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Chips, my nervous little sausage dog, just got an attachment for his lead that reads:

“Anxious

Give me some space”

It made me think, I wish us humans could be more open about the way we are feeling and the times that we are struggling. Would this make a difference to the way we interact with and treat each other?

How helpful would it be, when on your daily commute to have a badge that says:

“I am feeling sick with anxiety, it’s a miracle I made it out the house and I am doing my best, so please give me space“

I know in recent years, we have made leaps and bounds in the healthcare movement with regards to mental health, yet still, I feel we have such a long way to go.

Mental and emotional health is something that impacts us all.

Our experience with it doesn’t have to fit into the diagnosis of a condition, yet often sits somewhere on a sliding scale. Some days we may feel completely neutral, some days absolutely ecstatic, and some we may not manage to even leave the house.

In my experience, I had no idea quite how much my mental health was affecting me, my relationships, my career and behaviours, until I took a deeper look within, with both mind and body-based therapies.

Experiences that have made the largest impact:

Mental: The Hoffman Process – this was a week-long residential, where you take a deep look into your patterns of behavior, to understand where they come from in childhood. This was a life-changing experience for me and was simultaneously one of the hardest, yet best things I have ever done.

Emotional: Breathwork – specifically consciousness connected breath, has allowed me to access emotions that I had subconsciously suppressed. For the majority of my life, I was that person who claimed ‘I just don’t get angry’ – turns out we are just some of the best at hiding it. A large piece of acceptance has come through my breathwork journey, of learning to accept the full spectrum of emotion as part of the human experience. You can breathe with me monthly, here.

Physical: Somatic movement – practices like shaking, TRE, tapping have hugely allowed me to process what I am holding onto physically. Tuning into the way my body is feeling and identifying patterns of stored tension has been a huge part of my journey and something that I look at every day. Move with me online weekly, here.

Although divided into their core focus, the above examples also largely overlap. My interpretation of the body, is that we can’t really segregate the mental, emotional, and physical into separate compartments. Rather, I like to notice how they all have an impact on each other.

Here are a few main ways I see the overlap showing up in the people I work with…

Example 1: The ‘I MUST’

🧠 Mental: Anxious episodes, overthinking, too much time in the headspace

💟 Emotional: Fear, overwhelm, quick to emotional outbursts and explosive reactions

🦴 Physical: Muscular tension, high heart rate and blood pressure, faster shallow breathing, overriding with too much activation in their nervous system within the sympathetic branch (fight + flight response)

The healing: Integration of the stress response, through mobilisation and then becoming comfortable with rest and regulation

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Example 2: The ‘I CAN’T’

🧠 Mental: Depressive episodes, low self-worth, passivity

💟 Emotional: numbed out, disassociated, disconnected, and disinterested

🦴 Physical: Muscular atrophy, struggling with healthy activation of the nervous system, instead exists too far within the parasympathetic branch (freeze response)

The healing: Firstly establishing safety within a rested state, then bringing in small increments of healthy sympathetic activation

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Example 3: The ‘I NEED’

🧠 Mental: Hypervigilant assessment of people or places not being or feeling safe

💟 Emotional: Loneliness, isolation, detachment, and hopelessness

🦴 Physical: Muscular bracing, being drawn to people or places despite them being wrong and even sometimes threatening to us (people pleasing / fawning response)

The healing: Improving Vagal Tone for the social branch nervous system (ventral vagal)

The interesting part about the above, is that they are all protective and in some cases, survival mechanisms that our body instinctively put in place, in order to;

be safe,

be accepted,

be loved,

Which brings me back to the claim I made at the start, that despite how it may appear, your health is doing everything it can for you and not to you – I used to feel so betrayed by my body; exhausted adrenals, hormonal imbalances, and crippling body image; at large, for a long time, I remember so clearly feeling broken. I have such compassion for these experiences I had now, for me, they were cries for help. Your body, inclusive of your mind, is only ever sending you data, really valuable information, do with it what you will. Ignore it, suppress it, deny it. One day, you will feel ready to listen to it, to look a little bit deeper, and when you do, I am here to support you on that journey.

The silver lining to this somewhat heavier conversation, is that there are really powerful practices you can do to regulate your system, out of these protective states. Our body is innately a self-healing organism, in the right setting, given the right tools, you can navigate your experiences with more ease. If you would like to explore this further, it is best done within a private container. Please reach out to discuss booking a one-to-one session with me, either in person (London-based) or online.

So much love to you,

…all your parts

Jasmine x

(& Chips)