Voice Note:

Links: Impala in and slowly out of collapsed immobility – YouTube

What is Pendulation in Somatic Experiencing® with Peter A Levine, PhD

“The Lord Will Answer Prayer” by Fanny Crosby – Learning to Live by Faith

Transcript: [00:00] Hi. Thank you for listening. In yesterday’s voice note I was talking about how fight, flight, and freeze and immobility and it helped me to talk things through. So I was going to talk about it a little bit today. What helped yesterday was talking about basically what you’re doing is mobilizing or immobilizing your body so you know moving like mobilizing, standing up, walking around, or you’re immobilizing, sitting down, laying down to sleep. And that would be mobilizing in safety. It helps to think of the difference between mobilizing in safety and mobilizing in threat mode. If you’ve been sick for a long time and this flare ups been going on for a long time you forget what it’s like to just be standing up walking around without having all these warning signals firing off. And I found a video, a YouTube video of an impala that’s in collapsed immobility. It’s been caught by another animal. So, the impala is in distress, but if you watch the video the impala does get away…

if you watch, when it’s in immobility, it’s barely breathing, and it’s gone completely limp so that the other animal will think that it’s dead. But its mind is still scanning the environment for safety, and as soon as it sees it has an opportunity to get away, you’ll see that it starts breathing. And then it wakes up and then it has all this energy that it has to shake off. It’s I don’t know if it’s cortisol or it’s got to shake that off because it was taking a tremendous amount of energy to keep it in that immobilized state. And also it was in distress when it went from being in distress to being in an immobilized state. So I might see if I can post a video a link to a video on here of Peter Levine when he explains he uses a slinky to explain what happens when energy gets compressed, so when energy gets too chaotic like the slinky it’s expanded and it’s chaotic and then it shuts down. Compresses everything…you have to release the pressure slowly so that it can get out of the compressed state. And it helped me to see that with the impala. Again these are defensive responses that are intended to protect us. It’s from that animal part of our mind. But they can be triggered by something where it’s not actually helpful to get into that state. So it helped me to watch that video because I can see that whatever it is that’s triggering my mind, triggering this shutdown it really started more towards when I was about 16 years old, but something’s connecting with it again with this flareup that I’m seeing that something’s been triggered that doesn’t really apply to these circumstances. I don’t need to be in that state where your breathing is that restricted or things like that you may need to adjust that’s why you’re trying to turn the dial down on the intensity of the symptoms. When I got sick, I did need to slow down. I did have to leave school. I couldn’t go to school anymore, physically. And I did need to focus my attention on finding a diagnosis. Some of the tension  that’s there is that when I was first getting sick nothing was showing up on the blood work. So there was this expectation for me to continue to be able to function in the same way. And it was, you know, as I’ve said before, I went…Part of my mind would rather if it had to be something that was just stress, that would be really easily treatable. You know, that’s like what was being said was like, oh, well, you know, if you’re willing to try, you can get better. But I was trying really hard to get better. There was just something else going on in and a lot of people had that experience. that if nothing, showing up on the initial blood work, I was only 16 years old. I had a lot of stress that year. She’s probably okay, and if you kind of just push past it, you’ll adapt and get through.

[05:00] And that’s kind of how they see if something else is wrong if you’re not able to make it through that process. If  if that doesn’t work, just trying to push through it. So, again, I’m trying to just talk about this briefly here and now I see, like with the Impala, that’s why the intensity of everything is turned up too much. It would be beneficial to…have the intensity turned down some where you’re just able to rest. Maybe you need to be going slower through the day, not all the way at that standstill like the stopping so. it’s helping me to talk about it. I hope it’s helping you. Let me look at my notes here.

Okay, so, um, remember that when the Impala is laying there in the collapsed immobility, its mind is still active and scanning the environment for safety. And if you stay in that state for too long, your mind gets to the point where it’s difficult to take in new information. That’s what I’m struggling with after the COVID pandemic is updating. And what I was talking about yesterday, you’re trying to update your information. Make sure your mind has the newest information. So when it’s Googling things in your environment, you’ve got the most accurate thing. Maybe things are safe now that weren’t safe before. That was a few years ago when you Had to be concerned when you were going to the store now you don’t have to be concerned about the COVID virus when you’re going to the store. it’s trying to update that, but it’s hard to… Everything’s in this compressed state, and it’s hard to take in the new information.

That made me think of some imagery I had posted about on here before. I can’t remember what I was talking about when I was posting it but it was something about the days of a calendar. Maybe you’re trying to break things down just into, just not being worried about tomorrow. you only have the energy for today so like I was just visually myself like walking through a calendar and each day You’re only in that one little square. That’s all that’s happening, is what’s happening right now. You’re processing it through that lens, you know, you’re referencing the past, it’s helpful to reference the past, you can learn from things that happened. But you don’t want to be re-experiencing it. So it’s practicing with just being in the now. All that’s happening is what’s happening right now. and your mind gets exhausted in the flare-up or the shutdown goes on long enough where just maybe you’ve had it happen with your mind that the thought of um As you’re trying to break out of the cycle of reliving certain days, I know I have a lot of associations like you’ll have once you’ve lived for a certain amount of time, you’ve got all of these memories, and For me, I’ll have a lot of associations on a certain day of the month or the, you know, So like, you know, today, it was on a Monday that Libby passed away in 2014. So i’ve got those associations. Or with the number of the day. That’ll be tomorrow. And if it’s not all the way resolved, then you’re reliving it. January 20th of 2014. I’m reliving that now instead of just living this day. And so if you try and think through those days on the calendar, if I look at the box for tomorrow, everything that happens tomorrow is going to be something new. Um Nothing can really happen again. Similar things might happen, but it will be new things that are happening. Trying to see a healing light energy with that. And when your mind gets frozen to this point, it’s more threatening to think of an unknown day a day where you don’t know what’s going to happen and everything’s new. That feels unfamiliar.

So your mind keeps projecting these old patterns into it so that you don’t have the stress of waiting to see what’s going to happen. And If I can just… Just…

[10:00] You’re learning to take things in steps, because if you’re not feeling well, you want all of the pain to go away right away. But slower is faster, so if you just think about taking in a little bit of new information. Just kind of glance at that day on the calendar and think, okay, everything that happens tomorrow is going to be new. That means that there could be new possibilities. Maybe I’ll start feeling a little bit better tomorrow.

Maybe I’ll…have some time where I’m feeling better and can do something else rather than what I’ve had to be doing during the shutdown. Just let in a little bit of light. a little bit of healing energy and see how that feels and see if you can build on that.

My throat’s hurting today, so I think I’ll have to stop here for today. But, well, there was one other thing that…

I heard on a podcast that anger is when there’s dissonance between…what you wanted to have happen and what did happen. I thought that was interesting. It gives you a strong image in your mind. I almost see I see like two circles, like with your ideas of what was going to happen and then The information in the other circle is what actually did happen. There’s like this vibrating energy between them of dissonance.

I looked up dissonance is a lack of harmony, agreement, or consistency appearing as harsh, clashing sounds like in music or poetry. In music, if you play two notes that are not in harmony, it’s hard on the ears and has that dissonance with it. You’re working on trying to resolve that tension that’s there. And it reminds me of these exercises I’ve worked with about your learning to, they use the phrase, acquiesce to God’s will or submit to it. When I looked up acquiesce, it said that you’re submitting with hesitation, but…The way that they use it in the older commentaries, I don’t think it has that connotation to it of having hesitation with it. It’s like a peaceful, quiet submission to God’s will, trusting in His wisdom and sovereignty. So you can see it that way. There are a lot of hymns that use that phrase from the Bible verse that Jesus prayed. Thy will be done, O Lord, not my will. Not my will, but Thine be done. You’re learning to say that. Try to take out that disharmony there and let that energy dissolve. That resistance. That disharmony. I was just listening to that book, It Didn’t Start With You, and you’ll hear it. They talk about it in general in other places. You’ve got to connect to positive energy and then let the negative energy dissolve into that. So you’ve got to have that that feeling of safety, positivity, and it reminds me of a hymn that you have probably heard it’s Standing on the Promises of God.

So, you’re standing on the promises of Christ my King. Through eternal ages let His praises ring. So, you’ve got that underneath you. You’re safely in God’s hand. And you’re trying to let that…

resistance or disharmony resolve.

My throat is hurting today. I think that’s all that I can whisper today. But that’s an imagery we can be working with. as. If you can get to that place again, then you can take in new information. And just resolve it. Any pain or tension there into. God’s loving care for you. I think it was John Gill talking about God’s providence, his ordering, sovereign ordering of events. He’s weaving this tapestry. And the events of your life are woven into that His divine plan. But all we see in this life is the underside or the backside of the tapestry. And if you have ever seen the backside of a tapestry you can’t see what the pattern is going to be. But when you look at the front side of it, then you see this beautiful, loving plan for your life. That goes along with the verse that he’s going to work everything together for your ultimate good and for his glory. Remembering there’s another hymn. We’ll Understand It Better By and By. By and by when the morning comes, When the saints of God are gathered home, we’ll tell the story how we’ve overcome and we’ll understand it better by and by. So, have that peaceful feeling. And whenever I’m remembering the word to hymns, I usually say them with the rhythms that go along with the song. So, I hope that you can hear them, but I will have to stop whispering for today, so…There’s a hymn by Fanny Crosby called Pray On, or I think it’s called, actually, The Lord Will Answer Prayer.

I may try and post that on here. And it’s one you can use for meditating. And I’ll have to stop whispering here and maybe talk about that hymn on another day. Thank you for listening, and I hope you find it helpful. And I’ll post again sometime soon.