THE ACCRESCENT™ PODCAST EPISODE 140

Well, welcome back to The Accrescent podcast, everyone who is joining us today. I’m so ecstatic. For those of you who have followed the show for a bit, you’ll know that last year I took an intermission from the podcast for a number of reasons. I was fully booked with my Evox and Life Coaching clients, six days a week, seeing clients all day long.
And up until this point, I had been doing everything for the show from A to Z. Booking guests, recording. Editing, producing, uploading, publishing every single step. And it takes so much work and I just no longer had the capacity to be able to keep up with all of those steps. So a big part of the intermission was needing to rearrange my actual schedule to be able to have more time to record and not just record, but record from a place of peace, from calm, from composure, because I wasn’t, you know, rushing to get in a recording in between a client or.
On a weekend. And so now I’ve adjusted my schedule to be able to allow for that more. grounded, regulated, peaceful recording time. And then the second piece is I spent a good few weeks, even months looking for a podcast editor and producer. And I’m so, so excited to say that I have found one shout out to Claire.
I’m so excited to be working with her. She’s amazing and I know she is going to add so much value and just support being able to help me get these episodes out to all of you. So before we get into today’s solo topic, there are a lot of announcements to share with you all coming into this new year, 2024.
I don’t even know where to start. I think first of all, the show is back and the show will be released every Monday. That is the starting point for this year. We’ll see what it grows into. I would really, really love, there’s so many ideas. It’s kind of swimming beneath the surface of different types of shows, different types of episodes that could go up different days of the week.
So my goal is really to be able to be releasing two, even three episodes a week on a variety of different impactful topics. There’s so many things I’m passionate about and love to speak on. So that’s the goal. We’re not there yet. As of now, we’ll just be launching new episodes every Monday. A big, big exciting news with the podcast specifically is almost all, the goal is to make every single episode now available on video as well.
So even this episode, if you wanted to, you could go onto YouTube, watch the whole episode there. Even guest interviews, the goal is to make as many episodes as possible available on video. I’m very visual. I don’t know why it’s not. Taking me so long to do this, probably just shyness and getting nervous in front of the camera, but very, very excited about this.
This is something that I have had a number of listeners reach out to me about saying they would really appreciate video episodes on top of the audio episodes. So that is something that you can look forward to. I will put a link in the show notes. To our YouTube page where you can find all of the video episodes and whatever other content I’m putting up on those on that platform.
The second piece is I am so excited to announce that I have launched a Spanish. Instagram page and a Farsi Instagram page. Not just Instagram, all the social media platforms. So I have a Spanish Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest board, YouTube page. Everything that I’m putting out in English will get put out in Spanish as well as Farsi.
Translate it as best as we possibly can. All of the video content will have either Spanish subtitles or Farsi subtitles. I am so excited about this because it’s not something I see very often. Platforms or pages having other pages in different languages, but it’s something that I know just allows that content to be so much more accessible.
For any of you who follow me, Who maybe do speak a different language and have friends or family members who aren’t as comfortable in English. I’m so excited for you to be able to have these pages and these resources to send to them in their own native language. So again, I will make sure that those Um, handles are in the show notes below and the links to those profiles, very excited to start to grow those and foster more multicultural community with all of that.
Now, the big, big, big news that I am just bouncing to share with you all and for those of you who follow me on social media, you will probably already be hip to this. This year, early January, I launched The Accrescent online community. This is something I have been dreaming about for years. Even before I launched The Accrescent podcast, I, I just knew in my soul that Community building, community fostering is something that lights me up so much.
And especially once I launched the podcast, and then especially once I launched my actual practice, it was right there from the very beginning of when and how can I start to foster and create just a more intentional, uplifting, supportive, expansive community. So. There’s a lot involved in this Accrescent community.
I’ll do my best to share with you guys some of the different highlights of this space and of this platform. And there’ll be a link below so you guys can go check it out a little bit more as well. But it’s $11.99 a month and what you get for that is a number of different things. Number one, you’re getting this community engagement, so I will be hosting live community challenges, workshops, live Zoom calls, live interviews.
Right now we’re working through the New Year’s Eve or New Year’s challenge that I set up for all of us, a three week challenge that we’ve been going through. You’ll be able to post and interact with other members. So really starting to foster that community with other. Growth minded, like minded individuals who are really on, you know, kind of a growth journey and that holistic health.
So very, very excited about this community aspect and being able to connect with all of us come together for these workshops, courses, challenges, so much more. The big piece is I have within this community, something I’m calling the soothing sanctuary and what is within this. space of the community is an ever growing collection of guided meditations, EFT meditations, breath work, somatic exercises, nervous system exercises, visualization, so many different super, super impactful practices to be able to support you on a daily basis.
The goal is to just continue to add more and more each week. There’ll be a new meditation or practice that is getting uploaded. And I’ll also be welcoming in some of my favorite practitioners who will be creating exclusive custom content just for us. There’s so many meditation apps out there today, and this is going to be in part, a big part of what this community and this platform is, is having access.
To this continually growing library of amazing, amazing meditations, nervous system exercises, so much more. So I will put a link to The Accrescent community there. So much goodness happening there. You can check it out with that link below. We’ve already had so much amazing connection, and I just cannot wait to see what it continues to blossom into.
So, last thing I will say before I get into today’s main content through all of these updates is you guys will notice even in today’s episode that there will now be ads as part of the podcast. And the biggest reason for this is just to make producing and publishing this show more sustainable for me.
Especially now having brought on a podcast producer and editor, being able to support that so that I can show up and do this thing that I love so much, but be able to do it in a more sustainable fashion for me and for the business. So two quick things I really want to say about this one, every product or brand that I mentioned in the ads are products I use myself.
They’re things that. Most of them I’m using on a daily basis that I absolutely love. So I’m never going to come on and just start talking about some random product I know nothing about or don’t agree with or use myself. But the second piece here is if you really don’t want the ads, there are two ways to get the episodes ad free.
Number one is anyone who has. community membership, you will get ad free access to all of the episodes, video and audio ad free episodes. But if you don’t want the Accrescent membership that comes with the Soothing Sanctuary, the community aspect, if you just want the ad free episodes, there is a podcast.
Only membership that will give you access to all the episodes ad free You’ll be able to listen to them within the app or you’ll be able to listen to them ad free within your Spotify Some of the other main platforms. So again links to everything I’m talking about will be in the show notes below
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Let’s pivot to today’s main topic and coming into this new year I started noticing I’m experiencing this pattern happening within me, and I know if I’m experiencing it, it’s probably something that many of us are experiencing as well. And just kind of the one liner or the main way that I think to describe it is, I noticed I was getting excitement was very, or is, very dysregulating for me.
And let’s pause before we go even further. First of all, what does dysregulation mean? I talk about the nervous system a lot, but it’s been a minute, so I’ll take a second to give us a quick overview of the nervous system, dysregulation, and why from a nervous system perspective, excitement, something that is quote unquote, Good could be dysregulating my nervous system a bit.
And then I want to talk about how is this showing up in my day to day life and how, how is it keeping me from being able to do some of the things I want to do? I felt like this was so relevant to this time of new years and transitions because so many of us get excited with the new year. We are starting new things.
Maybe if you’re a business owner, you’re launching new things, a lot of change, a lot of transition, maybe a lot of newness is coming into your life. And you might find that initially there’s all of this excitement around it, but then you’re kind of yo yoing back and forth between the excitement and maybe a more kind of low state.
Or it’s really hard to stay on that bandwagon. Or you get excited and then you find yourself kind of like mindlessly doing something else. So I’m going to talk a lot more about how this shows up for me and how it might show up for you. But I think it’s something that particularly in this time of year, when there is so much excitement kind of individually, but also collectively.
This might be something a lot of us are experiencing right now in particular. So, but let’s talk about the nervous system for a second. So what, first of all, what is dysregulation versus regulation? So our nervous system, it’s a system of nerves, almost like these little connective tissues that go through our entire body, connecting our brain to every single organ in the body.
They go throughout our arms, our fingers, all throughout. And when the nervous system is In a state of safety, this is what we could call regulation. I am regulated. My nervous system is regulated. I’m in a state of calm composure. Oftentimes the key terms used for this are the rest and digest. When I go into a stress response, this is what is often called dysregulation.
My nervous system is dysregulated. I’m experiencing a stress response. And with that, I might be experiencing a number of different. Limiting symptoms because of that dysregulation. There’s four main stress responses, or four main states of dysregulation. Fight and flight, which I think most of us are much more familiar with.
And then freeze and fawn. Fight and flight are more of a hyperactive, kind of anxious, high energy type states. The freeze and fawn are a little bit more hypoactive type states. So what is this dysregulation and how can excitement put me into dysregulation? How could excitement be causing me, you know, nervousness or overwhelm?
And I really want to explain this from that nervous system perspective. We have what is called the window of tolerance and this window of tolerance explains how big or how wide is my nervous system’s capacity to manage the stimuli and the stressors of life while still staying within that window of tolerance, while still staying within that place of calm, composure, rest, and digest.
When I’m in my window of tolerance, I’m in that rest and digest. I’m in that regulated state. But, if I am experiencing too many stressors or even too many stimuli, and if I have a more frazzled nervous system, I can get thrown out of that window of tolerance into dysregulation, into a stress response. And what’s so important here, and I think something that maybe isn’t always talked about a lot, that really clicked a lot of pieces for me, is it’s not always quote unquote bad things or stressful things that can overwhelm my nervous system that can weigh on my window of tolerance and then throw me into a stress response.
That’s why we use those words stressors or stimuli because even me. Running to the grocery store and getting groceries is a stimuli. Me watching a video on Instagram, me calling my mom. These are all stimuli. And particularly when we have a really, a more frazzled nervous system, even stimuli that we might in our brains think of as quote unquote positive can still be very dysregulating and overwhelming to us.
Especially if it’s a super, super exciting stimuli, even something like, for example, Planning a wedding. Now that can be pretty stressful. So maybe my wedding day or getting proposed to, I just got engaged and that stimuli is so overwhelming to my nervous system. And so I started noticing this. Actually what brought this online for me was the book by Kimberly Ann Johnson.
I think it’s, I’m forgetting the title right now, but it’s so good. It’s like Into the Wild, something wild. I’ll make sure it’s in the show notes. It’s one of my favorite books. I’m also mildly concussed from a head injury I had last a couple months ago. So it’s not surprising that I can’t remember the title right now, but I’ll make sure it’s in the show notes.
She is the first one who really explained this that it’s not just bad stimuli or negative stimuli or stressful stimuli that can Overwhelm our nervous system and that all of a sudden it was like such a lightbulb moment of oh my gosh Anytime I get excited Super, super excited about something. I noticed that what follows very, very quickly, I mean, within minutes of the excitement is this sort of frantic, mildly panicky, urgent, anxious feeling throughout my mind and my body.
And how does that then show up in my day to day life? Recently, it’s been a lot of excitement around ideas for my business, for the podcast, for clients, all these super, super exciting things that I want to start to bring to life. And what I will find the pattern that I saw happening over and over and over when I really took the time to look at it was I would get really excited and I’d be on this emotional high for a few minutes.
And then almost without fail, I would go into this state of overwhelmed and then into a state of kind of a numbing or a shutdown where I would just start scrolling on Instagram instead of actually taking any action on whatever it was that I was dreaming about, planning, excited about. And I mean, I can see the nervous system process happening just within that flow.
There’s the excitement that happens, which is great. It’s beautiful. But for whatever reason, not. That high energy, that kind of high stimuli is a little too much for my nervous system right now. So first it takes me into a hyperactive state of dysregulation. I go into a fight flight where I start to get like, Oh, what can I do?
What can I do? Oh my gosh, I need to do this right now and this and all these different things. I feel really rushed. And then I think that place, that hyperactive dysregulation, is even more dysregulating than the excitement was originally. So then to help me. I’m not sure if I can really kind of balance or get away from that.
My nervous system goes into more of a freeze response. Which is that kind of mindless scrolling. Just to help my nervous system calm down and re regulate itself. Another way this showed up for me recently was actually over Christmas. I hadn’t seen Many of my family members in a few months and I was so excited for the holiday for the time of rest to be able to See everyone and connect with everyone and yet once I was there with everyone.
I actually found myself really Overwhelmed and having a hard time engaging with family members this year. It was like There was all this incitement, excitement in me to want to connect and talk and hear what they were up to, but then in the actual moment in the day to day, I felt very subdued and more like, uh, I actually just want to sit here and observe, I don’t really want to instigate a lot of conversation.
Which is very unlike me. Normally, I’m so like, okay, tell me what’s going on. How are you? And this year, I just, I think my nervous system was a little more frazzled with maybe how much work I’ve been doing and how busy I’ve been. And so even though there was so much excitement, there was so much joy to see and connect and gather with all these people.
It was hard for me to fully embrace that. It was hard for me to fully engage with that. It was hard for me to fully receive that engagement from others.
I talk about holistic health products, natural products so often, and I know it can be overwhelming when we want to start switching out some of our old products for newer, cleaner, less toxic products. And one of the things I always. say is start with the products that you’re using on a daily basis. And for me, one of those products is coffee.
One of the reasons, one of the biggest reasons why I switched to four sigmatic coffee is because I’m drinking coffee every single day. And most coffees, a study was done that I think 80 percent plus of coffees tested positive for mold. We also know. Non organic coffees have a lot of pesticides, herbicides.
There can be a lot of stuff, heavy metals in coffee, and so if it’s something I’m drinking every single day, every single day I can either be putting in something that’s much much cleaner, or every single day I can be putting in these Amounts of pesticides, heavy metals, maybe even mold. So, what I love about Four Sigmatic is they have now launched their whole bean coffee.
So they have a number of ground coffee options, but I love grinding my beans fresh every morning. So they have their whole bean coffee, which also has adaptogens like Lion’s Mane in the whole bean. And then they also have a few other amazing coffee options. One that I’m recently trying out is their Balance Half Calf Coffee, so it’s half the amount of caffeine.
This is something I’m trying to reduce my caffeine intake a little bit. But what I love about all of Four Sigmatic products is they are third party tested for pesticides, heavy metals, fungicides. Mold so many other toxic things So there’s none of that going on in here. It’s organic mold free heavy metal free toxin free coffee.
I Absolutely love it. I use it every single day As I said, there are many other options on their website, and I’ve got a great discount code for you guys, so use the code LAL, capital L A L, at checkout to get a discount on your purchase, and click the link below.
That’s one way, you know, two ways that it’s been showing up for me recently, but some of the other ways it might be showing up for you are also, it could be something like, You just signed up for a new program or a new course and there was all of this super exciting energy to start. But then it quickly led into overwhelm or you found that that fizzled out really quickly or it was hard to keep that excitement or stay in that place of excitement.
Another one is maybe you just got really exciting news. And initially, you were super, super happy to get that news, but then after receiving the news, you notice you’re going into some kind of stress response, whether it’s a hyperactive one or a hypoactive one. Maybe you got some really, really good news, and then You find yourself like being such a busy bee the rest of the day.
Or you got really good news and then five minutes later you find yourself wanting to just like kind of zone out on the couch or zone out with a movie or social media. Something I’ll point out is I tend to go into that freeze response because I think that’s my nervous system’s kind of default protective stress response and I think a lot of that for me goes back to early childhood trauma and the stress response That got me through a lot of that trauma.
I think all of us can have different default stress responses. So for me, mine is that freeze hypoactive response. I feel that excitement. It’s dysregulating for me. Initially I go into a fight flight. And then to protect me from the fight flight, I go into that freeze. But, and what that looks like is the numbing out, the zoning out.
But for you, you might find that you get super excited about something and then you find yourself kind of stuck in that fight flight response where I’m so excited about it. And now I like, just can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop working on it. You might, it might be the type of thing where you sign up for that new program and then you’re on your computer working through it for.
Five hours straight or you still have other work to do, but you can’t stop your mind keeps going back to this thing that you’re so excited about. And it’s so hard to focus and be present in whatever it is you’re doing in that moment. So. Not everyone will go straight into that freeze response, if this is something you’re experiencing.
But what I would say is, just kind of taking inventory of, yeah, does excitement seem to cause dysregulation for me? And this certainly is not the case for everyone, but as I said at the beginning, it’s the case for me, and if it’s the case for me, I’m sure it’s It’s something that many others are experiencing as well.
And it was just so expansive for me to start to understand this because one, I don’t think I was even super hip to this pattern that I was experiencing before hearing that this was something that was even possible. I think I only had on my radar. That I was having stress responses to quote unquote stressful or bad or negative experiences.
I hadn’t quite come online to the fact that I was definitely having stress responses to just very, you know, activating, very exciting, very high energy. It could be excitement. It could be like super, super fulfillment. It could be joy. That was just super, super high, and it was a little overwhelming for my nervous system.
It was so helpful for me to see this because it was really hindering me in my work life, particularly. Where, as I said before, I’d get so excited about an idea or multiple ideas, but then I wouldn’t be able to actually take action on those ideas. It’d be there, I’d be so excited about it, there’d be all these pieces to the puzzle, and then I would just kind of like zone out and for 30 minutes an hour and then maybe have to move on to something else And so it made my progress super super slow with a lot of these things because even when I would sit down Let’s say I blocked off an hour to plan this new thing.
I’m trying to launch I would notice it. It was like I would go through these waves of anxiety and anxiousness and franticness and i’d have to Regulate myself back down. And this is now after learning the pattern. Initially it would be, I’m going to spend an hour planning this new thing. And I would barely make any progress because I was in such a state of dysregulation, even though it was like, I’m so excited about this.
I’ve set this time aside to work on this thing specifically. It was so kind of exciting and overwhelming and activating for me that I really couldn’t make a lot of progress on it. Now, now that I’m really aware of this pattern, it, of course, it helps me feel so much better about myself. Like, okay, I’m not lazy.
There’s not something wrong with me now that I understand what’s going on with my nervous system. I can start to support myself so much better through some of these moments. And the big picture support to this is that bigger question of what, you know, why is my nervous system a little bit frazzled? Why is my window of tolerance a little bit narrower right now?
And you guys know for me, of course, there’s always the. the tear of present day emotional turbulence. Is there any present day emotional turbulence that is weighing on me? That is. lessening my nervous system’s window of tolerance, my nervous system’s capacity to sit with the stressors and the stimuli of life.
But of course there’s also that bigger question of, and is there past unresolved emotional turbulence that is also, that has chronically been narrowing my nervous system’s window of tolerance. And I know for me, both, both are the case right now because Last year, 2021 2022 were big, big years of starting to process and work through this early childhood trauma.
And so I know there’s still work to go there. I know some of that stuff is probably still affecting my nervous system. But likewise, this has been Last year, 2023 was It’s one of the busiest years of my life in the best way, but speaking to that, it was, it was a busyness. And even though it was a good busyness, it was an exciting busyness, very overwhelming and dysregulating for my nervous system.
So a little bit frazzled, but so bigger picture, it’s starting to work through some of those things. How can I process release? The past and present day emotional turbulence, but in the moment, there’s practical things that I’ve started to integrate as well to help me in the moment. And for me recently, what I’ve been finding really supportive is doing some kind of nervous system practice.
I feel that dysregulation happening when I get excited. And so I’ll take a second before I move on, before I jump into action or try and do too much work, or before I go into that numbing place. I’ll take a moment to do, you know, two minutes, three minutes of some kind of nervous system practice to give my body those safety soothing signals and help myself ground back in to more of that calm composure regulation.
And then once I’ve done that. And right now it’s kind of at a place where I might go through a number of waves of that within, you know, any time period, within an hour of sitting down to work on a new project, I might go through three waves of that dysregulation because I sit down, I’m so excited. It’s like, Ooh, okay, it’s too much.
I regulate myself. Maybe 20 minutes later, that like frantic energy starts to come back up. And so then it’s like, okay, let me pause again. Let me regulate myself. So I think especially when we’re starting to Retrain the nervous system that can very often be the case. It’s not usually a one and done, you know I regulated myself and now I’m not gonna get regulated the rest or dysregulated the rest of the day No, typically when we’re starting to retrain For some people it could be truly every five minutes dysregulation is popping back up again and we’re Soothing it and addressing it as much as
So that’s a little bit of what I’m working on right now. Of course, there’s those bigger picture things like doing my weekly EVOC sessions with myself, doing the daily nervous system work, even when I’m not dysregulated, to be proactive with supporting my nervous system, but also being able to be aware.
To recognize what’s happening in the moment when I am getting dysregulated, even though I’m excited and it’s something really good and positive, being able to go, Oh, this is what’s happening. And if I stay in this place too long, I know my nervous system is then going to want to default to that freeze response.
And it’s just going to be really hard to make any progress or go anywhere while I’m still in this place. And so being able to Be aware of what’s happening, support myself in the moment, and then move forward from that place of calm and composure. So, I hope this was supportive for you guys. Like I said, with New Year, there’s a lot of exciting things happening, and you might be feeling like Yeah, why do I keep numbing out or why do I feel so frantic even though I’m so excited about some of this stuff?
And this might be part of that reason for you that that high excitement energy that high happy is Actually a little overwhelming for your nervous system right now And if that does resonate go check out The Accrescent community go check out the Soothing Sanctuary Our collection of meditations they have been so I use it every single day Because there’s also the app where you can access the community through the app on your phone.
So I’m in the Soothing Sanctuary every day doing some kind of nervous system practice for myself as well. So, it feels so good to be back, to be recording. Long form content is my favorite way to connect and communicate with all of you. Instagram’s awesome, but I love being able to really hash out a topic like this without feeling like I need to condense it into a 60 second snippet for you all.
And the same goes for guest interviews, being able to sit down with them and really, really hash out a topic from A to Z. Is my absolute favorite thing. So I am just bouncing that I’m back, that we’re here again. I can’t wait for the guest interviews coming your way for the solo episodes coming your way.
I’m so happy to be here. I’m so happy you’re here and until next time.