More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
June 30 - June 30, 2020
when our nervous systems believe we’re in imminent danger, our brains focus their resources on recording as much sensory information as possible.
our brains haven’t been around as long as our nervous systems. In fact, your body is really smart, even without your brain.
The nerve that connects our guts and our brains is called the vagus nerve.
Your parasympathetic nervous system takes control when everything is going well. I call it the “digest and chill” nervous system. It tells your heart to slow down, your muscles to relax, and your pupils to constrict so your retinas aren’t saturated with too much harsh light.
your sympathetic nervous system is type A all the way. It exists because the world is dangerous.
it releases adrenaline into your bloodstream, fires up your heart, and initiates the body’s fight-or-flight systems.
When the sympathetic nervous system fires up, it can take ten to twenty minutes for the parasympathetic nervous system to calm your body back down.
polyvagal theory. Because the vagus nerve is not a single nerve but instead a complex signaling system that runs between our brain stems and critical organs,
The polyvagal theory model offers a three-tiered view of our involuntary nervous system.
when the parasympathetic system is highly aroused, it can also invoke a trauma response: freeze, or faint.
In safe situations, when neither the sympathetic nor parasympathetic systems are highly activated, a third system runs the show: the social engagement system.
ventral branch of the vagus nerve, running from your brain stem...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
ventral branch also runs to your heart and lungs, which means your brain stem, middle ear, heart, and diaphragm can respond to the tone of someone’s voice several seconds faster than the structures in your neocortex can process the content of their actual words.
our automatic nervous system is listening and responding to tone long before our thinking brains get the message.
One of my first decisions was to make myself available to the people who listened to our show—after
helped me escape the box I was in after I left the faith of my youth behind.
I don’t offer these folks advice—I’m under no illusion that I can solve their problems. What I offer people is nonjudgmental acceptance and a sympathetic ear,
that’s rare enough in our world that someone can make a living out of it.
The messages that stuck with me, and the ones that kept me up at night, were when people told me that something I said really hurt them.
My polyvagal system said, “That’s quite enough, Mike. It isn’t safe here; it’s time for you to go away.” And so I did.
it was enough for us to just deal with the feelings without working through who was responsible.
NORMALLY I LOVE therapy, because I’m a great storyteller.
I tell compelling stories and cry a lot.
Ron stops me—the nerve!—and asks me how I feel.
when I tell stories, I care less about what I feel, or even felt at the time, and more about the emotions I’m stirring in the listener.
robbed me of my powerful defensive affects, like humor, intellectualization, deflecting, and denying.
describe what was happening in my body, and then let it happen.
Ron was training me to stop abandoning ship when I felt an emotional wave coming on.
when I start telling a story and you stop me and ask me to focus on what I’m feeling, I mostly just feel confused.
I told him I didn’t have a real friend at school from kindergarten to seventh grade. And he said that my nervous system remembered that.
My brain and body had learned how to survive that trauma, Ron said, but I shouldn’t blame my nervous system if it couldn’t tell the difference between a nine-year-old boy saying my chest “looked like tits” and someone in the present day telling me via email that I’m not really a man.
the little boy on the playground was still inside me.
Deep in my brain, there was a grade-school kid without any friends—curled up, sad, and alone. I didn’t know it, but he had been there for decades, watching every moment of my life pass. All the while, he was taking care of me, using the ancient wisdom imparted by my ancestors to watch out for signs that someone was going to hurt me so much again.
I practice a kind of performative vulnerability, both with my friends and with the public at large.
to get the thing I need most: for people to love me through my faults.
I can respond to other people’s tears with my own, and make people feel heard and known, because every painful beat of their broken heart can be echoed by one in mine.
also learning that tapping into trauma without processing it is a dangerous and dark magic.
instead of embracing the little boy in my brain, more often I have exploited him to make others empathize with me.
we’re not here to remove that little boy,” he said. “We’re here so you can learn to protect him.”
I imagined my grown-up self standing between my childhood self and the bullies who tormented me.
honoring them by accepting them as part of me. A vital part of me that has not only kept me safe, but transformed me into a kind and empathetic person who doesn’t turn away from the suffering of other people.
I took a radical step to protect that little boy. You can’t email me anymore—there
I plant both feet on the floor, grounding me in this moment—not
I’ve learned to sit and be sad when I need to be sad, instead of deflecting or making a joke.
when I feel anxious or guilty, those feelings are inhibiting something else. I take the time to ask, “What do I feel anxious about?”
Anxiety doesn’t tell us very much. It’s like the “check engine” light in your car,
Sometimes, protecting yourself means backing off, like when I took that form off my website.
But other times, growth and healing come from leaning in and pushing through, like when I told Ron I wasn’t being honest with him.
I’m a successful, popular person who is also a total mess.
want you to learn to love yourself—all of you.
