Accessing Decision Making Through Nervous System Activation

Your phone pings, your shoulders rise, and your chest tightens. Before you even read the text, your body declares an emergency. If divorce has you living on edge, this conversation is a guide to staying in charge of your choices even when your nervous system screams otherwise.

The truth is you don’t need perfect calm to make decisions that support you during divorce. You’ve been deciding under stress all along. The real skill is widening the space between trigger and response so your values, not adrenaline, steer the moment. You’ll hear practical, repeatable tools to help you learn to do this.

If you’re ready to respond to texts, mediation, and co-parenting with more self trust and power, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs steadier footing, and leave a quick review to help more women find these tools. Tell us: what’s one micro-pause you’ll practice this week?

To download your FREE "Becoming You Again Podcast Map" click here. 

To schedule your complimentary consult with Karin click here.

Struggling after divorce to get to know yourself? Click here to grab my $7 guide to get started!

If this podcast resonated with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Welcome & Book Talk

Karin Nelson 0:00

This is Becoming You Again, episode number 257, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome to Becoming You Again. The podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world, where you learn to reconnect to your wholeness, your integrity, and bring into alignment your brain, your body, and your intuition after divorce. This is the podcast where you learn to trust yourself again and move forward toward a life that you truly want. You are listening to Becoming You Again, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast, my lovely, lovely ladies. As always, of course, I'm so happy to be here. So, what has been going on for your lives besides the divorce? I know that that is probably top of mind for you, but let's focus on something else for a minute. Let's take you out of the heaviness, the pain, the anger, whatever you're feeling of the divorce for just a second. We can, we can think about that a little bit later in the podcast when I'm teaching you some things, but let's talk about books. What have you been reading? I'm in a book club, as you all know. And uh we just had book club last night. So our book for this month was called The Perfect Marriage. It was kind of like a just a fun, it's it's not actually about a perfect marriage. I'll tell you that right now. That's just a little spoiler alert. It's actually about a murder and all these things. So it was okay. Um maybe not my favorite. I really, I really did not enjoy the man, the man character like at all. So if you're looking for a book to like help you engage in your anger about your husband, then this might be a good book to read. Otherwise, maybe stay away from that one for a little while. But I will tell you, a book that I didn't read for Book Club, I just read for myself, um, that I just finished was Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Wow. Wow. I loved this book. And I am not a science person. I don't understand science very much. It's not a subject that I'm like, oh, tell me the science. Even though I do sometimes tell you guys the science, I try and keep it very light because I'm not really into the science. So there was a lot of science stuff in it. However, it didn't bother me. I was able to just kind of like move past those parts and not need to understand them. But also just the story is I I just absolutely loved it. There's a character named Rocky who is one of the greatest characters. I just loved everything about him. And um yeah, I think it's really good. I am excited to see the movie. This is the same author that wrote The Martian, which I actually never read, but I really loved that movie. So I'm hoping that they did the book justice through the movie by keeping it different enough, but also fun enough that they're like different but like the same in some ways. I don't, does that make sense? Like, I don't want the movie to be exactly like the book because typically that's really hard to do. And I feel like movies that follow the books too closely aren't very good. But also I don't want them to stray so far that I'm like, what's even like, how is this even the same book, right? So anyway, there's like a fine balance between keeping the same feeling that you get when you read the book when you watch it on the screen. Does that does that make sense? I feel like it does. Anyway, if you've read this book, come message me on TikTok or Instagram at Karen Nelson Coaching. Let me know what you thought. I've heard lots of mixed reactions from people of that they hated, that they couldn't finish it, they didn't like it. And I've heard so many people who just absolutely loved it. So I would love to know your opinion. Come and tell me, or tell me some of the books that you're reading. I'm always down for great book recommendations. Um, I love to read, and I love all different kinds of books. My book club has definitely opened me up to different genres, different types of books. And, you know, I'm always telling you guys about books that I read. So come tell me. What are your recommendations? And tell me if you've read this book or not, and if you liked it. All right, so let's jump into today's podcast. We are talking a little bit about nervous system regulation, about how important that is for you, especially as you go through your divorce. So, speaking about science and how I was like, I don't really talk about science, we're gonna talk about it a little bit in terms of your nervous system today. But don't worry, like I just said, it's not really my favorite topic. I don't know a lot about it. I know enough to get by, enough that makes sense. And that's really all you need to know when it comes to your nervous system. Because when you're going through a divorce, you are constantly, almost constantly, maybe not when you're reading, right? Maybe not when you're taking a bath or when you're out on a walk or something, but you are almost constantly living in this like dysregulated state, right? Your nervous system is just constantly being dysregulated. And maybe that's been something that you have dealt with for much of your marriage and you just didn't even know it, right? For sure, I for sure that was my experience. Now I know so much more and I can recognize it when my nervous system gets activated. And if you understand what that feeling is, if you are now aware of what that feels like in your body, you will know what I'm talking about. Like when your ex sends you a text message, and before you even open it up to read the message, you feel like your body react, right? You feel your shoulders raise to your ears, you feel the tightness in your chest, you feel your throat like close up. That is nervous system activation. That is your body reacting to like, this is how, this is how I protect myself from this thing that's happened, this text message, this anger that I'm sure is gonna be coming, right? Or your lawyer calls with an update. And then you automatically just spiral into like a worst case scenario of like, oh no, what is this gonna mean? What's gonna happen now? Or your kids are just being kids, right? Like kids like to do. And maybe they like say something rude or they don't react in the way that you hope that they would react. And then you either just shut down completely, you dissociate, you explode way more than the emotional situation is actually calling for. Like that is how we know we are in survival mode, which happens when our nervous system gets activated or shuts down, right? And here's what I want you to know about that. Nothing has gone wrong when you're in survival mode, when you're in fight, flight, freeze, fawn, any of those. Like literally nothing has gone wrong. It's actually your nervous system is doing everything that it was designed to do. When you're under prolonged stress, that's when your amygdala kicks in. That's when your heart rate spikes. That is when your attention narrows. And your brain, your prefrontal cortex, that that part of your brain that is like the problem solving, the decision making, the intentional thinking part of your brain, it goes a little offline. Like scientists have done studies on this, that your IQ actually drops when your emotional state is heightened. But here's the here's the thing. I have had, I have heard from people, and I have heard even like nervous system gurus, I'm gonna put guru in quotes, because I just think that it's so stupid. Like, we don't, not everything works for everyone, right? We already know that. Not everything works for everyone. And so somebody who claims as a guru to be like the person who's gonna solve it for you and can fix everything for you. I just don't like believe in that. I think it's silly. I think there are lots of things that work for lots of people and you can get it from lots of different places. There's no one person who's like the answer to everything, right? But anyway, so I'm just gonna, because that was like a little side note. I'm just gonna put guru in quotes. But I've even heard from like nervous system gurus who are like, don't let your nervous system take over your life. Don't stay in this emotional state because you're not capable of making decisions when your nervous system is activated. That's bullshit. That is bullshit. When your nervous system is activated and your amygdala comes online into survival mode, protection mode, of course you're able to make decisions. Like you've been making decisions your whole entire divorce. You probably made a decision to get a divorce while your nervous system was activated. Being in nervous system activation does not mean you're not capable of making decisions. You are capable of making decisions. It's just a little bit harder to make decisions that are typically in your best interest. So if someone is telling you that you cannot act, you cannot choose, you cannot show up for yourself until you're completely calm, calm, and your nervous system is like completely in line, what that's doing is that actually is removing your power from you. And that's not what we want. We want you to stay in your power, even if it's making decisions and acting and doing things for you that support you while your nervous system is activated. And believing that you're not capable of that in nervous system activation is training you to believe that your discomfort when your nervous system is activated actually equals incapacity, inability to choose, inability to act. That is not true. You are 100% capable of doing that. You've already proven that to yourself, I guarantee, many, many, many, many, many times. But your brain, in believing that, and then and then reinforcing it when you don't choose, when you believe that that discomfort equals incapacity, inability to choose, inability to act, like reinforces, oh, I'm I don't have a choice here. I'm not powerful enough. This is going to hurt me if I make a choice here. No, no, no, no, no. We want you to feel capable of supporting you and showing up for you, even when your nervous system is activated. Right? We want to expand on your capacity to be able to show up for you when your nervous system is activated, because it's going to be activated not just through your divorce, but many, many times throughout your life. Many, many times. Okay. So that's what this podcast is basically about. I'm going to teach you ways to be able to do that, create greater capacity to support yourself through nervous system activation because it's a very normal part of life. So nervous system regulation isn't about like having a perfect life that where you don't feel any emotions, or you're never activated, or you never feel challenged, or you never feel uncomfortable, or you never feel stress. Like that is unrealistic. That's not ever going to happen as a human. You're never going to have a completely experience devoid of challenge, discomfort, uncomfortable emotions, or just emotions in general. Maybe they're not even all uncomfortable, right? So regulation is more about widening the gap between what happens to you and how you respond. And you can decide how to respond even when you're activated. This is about supporting you through that. Okay. You can still feel fear and make a choice. You can still feel shame and speak up for yourself or use your voice in some way. You can still feel anger and exercise restraint. You can still feel uncertain about what your next step is going to be, but still take a step in the in a direction, right? That is what true regulation is about. It's not about not feeling emotions. It's not about not feeling uncomfortable. It's not about even feeling things in your body where your shoulders are raised up to your ears or your chest is tight or your throat is like constricting, right? You can feel all of those things and still support yourself, even with your amygdala like taking over and your prefrontal cortex and your prefrontal cortex is more offline. So let's talk about what this looks like in real life. The first step that you need to understand is notice your patterns before the moment hits, right? Hi, it's me, Karen. I just wanted to pop in real quick and say that as you know, I have been through the divorce process. And I know that even though you have tons of tools at your fingertips to give you the mental and emotional support you need, doing it alone is tough. So often we want to feel cared for. We want to talk about what's going on for us. We want people to see us and hear us and understand. But we don't want to feel like a burden to our family or friends. We don't want to always be questioned about what's happening or how things are progressing. But we also want space to be able to talk about it in certain moments without feeling pressure and without feeling judged. That's where I come in. I'm a life coach who specifically works with women going through divorce. When we work together, that means that you don't have to rely solely on yourself to know what tools to use every time a sticky situation arises. You don't have to feel like a burden to your friends and family every time you want to feel cared for while also wanting your space. You don't have to do your healing, your emotional processing, or your decision making all by yourself. I will be there to walk you through this healing process every step of the way. I offer a free 30-minute Zoom call. This call is a safe, comfortable space for you to show up and be heard and understood in a way that your family and friends just can't offer you right now. It's also a way for you to see that you don't have to do it all on your own. One of the things that we'll talk about on the call is what it would look like to work together further. And even if you decide you're not ready to continue working together, you will leave this call feeling supported, valued, comforted, and seen. You will leave this call feeling transformed in some way. Even if that transformation is that you feel emotionally a little bit better and more supported than you did before the call started. Schedule your free 30-minute call today by going to Karen Nelson Coaching.com. That's www.karincoaching.com. So, like let's say you have a mediation coming up, and this one is about finances, or this one is about parenting time, and you know that those are like tough topics. You know that those typically create dysregulation in your nervous system. So what we do is we don't go in unprepared, right? You're gonna spend five minutes beforehand, or maybe the morning supporting yourself, however long you get to decide supporting yourself. Do some grounding exercises or somatic practice that you know works for you to help prepare yourself beforehand. Maybe you're gonna sit flat with your feet on the floor and you're just going to like orient yourself to where you're at. And then you're gonna go into the meeting and you're gonna remind yourself as you go into this meeting, I am here, I am capable, I got me. This is like intelligent strategic regulation where you are showing up for yourself. It doesn't mean you're not going to get dysregulated. It doesn't mean your nervous system isn't gonna be activated throughout the meeting. It just means you are aware of situations that typically activate you, that typically throw your nervous system into dysregulation and your amygdala takes over. What you're doing is you are preparing your body so that your choices can align with your values instead of survival instincts that want to take over. And they still might. And it's okay. It doesn't mean you still can't make choices that are best and right for you. Okay, the next step that you want to do is you want to create space in the moment. So let's going going back to like this idea of you're in the mediation. If you're feeling activated, even you've done the grounding and you've done the somatic practice before you go in and you still are feeling activated, take a beat. Take a second and say, listen, I need to think about this for one second. I'm just gonna like step away. I'm gonna go get a drink. I'm gonna support myself while I'm feeling this. I'm gonna take a breath, even, before I answer, before I decide which direction I'm gonna go. Creating that space. This is something that Victor Frankel wrote about, talked about. And he said something like between the stimulus and the response, you can create space, or there is space. And it's in that space that lies your power to choose. Right? So the next time you're in the mediation or the next time your ex sends you like a nasty message, pause, step away, set the phone down, take a minute. Step outside. You do not have to answer immediately. The goal isn't to not feel the emotion. The goal is to feel it without letting it make the decision for you. Feel angry, but don't let that anger make the decision and send back a nasty text. I mean, you can if you want, that maybe would be great. I don't know. You get to answer for yourself, right? Every person is different, and every person's answer for what is best and right for them is going to be different. You know you best. Create that space. Okay, the next thing you're gonna do is you're gonna validate to yourself what's going on for you, like how you're feeling, and do it before you respond. So you can say out loud to yourself or in your head, I feel very angry right now, and it makes complete sense that I feel this way. That's it. That's validation. That's just like I'm feeling this thing, and it makes sense that I do. And and if you need to even go a step further, tell yourself why it makes sense. You have a very good reason for feeling the way you're feeling. Validate the reason. It doesn't mean you have to continue with the story and continue like supporting why it's okay for you to feel this way. Just have tell yourself the very good reason if you need to. And then we do that without shame and without judgment. We just acknowledge it. This is what I'm feeling and this is why. And it makes sense that I do. Do not skip this step. I'm telling you, validation of what you're feeling is really important because oftentimes if we don't validate what we're feeling, we'll just feel the shame or we'll feel judged. We'll be like, I'm feeling angry right now and I shouldn't feel that way. And then we start to judge ourselves for feeling what we're feeling. And we're like, I'm feeling really angry, but I shouldn't feel this way because I should be past this now, or I shouldn't feel this way because I thought I had done enough work on myself that I would not feel angry anymore, or like whatever, right? And so we start to judge ourselves and then we feel shame. And that shame and that judgment keeps us from being able to access what we're really feeling, which is the anger. So we validate what we're feeling without judgment, without shame. We understand why it makes complete sense that we feel that way. And then it has less power over us. Then we don't have to react to it. And we don't have to let it run the show. The anger can come along with us. It gets to sit in the passenger seat, though. It doesn't get to drive the show or the fear or the guilt or whatever, right? It doesn't get to drive, it gets to sit in the passenger seat. And then the fourth thing that I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself some intentional questions while you're feeling activated. It's totally okay. Again, totally okay to be activated. So once you create that little bit of space that you're looking for between those, like what happens and what you're feeling, we just create a little space. You can ask yourself, like, who do I want to be in this moment? What does she look like? What does she say? What does she do? What does she feel? What response is gonna serve my long-term goals? These questions aren't about being perfect or showing up perfectly or having the right answer or like knowing exactly what to do for the next 10 years, right? They're about who you want to be in this moment that aligns with your values and your priorities. Maybe so, for example, if we're going back to like your t your ex texts you something nasty, maybe you don't respond at all. Maybe that's how the person that you want to be, like, I'm not even going to engage with this. Maybe it's you respond with a factual sentence. Maybe it's I'm not going to allow you to talk to me that way. I'm cutting off all communication. And if you have a question about the kids, you can go through our lawyers. Like, I don't know. I don't know the answer for you. But there are lots of different options, and you get to decide. And that is where the power is. And you can do it even when you are activated. And then the last thing that I want you to do is I want you to build capacity for your nervous system to be activated over time. Being activated, but being activated with awareness is a muscle. When we start to be aware of our nervous system activation, oftentimes it happens after the fact. We have an argument, we sit in mediation and we are just like tense and activated the whole time. And then afterwards we get home and we're thinking about it and we're like, oh my gosh, I was activated. My nervous system was completely activated that whole time. And then we we come with even more awareness of like, and I still made decisions. And it was really uncomfortable. And I still stood up for myself, or I still spoke up for myself, or I still like did this thing. I still said, don't talk to me that way. I still said like the one factual sentence that I sent off, right? Like maybe we have that awareness after the fact. That's okay. As you continue to build capacity for yourself to make decisions through discomfort, to not let the emotions that you're feeling be in the driver's seat. It will happen more and more where you will be able to recognize it in the moment, where you'll be able to stop yourself from reacting, from yelling, from saying the thing that you don't want to actually say, but it comes out anyway, from making the decision that feels right in the moment, but it actually doesn't serve you, and then having to change your mind later on. Like you will notice it in the middle of it. And it will be so amazing because you'll go, oh my gosh, there it is. I see it and you'll stop yourself. I see it, you'll shut your mouth and not say the thing, right? I see it and I'm able to take myself out of the situation. I see it and I'm able to support myself through the discomfort. The more you do this, the better you get at it. You're not gonna be perfect at it. And again, that's okay. We're not shooting for perfection. We're shooting for more often than not. More often than before. But here's what I really want you to take away today. Growth? It's not gonna feel safe. It's not gonna feel perfect. It's not gonna feel peaceful, even, right? Raising your standards of how you want to live your life, who you want to be, who you want to be around, who gets to come into your space. That doesn't always feel safe. It feels uncomfortable because you're actually speaking up for yourself now. Like speaking up for yourself often doesn't feel safe. Like lately, I've been trying to be more vocal about what's important to be about calling people out on their misogyny or their racism or their sexism or whatever, right? And often when I do this, my cheeks get red. Like I get, I get embarrassed very, very easily, but not like I'm embarrassed. I feel like I shouldn't have said that. Embarrassed in like my cheeks immediately get a flash of heat. They turn bright red. It's a very like anybody can see that this is happening to me kind of a thing. Um, and it feels very uncomfortable. It doesn't mean that I'm going to stop. That means I'm speaking up for things that are important to me that align with my values. It's an uncomfortable feeling. And my nervous system, you could say, is activated in those moments and I'm still gonna do it. Right. Your nervous system is totally wired to treat those uncomfortable, unfamiliar feelings as potential threats, even though the threat is just change or new possibility or decisions that feel odd because we haven't supported ourselves in that way. Right? But there is a difference between actually feeling unsafe, actually being unsafe, and just unfamiliar or uncomfortable. And learning to tell the difference is one of the most powerful things that you can do. And that is how you are going to create more capacity for yourself to make decisions, to support yourself, even when you're activated, even when your nervous system is out of alignment, even when you're not calm, even when you're not feeling peace, right? You're not broken because you're struggling, you're not broken because you're going through a divorce. You're not broken because your nervous system feels activated a lot of the time. You're a human being and you're going through something that's really challenging. Divorce is hard. And there are moments that can be really shitty and feel really terrible. And it does not mean that you don't have the capacity to trust yourself. It does not mean you don't have the capacity to make decisions that are supportive of you and are going to help build your future, even if it's uncomfortable, even if your nervous system is activated. You have so much more capacity within you to handle these hard things than you know. In fact, like I said before, you've probably been doing this for a very, very, very long time. You're just overlooking all of those times you supported yourself through nervous system activation to get you to where you are now. So let's look for those moments and then let's build capacity to make it even easier for you to move in and out of nervous system activation and regulation quicker. That's that's all we're looking for here. Because every time you create even one second of space between what happens and how you respond, you are building that capacity for yourself. All right, my friends, that is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. I will be back next week. Hi, friend. I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life with weekly coaching, real life practice, and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to Karin Nelson Coaching.com. That's www.karinN-E-L-S-O-N coaching.com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.