How to Utilize Nervous System Literacy to Become the Empowered Mom

• What is nervous system literacy, and how does it show up in our daily lives?
• What can we do to maintain a healthy, well-regulated nervous system?
• What does it mean to be a radical mother dedicated to breaking cycles of trauma?
• How can TRE (tension and trauma releasing exercises) help you eliminate panic attacks and get your anxiety under control?
• Why is it so important to view your stress responses as super powers instead of stumbling blocks?
• Why is it so important to include your body in the conversation when working to heal from trauma?
• What is dynamic self-care, and how can we incorporate it into our day-to-day routines?

If you would like to speak with one of our family law attorneys, please call our office at (503) 227-0200, or visit our website at https://www.landerholmlaw.com.

To learn more about how Christa can help you, or to set up a free phone consult with her, visit her website: https://christabevan.com/

Disclaimer: Nothing in this communication is intended to provide legal advice nor does it constitute a client-attorney relationship, therefore you should not interpret the contents as such.

Steve Altishin 14:34
Can you get stuck and I guess what I mean by that is, if you're reacting quickly or freezing, can you kind of get into that mode where it happens and it's hard to get out of it? Because it sounds like the thinking brain is trying to knock on the door and say let me in, but sometimes that doesn't happen.

Christa Bevan 14:54
Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons why it's so important to actually start working with your body in this process. Because if you think about it, your body is where the trauma is stored. And so if you're trying to use your thinking brain to override your body's survival responses, you're often going to lose that battle. And that's why so many people feel frustrated with traditional approaches where they're trying to think their way out of anxiety, or they're trying to mindset their way out of panic attacks, or they're trying to use logic to convince themselves that they're safe. And while those things can be helpful, if your body doesn't actually feel safe, then your nervous system is still going to respond as though you are in danger. So yes, we absolutely can get stuck in those states, especially if we have unresolved trauma in our nervous system. And what nervous system regulation work does is it helps us complete those stress cycles and teach our body that it's safe again, so that we can come back into regulation more easily.

Steve Altishin 15:57
That makes me think about the term trauma, because I think a lot of people hear trauma and they think of some giant catastrophic event. But it sounds like what you're talking about can also be these smaller repeated experiences that sort of teach your nervous system to respond a certain way.

Christa Bevan 16:18
Exactly. Trauma is not just what happened to you, it's also what didn't happen for you. So yes, trauma can absolutely be a huge catastrophic event, but it can also be chronic stress, emotional neglect, constantly feeling unsafe in your environment, constantly having to suppress your emotions, constantly feeling like you had to earn love or approval, right? Those things all shape the nervous system. And especially in childhood, when our nervous system is developing, we learn what the world feels like through our experiences. So if your childhood experience taught your nervous system that the world was unpredictable or unsafe or that your needs weren't going to be met, your body is going to carry that into adulthood until you intentionally work to shift it.

Steve Altishin 17:10
And that's where you talk about being a cycle breaker mom?

Christa Bevan 17:16
Yes. A cycle breaker mom is someone who becomes conscious of those patterns and says, this stops with me. It's someone who realizes that even though they may not have had the childhood they deserved, they don't want to unconsciously pass those same wounds down to their children. And that takes tremendous courage because it means being willing to look at your own pain, your own triggers, your own nervous system responses, and choose to heal them instead of repeating them. And I think that's incredibly brave work.

Steve Altishin 17:52
It sounds exhausting too.

Christa Bevan 17:56
It can be, which is why self-care is so important, but I like to talk about dynamic self-care instead of just bubble baths and massages. Those things are wonderful, but dynamic self-care is really learning what your nervous system actually needs in the moment. Sometimes your nervous system needs rest. Sometimes it needs movement. Sometimes it needs connection. Sometimes it needs solitude. Sometimes it needs nourishment. Sometimes it needs boundaries. Dynamic self-care is learning to tune into your body and ask, what do I need right now to support my nervous system?

Steve Altishin 18:34
That actually sounds really different than the way self-care usually gets talked about.

Christa Bevan 18:40
It is. And especially for moms, because we are often taught to abandon ourselves in service of everyone else. So many moms think self-care is something they'll get to later, once everyone else's needs are handled. But nervous system regulation really asks us to include ourselves in the equation. Because if your nervous system is chronically dysregulated, it impacts everything: your parenting, your relationships, your health, your ability to think clearly, your ability to enjoy your life. So self-care stops being selfish and starts becoming necessary.

Steve Altishin 19:16
You mentioned TRE earlier. I want to ask about that because I know some people may not know what that means. What is TRE and how does it help?

Christa Bevan 19:28
TRE stands for Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises. It's a somatic modality that uses the body's natural tremoring mechanism to help release stress and trauma from the nervous system. And that's important because animals in the wild actually do this naturally. If you watch an animal escape a threat, afterwards, it will often shake or tremor to discharge the stress response from the body. Humans are designed to do that too, but we've been conditioned to suppress it. So TRE helps reactivate that natural mechanism in a safe and controlled way. And for many people, it can be incredibly effective for reducing anxiety, panic attacks, chronic stress, and helping the body come back into regulation.

Steve Altishin 20:17
So instead of seeing these stress responses as something broken about us, you actually want people to see them differently?

Christa Bevan 20:27
Absolutely. I really encourage people to view their stress responses as superpowers instead of flaws. Because your nervous system responses are actually evidence that your body has been trying to protect you this whole time. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn--these are adaptive survival responses. They helped you survive whatever your nervous system perceived as threatening. The problem is not that your nervous system learned these responses. The problem is that your body never got the message that it's safe now. And when we shift from seeing ourselves as broken to seeing ourselves as adaptive, it changes the entire healing process.

Steve Altishin 21:08
That feels like a really compassionate way to look at it.

Christa Bevan 21:13
It is. And compassion is such an important part of healing because shame keeps the nervous system stuck. Shame tells us there's something wrong with us. Compassion tells us that our body did exactly what it was designed to do in order to survive. And from that place, we can begin to gently teach our nervous system new experiences of safety.

Steve Altishin 21:37
Wow. This has gone by really fast, and I feel like we could probably do another hour on this. Before we wrap up though, if somebody is listening and they're thinking, okay, I need help with this, where should they start?

Christa Bevan 21:53
I think the first step is simply becoming curious instead of judgmental about your responses. Instead of asking, what's wrong with me? Start asking, what happened to me? Or what is my nervous system trying to protect me from? And then begin incorporating small regulation practices into your daily life. That might be deep breathing, getting outside, movement, grounding exercises, TRE, or simply slowing down long enough to notice how your body feels. And if you want support, that's exactly the work that I do with moms.

Steve Altishin 22:29
And where can people find you?

Christa Bevan 22:33
The best place is my website, christabevan.com. I offer free consult calls there, and I also share a lot of educational content and resources for moms who want to learn more about nervous system regulation and cycle breaking.

Steve Altishin 22:49
That's wonderful. Christa, thank you so much for being here today. This was fascinating.

Christa Bevan 22:56
Thank you so much for having me.

Steve Altishin 22:59
And thank you everyone else for joining us today. If anyone has further questions on today's topic, you can post them here and we can get you connected with Christa. And until next time, stay safe, stay happy, and be well.

Outro:
This has been Modern Family Matters, a legal podcast focusing on providing real answers and direction for individuals and families. Our podcast is sponsored by Landerholm Family Law and Pacific Cascade Family Law, serving families in Oregon and Washington. If you are in need of legal counsel or have additional questions about a family law matter important to you, please visit our websites at landerholmlaw.com or pacificcascadefamilylaw.com. You can also call our headquarters at (503) 227-0200 to schedule a case evaluation with one of our seasoned attorneys. Modern Family Matters, advocating for your better tomorrow and offering legal solutions important to the modern family.

Christa Bevan 15:00
Yeah, absolutely. And this is what we would call a chronic state of nervous system dysregulation. And it can be existing in either a state of fighting, so this would look like, you know, chronic yelling at your kids, being sort of aggressive, being difficult for people to deal with, you being overly just, like, aggressive, right? Or flighting, where you're sort of anxious and you have this anxious energy in your body, or you're always trying to control things, or you're overcompensating, right? These can be sort of those hyper-aroused states, where it can be something like a freeze, like a hypo-aroused state. So something like depression is often in this category, or again, that sort of checked out feeling like you're going through the motions, but you're not really there, you're sort of showing up to your life in this very superficial way. And then sometimes what happens to people too, is they bounce back and forth from one extreme to the next. And they kind of, you know, oscillate back and forth. But we can become, like you said, for lack of a better word, sort of stuck in these response patterns, where that's how we see the world and how we interact with the world. So I'll give you an example from my own life. For years and years and years, everyone just told me, I was an angry person. They just said I was angry, they always thought I was angry, they always thought my face looked angry, they thought my tone of voice was angry, that the way I responded was always angry. And so I started thinking, I must be an angry person, they must be right. All these people in my life are telling me this, and then come to find out, I'm actually not an angry person. I can get angry. But I was a severely dysregulated person. And what my nervous system had done was basically assessed the world to be dangerous. And the best way that my body felt that I could cope with that was through anger as a protective mechanism. And so it sort of became this defensive shield that I wore around even when I didn't need it. Because my body didn't know how to set it down. It didn't have other skills to replace the coping skill of anger, and that sort of fight energy that I knew. And so a lot of times we can develop these sort of patterns and kind of become stuck in not knowing what else to do, where nervous system regulation work is going to help us sort of break out of those patterns and out of those habitual ruts.

Steve Altishin 17:28
That sounds like it's where the literacy comes in. I guess you have to kind of understand it before you can try to fix it, it sounds like.

Christa Bevan 17:38
Absolutely right. I'm always telling clients that alteration follows awareness. We can't change what we don't know to change. So first, we become aware of these things, we start to recognize these patterns, then we start to understand sort of the root of the pattern. And then we look at what we can do to shift that, what can we do to augment the pattern. And those three steps kind of work together to give people an opportunity to really change the story for themselves.

Steve Altishin 18:07
Starting with the first one, how do you recognize it, the problem?

Christa Bevan 18:14
Yeah, so this one, it's a great question, and it doesn't have a great answer. It's one of those things where you have to just start to notice. You have to start hearing enough people say, Why are you always so angry? You have to start feeling like there's something in your life that just isn't quite right. It's sort of an intuitive knowing that something's not the way that it should be, to get you to start asking questions, to go, Is this really the best that life can be? Is this how I'm supposed to be reacting to my children? Is this the kind of mom that I want to be? Is this the kind of, you know, whatever, fill in the blank, and then through that curiosity, we can start asking questions that open up some of these doorways to more exploration.

Steve Altishin 19:01
I take it this is kind of the stage a lot of people come to you out there that may be starting to recognize. So let's say someone comes to you, how do you start to break that pattern?

Christa Bevan 19:16
So the first thing we do is we start to look at what the pattern is. We start to say, is there a pattern when you face this certain stressor? I call them stress hotspots in your life, right? Is it every time that you need to go to the grocery store? Does your anxiety kick in? Is that a pattern that we can recognize? Okay, so let's look at that. What can we do? How can we work with that? How can we honor the fact that your body is having this anxious reaction? Is it there for a reason? Can we accept what that reason is and then change that that reason is existing? Or can we change the way that you interact with that stressor? Can we order groceries to be delivered to your house? What can we do to manage that anxiety? We can start to work on tools to work with the body. So I do a lot of embodiment work, and a lot of different brain science based tools to really get people to come into safety in their body. Because again, when we're talking about the nervous system and the survival brain, we're really mostly talking about the body's responses to things. So the best way, I think, and a lot of people agree with me, to approach working with that is to work with the body. So using somatic approaches to start to shift some of these things, and start to move out of those patterns so that you can create that new story for yourself.

Steve Altishin 20:38
What kind of work? You're working with the body-- is this like physical stuff, because I know you said earlier that it isn't just the brain. And it's not necessarily being run by the brain, it's your whole nervous system. And that made sense when you talk about someone who just has an angry face, it's just sort of your nervous system doing it. So what sort of physical things do you have people do to kind of break or stop that or slow it down?

Christa Bevan 21:10
Yeah, so breathwork is one option. There's intentional movement, there's intentional movement exercises that we can do. I was actually just doing one of them before we hopped on this call, it's just really, I can show it to you. It's this really simple movement to sort of get everything firing in the right way. And you literally just, it's like rocking a baby, you sort of rock the baby down here, and then you move up, and then you move up, right. And so it's things like this, it's these little hacks that work with our body's physiology. So in this case, what we're doing is firing up the trapezius muscles to activate the vagus nerve to tell the vagus nerve that our body is safe. It can sort of act as like a little reset through our day. So we use things like that. It's yoga postures, it's breath work. It's also one of the modalities that I teach clients called TRE, which is tapping into the body's innate ability to shake as a stress discharge function. So there's lots of different things that we can do that are sort of working with the body to release the stress hormones that have accumulated in our systems, and allow those to sort of dissipate, which helps us to recognize maybe things aren't quite as unsafe as I'm perceiving them to be right now. Maybe I actually am feeling better, right? So people also do things, like for anyone listening that likes to run, I am not that person. But I hear after you go for a long run that you feel better afterwards, right? You sort of get that runner's high. And you get those natural endorphins and the oxytocin and all of these things that are working with your system and your stress physiology, to produce a state change to help you feel better. So it's knowing those things and then mindfully implementing them in your life.

Steve Altishin 23:00
Yeah, you're not just running away from the problem. You're running to understand the problem. It seems to me that it makes sense also, because I mean, so many people that I talk to-- I mean, maybe everybody--one of the times that it seems like some of this perceived danger kicks in and anxiety is when you go to bed, and you're lying in bed. And I mean, should I get out of bed and actually do some of these things? Because it seems like there are people just lying there, and the more your lie there, the more it kind of compounds.

Christa Bevan 23:00
Mmm yeah, for me, once I hit that, I don't usually want to get up and out and do anything. But this is where an ounce of prevention is really worth a pound of cure. And this is what I teach clients is, what are the things we can do on a regular basis to nourish our nervous system? What are the things? Can we start to recognize the things that trigger us that put us into this activated state? And then can we also create a custom list for ourselves of things that can help us reset and regulate ourselves? Right? So for me, I just said running is a great one, except I hate running. So running is never going to be on my list. But for my sister, running is one of the things that helps her keep her cool. So what are the things that you can do that would work with your body that you can start to incorporate into your life in this mindful way, in order to prevent that point that you get to where you're laying in bed, and then just sort of spiraling into that into that place?

Steve Altishin 23:50
So the list isn't something you'd necessarily tell them do A, B, C, D, E and F because this could be different for different people.

Christa Bevan 24:33
Yeah, it's more like I give them a menu and ask them to order the things that that they like.

Steve Altishin 24:45
Should I be writing this down? I mean, is that something that-- I always think about that, taking notes. Is this like you go, Oh, this isn't that bad, and I should not do this, and maybe I should-- I mean, if I recognize some things should I write it down, or is it just the process of doing it over and over again, that sort of intuitively brings you to recognizing?

Christa Bevan 25:40
For a lot of people writing it down can be really helpful. And in fact, I often tell people to write it down and to have a list. So when I work with people, we create our resources for regulation roadmap, right, and I help people create this custom menu for themselves. And then I say, print it out, and put it on your fridge. Print it out and hand it to your partner, and they can remind you. Because the thing is that when we get in this triggered state, when we're feeling anxious, it's really hard to use our thinking brain to remember, Oh, if I just do this, that'll help me feel better. And so when we have this, like physical document, or you know, put it in the notepad on your phone, if we have it sort of external to ourselves, it can be a really great way to look at it as a reference, and then say, oh, yeah, I'm going to try this thing. And if this doesn't work, I'm going to try the next thing. And at a certain point, it will become intuitive to just know what you need to do. Um, but I do find that for people beginning, it can be very helpful to create a list for yourself.

Steve Altishin 26:44
Yeah, part of it also would seem that if you've got 14 things to do, and you're between nine and 10, and you suddenly start to feel this way, I mean, do I have to get on to number 11, do I have to do that right off the bat?

Christa Bevan 27:02
I mean, that's our tendency, right? That's the curse that all Americans need to break is this constant productivity drive. And that's what I mean about, you know, working this stuff into your life. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes practice, right? We've all gotten to this place where we value productivity over rest. And we need to all step away from that more than we are, I think, because rest and downtime, if we think about this from sort of an evolutionary standpoint, our nervous systems are not evolved to live in the time that we live in, because they were used to having a threat happen, and then the threat would go away. And instead, what we deal with is constant barrage of unending threats, right? And again, threat in the perception land, not in reality land. And so when we don't build in time to our schedules, and we don't build in permission to ourselves to allow for time for our nervous system to recalibrate to safety, I mean, of course we're all a bunch of anxious messes. So we really need to start to shift the way that we show up in our day, changing how we schedule our lives, changing the way that we interact with events and things like that, so that we can really build in some recovery time. And I think that that's just a practice and that you can get good at it. I have gotten much better at it in my life. And if I can do it, I promise that anyone can.

Steve Altishin 28:35
I believe it. I mean, you're talking about it and it all just makes sense. Even though I wouldn't think about it, when you talk about it, it makes sense. And just even listening to it kind of brings you back to being intentional, just kind of hearing it. We're getting close to having to go, but I just kind of want to touch on the stress hormone thing you talked about and maybe hitting again on, what do you do with them when they start to flood? And is there a way to know what's coming, I guess is kind of the question.

Christa Bevan 29:24
I mean, knowing it's coming, yeah, we can sometimes predict the stress in our life. So this goes back to the stress hotspots that I was mentioning. Like if getting your kids to daycare in the morning, and then getting yourself to work all within the 15-- you know, you might recognize that that's a stress hotspot and you can sort of anticipate that that's going to be a stressful event. And then you can do things to sort of try to lessen those effects. But also stress can hit us out of nowhere, and what it does on a physiological level is it causes a spike, a surge in stress hormones. So things like cortisol and adrenaline running through our body. And those are happening to prepare us to fight or flight and run away from this threat. And if we don't do one of those things, those stress hormones are still in our body. And we know that when our heart is racing, when our hands are sweaty, when we sort of feel jacked up, like we've had too much coffee. And so we can do things to sort of discharge that feeling from our body and use those stress hormones up. That's where physical movement can come in. But it's also things like, co-regulating with a safe person. So it's what I like to call the phone a friend option, right? I think we all know this sort of instinctually, we've had a long, hard day, somebody said something really crappy to us. And what do we do? We call our mom, we call our sister, we call our best friend, and you vent about your day, right? There are ways to work with your stress anatomy to let the stress valve open up a little bit and let some of those things discharge in a healthy way instead of in a way that's yelling at your kids.

Steve Altishin 31:04
That makes complete sense. Wow, this has been really cool. Somehow we just ripped through 30 minutes. Before we go, is there anything, one last comment or tip or something about not feeling shame, because it's one of the things that it's like, you know, you could do all these things, and these things aren't bad. I mean, these things, these reactions, they're not bad things. You need them, but it's just a matter of getting to turn them off, it seems like, is where the ship goes wrong.

Christa Bevan 31:41
Well, you know, you asked me this question. And then you say you want it to be a quick tip. So I'll do my best, but you tricked me here. But I think, you know, this is just one thing to know about this. And I don't say this to make you feel bad, but instead to say this to make you understand the possibility of what can happen when you do this work, which is that your self talk matters. And that can be as much danger to your system as any external threat. And so I want everyone listening to this to just to pay attention to how you speak to yourself, after you behave in a way that you're maybe not proud of, or when you're lying in bed at night trying to fall asleep and your replaying your day. Just start to have an awareness of what that language is like, and start to ask yourself the question, would I speak to my child the way that I'm speaking to myself, and see if that gets you to change what some of that inner dialogue is like. And I have a feeling that for a lot of us, it would.

Steve Altishin 32:48
That makes sense, it makes so much sense. So obviously, folks work with you on this. This isn't you just give them a book and they walk away. So how can people get a hold of you?

Christa Bevan 33:01
So you can head to my website, which is christabevan.com, and you can find ways to work with me on there. I also host a podcast as well as a free Facebook community for other moms that are doing this work. And both of those have the same name, which is the radical mother village. So if you search for that in your podcast platform or on Facebook, it'll pop up and you can find me in those places as well.

Steve Altishin 33:25
I love it. We are now out of time. I really appreciate it. I totally now want to do one on the radical mother village.

Christa Bevan 33:34
Yeah, that's a whole other thing.

Steve Altishin 33:37
Yeah. That sounds great. But really, what you did here again, is, you know, you somehow took science and behavior and just a lot of concepts and made them understandable. Because I think if people just thought, you know, nervous system literacy, I wouldn't know what the heck you're talking about, but now I kind of do. So thank you so much for being here today.

Christa Bevan 34:01
You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.

Steve Altishin 34:04
Oh, it was wonderful. And everyone else. Thank you for joining us. If anyone has any questions at all on today's topic, post it here and we can get you connected with Christa. And until next time, everyone, stay safe. Stay happy. Be well.

Outro:
This has been Modern Family Matters, a legal podcast focusing on providing real answers and direction for individuals and families. Our podcast is sponsored by Landerholm Family Law and Pacific Cascade Family Law, serving families in Oregon and Washington. If you are in need of legal counsel or have additional questions about a family law matter important to you, please visit our websites at landerholmlaw.com or pacificcascadefamilylaw.com. You can also call our headquarters at (503) 227-0200 to schedule a case evaluation with one of our seasoned attorneys. Modern Family Matters, advocating for your better tomorrow and offering legal solutions important to the modern family.