The main interest of your autonomic nervous system (ANS) is your safety.

If you are ever anxious, frightened, sad, unsettled, overwhelmed or angry, but logically can’t make sense why, you might feel frustrated or betrayed by your body and mind… like they’re conspiring against you to make life hard.

Could you reframe this experience as a communication from your history, (via the ANS) which needs interpreting? An opportunity to explore… what’s the message here? Why might my system to responding in this way? What does my body need? What might enable me to feel safer in this moment?

This is an alternative to feeling betrayed by your body…. like it thrusts this experience on you with malice.

I share this because I’m passionate about working with the body to create a relationship where you can thank it for the communications it offers to help you make decisions which are right for it.

Feelings and bodily sensations without an immediate “trigger” or obvious reason might occur because we have been reminded (perhaps by a smell, a sound, a fleeting memory or a feeling) on some level of a difficult time or experience from the past.

Can this idea also help also to understand why it’s so important to acknowledge what’s hard for you at the moment? Why, while of course it’s human and compassionate to think about those who may be worse off than you, this knowledge shouldn’t prevent you from feeling whatever it is you feel, without guilt or shame. The existence of someone’s else’s suffering doesn’t reduce or invalidate your own. The nervous system doesn’t question or discriminate, like our busy, sometimes critical minds do. On some level:

#ifyoufeelititsreal