to argue with him, right? It didn't matter that what he was said did not matter. I was going to argue and it wasn't until I could really take a step back and a friend sat with me and I said I got to figure this out because this is crazy, right? I knew my brain knew it was crazy. I could not stop, right? And it come to find out as I checked with my nervous system, this colleague had a certain way, a certain posture and a way of moving that was very reminiscent of someone in my past that had been a very challenging relationship. So I had nothing to do with him. It was a certain posture and way of moving and when I could get clear on that, then I could transform that. I would still have that response or go oh yeah, not that person, this is this person, it's okay, right? So it's those sorts of things but unless we get really curious about the cues of danger, we don't find those things, right? You know, instead we go to a brain story, which doesn't get us anywhere. So if you sit with your colleague, with your client and ask them, let's think what moment to moment, what was happening in your nervous system as you were in that experience with your colleague, right? And we will find the cues of danger, once we find the cues of danger, those we can work with. But if it's simply, I just keep having this, you know, arguments with all my coworkers, you know, I think I don't fit in, I need to quit my job and then we go into, you know, job transition planning, which is not going to get us anywhere because that same nervous system is going to go to the next job, right? Let's figure out in this environment, what's going on for your nervous system, right? And the end result may be, yes, let's help you look for a new job because the environment is not what is, feels safe and nourishing to your nervous system. But oftentimes, you know, we come up with things and go, oh, we can work with this, this, this, right? Because they're going to go with you wherever you go, right? So it's that kind of work that I think is so fascinating. Because how would you work with those cues of danger, once you've identified them? You know, there are two ways that are really interesting, the first one is this discernment question that I use all the time and the discernment question, you know, it sort of brings us into the present moment to see, is this response necessary in this moment, right? So the question is, in this moment, in this place with this person, is this response or the intensity of my response needed, right? And we ask that question. Sometimes clients will say, no, it was out of proportion, right, because it's a familiar cue from the past, like my, you know, thing with my colleague, right? I asked that question, no, that is not needed. And then it's from the past and then you begin to think, when else in my past, have I had that same, you know, response and you can trace it back? I was able to trace it back to a certain person, a certain relationship, right? And from then on, everything could change. So if the answer you get is, no, it's out of proportion. Then you know that some familiar cue from the past has come alive in the present. And then you begin to be curious about that and you discover what is the cue. And once you discover the cue, sometimes just discovering it, like there's nothing, I didn't need to do anything about that prior relationship. It remains unresolved, it remains challenging the way it was. That was not the issue. I just needed to understand it, so it would be different in my present relationship. I think that often happens, right? We don't need to go process everything from the past. We simply need to, the nervous system, you know, when we understand it, the nervous system can reshape. What was it for you or for a client that allowed you to kind of go, oh, yeah, it is. It reminds me of a relationship from the past. How did you like look for that once you'd ask that question of like, was this disproportionate? Yeah, so the question that I often ask next is does this feel familiar, right? And clients will say, some clients will say, I've been doing this forever, and they say, okay, well, let's float back and see other times in your life that stand out for you. And then you begin to see the pattern, right? Some clients will say, you know, I think the first time it happened was when, and they'll give you the moment, and that's so helpful, right? So it doesn't feel familiar to the next question you want to ask, right? And then some clients will say, not familiar at all. I don't know why this is happening, go, okay, right? This is a new experience for the nervous system, right? And so then we can play around with, well, let's, let's see if we can hear more of this story. You know, again, what on a biological level feels dangerous, right? And so again, you're looking for what's happening inside my body, what's, what's the environment, sometimes the environment, right? Doesn't matter who the person is, it happens to be this person, but it's more about the environmental cues. And then the between, sometimes it's between, I don't know, it just, I just feel sort of unsafe when I'm around this person. There's something that I'm getting from that person. And then you can begin to sort of hone in on that. So is it something about their eyes or their words or their tone of voice or their posture or the way they move, because those are, those are the cues that are so sensitive. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, we can begin to narrow it down. Yeah. Oh, brilliant. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, then there's an emergent process, you know, as, as you kind of tune in more and more. Yeah. Yeah, something, you'll start to get resonant, something will start to kind of emerge out. Oh, yeah. So, so it was kind of unconscious. Yeah. I'm praying in the background. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I kind of love this kind of work. As I imagine, you might as well, because it's really interesting. You never know where you're going to end up. Right? But you have these general pathways. You're following. So, you know, you're, you're safe on a pathway. But where it's taking you and what you're going to find is, is always interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As I imagine, you might as well. Because it's really interesting. Right. You're following. So, you know, you're taking you and what you're going to find is, is always interesting. And I think that's, that's a ventral experience. That's my ventral system saying, this is really interesting. I can be curious. Let's see where it's going. And so, I'm sending that to my client's nervous system. They know that I'm both confident and competent in what I'm doing. And they'll fall, they'll come along. We'll go along on the journey together. Right. I think that's, that's such, that's such the process. Again, because it's this co-regulating experience. Right. I don't need you to do this on your own. I'm right here. And I show you the way. And, and I'm happy to go with you. You know, I often ask that to my clients. You know, as you, as you go back in time, do you want me to come with you? Right. Most clients will say, yes, because they're experiences they've been alone. Right. So, as they make a stop in the, you know, what felt familiar? Who tell me more? Yeah. Right. And I'm right there with you. Yeah. Yeah. And it, it sounds like, um, that there's something in ventral, like curiosity that you're naming that is healing and that if they can, you know, that you're doing this exploration together, they're feeling you with them, they're feeling that you don't need something from them, you know, that you just hear with them as they are. That, that, that then as they make these discoveries you're describing, you know, they're like, oh, was it, was it something in the way they stood or spoke? And, and then they might start to, you know, something from the past is that actually if they're in that ventral place that there's, there's a kind of, and I guess this is a question, but there's something about that relationship that's healing where, you know, they might be kind of able to reintegrate that experience in some way. Ventral is a, is a healing, powerful intervention in and of itself. And I tell that to people, if you don't have, if you, if you do nothing but show up regulated predictably and stay that way with your client, it's a powerful intervention, right? And, and, and magical things happen, right? Without any trauma processing or anything else, because the system reorganizes, right? Just as you were saying, you know, they integrate in a different way, the system reorganizes, right? as as it is held in this ventral end. energy and you know, I like to say it's always an invitation never a demand. You know, you said, you know, you don't have to do anything for me. I'm not expecting anything of you, right? Because as soon as I, you know, think, oh, we need to go here or you need to this or you should, you know, need and should are not ventral words. They're not invitations. They're demands, but an invitation, you know, where do you want to go? How? I'll follow you. What about? I wonder if those are ventral sort of, sort of words. And the system does begin to reorganize because it's being held in an energy that says, you know, wherever you go is, is, is just right. And we're safe doing it. It's the safety. It's all about safety, right? It's all about that embodied safety. And if I can help my client feel safe in the moment, who knows what can happen then? I think this is again, so important what you're saying that, you know, maybe in the coaching industry, there is being times where we make an assessment of somebody we might even say, well, they're, you know, it's hopefully it's coming from them. It's, you know, that this is where I am, and this is where I want to be. But they might have had 360 feedback or some kind of assessment. And there can be, of course, use in that. But what I'm getting to is that can also be quite threatening to people, you know, they can feel that lack of safety from an assessment of some kind, from an assessment of the coach, you know, and that, that can create, you know, I've heard people talk about coaching for compliance. Certainly, they're, you know, they're, they're, without really knowing it, they're, they're desire to change is coming from the outside in, complying to someone's vision. And it just, you know, neurobiology, it doesn't work. I love that. And we talk about compliant clients, you know, it's, it's often a sympathetic, I'm going to do whatever you want me to do. Right. It's not, and change can't happen that way. So you're right. You know, and, you know, assessments are, are useful in some ways. If we then translate the assessment into nervous system language. Right. And in my world, we do DSM diagnoses every, most, every DSM diagnosis is simply a nervous system that's dysregulated in a particular way. Right. So my client, you know, coming in and saying, you know, I have an anxiety disorder, you know, not so helpful, but saying, you know, oh, your sympathetic nervous system comes to the rescue often. Right. We can work with that. We can help you reshape your nervous system. Absolutely. You know, so the same is true for your coaching clients who come in and have assessments. Right. And then, then the coach, you know, has read the assessment and informs a plan. Right. I mean, it's not bad to have a plan, but you have to be willing to throw the plan out immediately because it's, it's what's happening between two nervous systems. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I, I think about, and people can't see it, but I'm drawing a big, big square box with my hands. This is the frame. Right. We have a frame. And all of us have a frame. Coaches at frames, therapists have frames. We all have a different frame, but within that frame, we don't have a protocol or a step process that we do. We float from side to side. We go where the other nervous system is inviting us to go. So frame is good, but you know, steps one to eight, not so helpful. Yeah. That I think is really important is that, yeah, it's, that's these organic intelligence that I was kind of, if you're trying to impose a particular set of steps, then yeah, you can miss, you're just kind of, you can either create lack of safety or stress, they've got to comply. Oh, you know, you're just missing out on this like beautiful place, you know, being in your client with your client where, you know, you don't, like you said, you don't know where you're going to go, but you're not, that isn't a scary experience. It's an incredibly fulfilling experience as like that, you know, it's all emerging. And I think that ties into a question that I've got, which I've been carrying with me, and then, you know, I know we're kind of coming towards the end of our time. So, and I think it fits in with this because, you know, you talked about in the sympathetic stage, how, you know, if a client is a, you know, kind of energized and moving their body before that, you know, you don't want to say, be still, that it's actually, there's an intelligence in that movement. So you can kind of like ride on it. It sounds like you're kind of, and I'm just wondering about that, you know, like what are some kind of things that, that may help a client in that sympathetic space move into the social engagement, the ventral vagal, because, you know, I, and again, just like, because commonly we might ask like, Oh, what are you feeling in your body right now? And is it okay for that to be here, which may be a useful intervention, but it might even over stimulate some people. So I'm just wondering, yeah, what kind of interventions we might offer, like looking around or whatever, you know, it's interesting is, you know, what, what are you feeling in your body? Body can often be a dangerous place, right? As we say body, it can, can activate more dysregulations. I often, I mean, I talk about the nervous system, you know, and I think you, I think the nervous system is such an intelligent part of our biology. So, you know, I would probably say to a client, your nervous system is trying to tell us something, right? A lot of sympathetic energy, a lot, a lot of, you know, want you to move, want you to, you know, be fine, be hyper vigilant, it's hard to come to a place of focus. Let's just follow the nervous system, right? And what does it want you to do now, right? And I, I think if we, if we're willing to follow the nervous system, because I will say the nervous system, I believe, has an inherent longing to be in ventral. I think that's where it wants to get us, always, and an inherent knowing about how to do that. I think we have to uncover those pathways, and I think we sometimes get in the way, you know, like I might tell my client, oh, okay, so, so let's go for a walk, but that's not what their nervous system wanted, right? So if I can be curious and say, you know, so what, what is your nervous system telling you right now? What would be helpful, right? Sometimes that'll get you there, sometimes clients are too disregulated to do that, and then I'll have a menu and say, so, let me just, let me just give you these options and see what lands in your nervous system, not what do you want to do, because that's that brain question, what lands, what is your nervous system say yes to, right? We could go for a walk. I could turn on some, some mobilizing music, right? We could, we could, you know, move in the chair, we could get up and sit down, we could, you know, I've got lots of, you know, squishy things in the office, you could, you could hold things and squish things, you could, all sorts of things, right? And as you're going through the list, you'll notice when the nervous system goes, ooh, maybe, I'll take a maybe, right? So try it, see what happens. You know, it doesn't work, throw it out, we'll try the next thing. It's, it's the invitation to, to do what that nervous system in this moment wants, right? And you may have a client that wants to grab the squishy every time they come in, right? But one time they're not going to want to grab it, right? And it, because the nervous system says not today, today I want something very different. So again, they're not one in done conversations, which is again, what I, what I love is like, it's just asking again, you know, in this moment, what, you know, I had a client who would come in and was really in tune with her nervous system. She lived in sympathetic most of the time and she would come in some days and say, Deb, don't use your kind therapist's voice today, because it's too much for my nervous system. I say, great, I got a lot of ventral voices and the, the kind warm one, I don't need that one today. I can do the, okay, here we are. What do we need to pay attention to today? It's still ventral, but it's a very different. So we're looking for all of the different ways that we can offer so that a nervous system has to choice is essential for safety for the nervous system, right? Without choice, a nervous system feels trapped and will stay in survival. So choice, yeah. I don't know if that's helpful or not, but it's so fascinating to think about. One of the things is you just have to have a whole menu of things and say and be willing to put them out there and to be willing to have your client go, no, no, no, no, right? And that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. You'll be teaching in the power of embodied transformation and we talked more about this in no sessions, you know, the kinds of, you know, skillful interventions coaches can make. Yeah, we'll do some mapping and give it to really the place to start and then the, okay, you have a map, no, what do you do, right? And, you know, they're for regulating resources. We need things we can do on our own and things we do with others, right? We need, we need, this is again, a both-hand. And so we'll play around with, with breath. Breath is a great way to regulate. It can also really activate. So you're going to be careful, so we'll play with breath. You know, touch is something. You know, if we can touch on touch for a moment, touch, if I am touching another being, I am transmitting with my touch, the state of my nervous system. So think about that for a moment. If I am not anchored and ventral, I should not be touching another being because I'm going to send them either, you know, dysregulation or regulation, it's fascinating. And touch is a very necessary for all of us, right? We're on a continuum somewhere of touch-deprived to touch nourished. Again, we're somewhere along that. In the pandemic, many of us went moved to touch-deprived. We could not, you know, touch was no longer safe, which is a paradox for we humans. We need it and it's not safe, right? So, you know, we experiment with self-touch, right? Which is still where I do a lot of my work with self-touch because I'm working with trauma survivors for them. Touch can be very challenging. But there's research so that tells us that touch pathways. You know, we think we have to process the old, harmful touch in order to bring in safe touch. And the research says we don't, we can create new pathways, parallel pathways, which I found really, you know, helpful in my work. So, you know, warm, friendly touch, which is how the literature talks about it, warm, friendly touch from another being is incredibly regulating for a nervous system. And hard to find. So, we do self-touch, you know, and I invite people to create a map, a self-touch map. I'm touching my cheeks for me. That's a place that feels, you know, I can do that feels warm. You know, other people put a hand in the back of their neck, right? You're, you know, over your heart, you're finding the places that your nervous system can take it in and say, oh, yes, that feels, that feels nourishing. So, yeah, we'll do, we'll do a lot of that sort of stuff in listening to the stories that emerge from each state because the stories are so different. We, you know, we've talked a lot about not going to the brain and yet we humans are meaning making beings, right? And the brain's job is to make up a story that makes some sense of what's going on in our, in our body. The nervous system sends the information, the brain makes up a story. They can be pretty fantastical stories, right? That, that we, that we move into. And so, we learn how to listen to the stories that emerge from our states and not get stuck in a particular survival story. So, yeah, we'll do all these sorts of things one more together, which will be quite fun. Excellent. Yeah, I can't wait for that. And, you know, just as a comment, I'm just thinking, I love touching my head, you know, like, and I realized that a while ago, I was like, oh, yeah, it's kind of just my body, you know, without me being being aware, it's like just regulating itself, you know, massaging my head and my face. And it's just brilliant that, you know, you can actually, yeah, once you start to recognize that and why that's happening, you know, kind of just allow, allow that to happen more, you know. And I love that you said that because it's the you, we do these things anyway, but when we can bring awareness to them, they, they take on a different quality. So, when, you know, you're doing it, but when you recognize, go, oh, soothing my nervous system, nourishing my nervous system. And then those pathways become stronger. So, I love that. And, and I love people can't see you, but, you know, rubbing your head is, it's like me holding my cheeks. It's just, it's just for us, it feels good. And for somebody else, they're going to find a different place that they, that they touch and go, oh, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, this has been for me an incredibly rich conversation, Deb. And I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. I just want to say, yeah, thank you so much. Really, truly, I've, there's been so much packed in here. And I'm so glad to share this. And where can we find out about your work, too? Oh, if you go to my website, easiest place, rhythmofregulation.com, we try to keep it sort of updated with, you know, podcasts and interviews and resources and things. So go there and, and, you'll see what, what's happening and what's upcoming. So that'll be great. Nice one. Thanks, Deb. Thanks, so it's been really lovely. Here we are. We're at the end of the podcast. Just a heads up again. If you're not on our mailing list and you want to stay in the loop about other things we create, then head to coachesrising.com, put your name in the sign up box there. You'll also find some of our other offerings are online trainings for coaches there. And just want to end by wishing you well. And I'll see you again next time.