Transcription
Hey guys, I'm Heidi Pribb. Welcome back to my channel, or welcome if you're new here. This week on this channel, I want to do a kind of mini capsule series on nervous system regulation for those who grew up with, or still have, a chronically disregulated nervous system.
So, generally, this is a pretty common thing for those of us who have complex PTSD type wounding. Now, when I say regulated, right off the bat, to get some definitions out of the way, generally what I mean is that you are functioning from inside of your window of tolerance. So, our window of tolerance is any physiological, mental, emotional state where we're able to, even if we're feeling emotional, tolerate the discomfort of what we're experiencing and be at choice when it comes to how we are responding to a given situation. And when we are outside of our window of tolerance, generally what it means is that we are acting from some sort of more core emotional, instinctual place. And in most cases, we are in one of those 4F responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. We are either bringing an excess of energy to the situation because we believe in our nervous systems that we have to mobilize everything we've got to fight off some threat or escape some threat, or we are kind of shutting down in our nervous systems because we are trying to immobilize ourselves because our body believes that the only way to keep ourselves safe is to inhibit and avoid making a mistake in some way.
Now, it is wonderful to have tools for getting back into our window of tolerance in the moments when we find that we are out of them. However, for many of us, especially those of us who grew up with complex trauma patterning, we spend a surprising amount of our lives outside of that window of tolerance. And spending that much of our lives outside of that window of tolerance ends up creating new problems that are much greater than the single problem of getting back into that window of tolerance when we are out of it.
So, what we're going to be talking about today are some of the long-term effects of living with complex PTSD or with a nervous system that is chronically disregulated. And what we're going to be doing is basically using the metaphor of having a secure, well-regulated nervous system as kind of being akin to being born into generational wealth. And before we get into that metaphor, I want to be clear that you can literally be born into generational wealth and have complex PTSD. So those things are not different categories necessarily. But the reason I want to look at being nervous system rich versus growing up in a chronically disregulated state—is kind of akin to being born into nervous system poverty—is because it's very obvious to most people that those who are born into wealth have certain routes open to them that are simply not available immediately, or in the same way, to people who are born into poverty. So these are two different circumstances that pattern out quite differently over the course of one's life that it's pretty easy to overtly point at in most cases. But having a well-regulated, or nervous system-rich environment—which is kind of how we can look at being born into a secure family versus being born into a family that has poor regulation skills and cannot pass them on effectively—is a situation that also gives way to significant differences in how one's life patterns out as you go through life. But once again, it's not always as obvious.
So today, we're going to be using this metaphor and playing with it to get really clear on why complex PTSD is as challenging as it is. And the disclaimer I want to give before we get too far into this video is that it might start to feel kind of discouraging at times as we go through this. But for the rest of the week, what we're going to be talking about is how to work with all of these problems.
So to start off, using the metaphor of finance—and I want to say I'm very sorry, truly, if this triggers anybody's financial anxieties or stresses—we can kind of bracket that for the rest of this video. We are not here to talk about actual financial concerns insofar as they come up in the outside world. This is just a metaphor we're going to use today to explore this concept. So being born into a secure, well-regulated environment essentially means that as you grow up you are getting frequent deposits being made into your nervous system bank account. So what that means is that you are having a lot of moments over the course of your life where you are receiving things like love and support from your environment, good competent mirroring from your environment, where you are given a lot of help in understanding how your inner world connects to your outer world. So, it's like you are constantly getting these tiny deposits being made into your nervous system that build up over time and give you a resource of extra regulation when you need to tap into it. Versus if you are growing up with complex PTSD, basically, what's happening is that it's kind of like you're running a bunch of programs inside of your nervous system that have very high overhead costs. So things like hypervigilance take a lot out of your nervous system. Masking and self-suppression are very exhausting for the nervous system; flipping very frequently into those 4F responses and being outside of that window of tolerance very often. All of these things, and many more, are kind of like withdrawals that are constantly being taken out of your nervous system bank account.
So whereas the secure person, as they grow up, is receiving a lot of frequent inputs that are helping them to build nervous system wealth before they go out into the real world and need to start responding to more stressors, the opposite is kind of happening for those with chronic dysregulation. So their nervous system, from the get-go, is in a kind of chronic state of stress and overwhelm because all of these programs that they're needing to run to navigate their early environments are putting stress on that nervous system. And so already these nervous system patterns and what's available to us as nervous system resources—which means things like energy and creative thought—are very different for these two individuals.
Now the next difference that starts developing is the difference in compounding interest. So if you have a secure nervous system, what that means is that as you go through the course of your life, these other things are going to start arising out of that wealth of emotional support that you have. So you're going to start developing strong self-esteem, which might mean that you're willing to take more risks and go for more things in life that are going to yield good results. So, for example, you might have a relatively high tolerance for rejection because you know in your core that you are safe and loved by the people you're close to. And so you're willing to put yourself out there more in the dating world, in the academic world, in the work world, knowing that if you need that support to fall back on, you're going to have it. And as a result of taking those chances, your life is likely to start getting better and better in a lot of different ways because you are more resilient by virtue of that nervous system wealth that you have. But the opposite is unfortunately also true. So when we are operating out of a place of nervous system debt, essentially what's happening is we are now having to pay interest on that debt. And what that looks like is if you are chronically stressed out and overwhelmed, you're generally going to be flipping into a trauma response, a 4F response more often. And as we go through life chronically flipping into these response patterns, what ends up happening is the exact opposite of what happens for a secure person. Being in this disregulated state might lead us to burn out more quickly. It might have us lashing out at our friends and family the second something goes wrong because we are already so overtaxed. It might make us really sensitive to rejection because we have a lot of instances logged where upsetting someone led to really bad consequences. And so just as the secure person builds up all of these resources they can then spend on taking some risks and investing wisely, we don't really have that same room to play with if we have something like complex PTSD. On the flip side, chronically being in one of those trauma responses is likely to lead to more problems. So maybe we dissociated from our financial lives for so long that now we're in a bunch of literal debt; and the knowledge and awareness of that literal debt is going to cause more stress on our nervous system. Or let's say that we were struggling so hard that we pulled back from a whole bunch of our relationships. And so now there's repair work that we need to do if we're even going to get back into our relationships. And all of those things—that shame, that burnout, that sense of, oh my god, I have to do so much work just to get back to baseline in my relationships or my financial life or whatever it is—this is all compounding negative interest. So these are the problems that are getting built on top of the problem of having to live a life in survival mode.
Now the reason we're talking about this—and I just want to hit reminder points throughout this video—is not because you are in a hopeless situation. What I want to help us do through the course of this video is develop some language for why we might be struggling so much if we have complex PTSD and if our nervous systems are chronically overtaxed like this. Because a very common problem is that people with CPTSD do not have context for themselves that they don't have the same wealth as someone who was born into a secure situation does. So they end up shaming themselves for all of these things that they seemingly can't get right, not realizing that in fact those things were unreasonable to expect themselves to get right with the pressures that they were under at the time. But it's kind of a death by a thousand cuts situation, right? If you can't point at a single overt trauma that happened within the recent past, it might feel like you are just exaggerating or you're just not strong enough to deal with day-to-day life, if you're finding yourself struggling so hard, when in reality, much like financial debt or financial wealth accumulates in whichever direction it exists in, so does nervous system wealth. And again, we're going to start talking soon about how to better manage that nervous system debt. But for now, we're going to go on to the third problem that tends to develop over the course of your life if you are in nervous system debt, which is: when you are in literal poverty, there are hidden costs that come along with that, and the same is true with nervous system debt.
So sometime around 10 or 15 years ago, there was an article that came out about this that I remember finding really enlightening where they talked about how there are a lot of little things that add up when you are in poverty that you don't have to deal with if you are not in poverty because having enough money to get by without being paycheck to paycheck allows you to spend your money more wisely. And this is something that I actually remember having a conversation with someone around when I was in university. We were at the grocery store together, a friend and I, and he was really struggling financially. And I remember him buying a two-pack of chicken breasts. And I went, "Hey, why don't you buy this 10-pack of chicken breasts? It averages out to less cost per breast, and you can just freeze the rest of them." And he went, "Well, I know, but I can't afford that 10-pack." And so even though it would be a financially wiser move technically to buy it, I just don't have the money to do that until my next paycheck comes in. And he explained to me that this was something that just came up for him frequently. He ended up having to pay a little bit more per item than someone who had more of a financial cushion would have to pay because they could buy things in bulk. And this is very similar to what it means to have a regulated versus disregulated nervous system. When you have a well-regulated nervous system and a lot of resource to spare, it means that you can afford to make a lot of changes with your life that are going to be taxing on your nervous system. So on a tangible level, that might look like being in a bad job or a bad relationship and knowing that it's going to be really stressful on your nervous system to get out of that situation. Because even if you're going to something better, there is just a natural sense of grief and disorientation that comes along with almost any change, especially changes where you don't know what the future is going to hold once you commit to a certain course of action. But if you are someone who has an excess of resource built up inside of your nervous system, it might mean that you have more things like support, resilience, the capacity to self-regulate around the unknown. All of these things are going to help you make that choice to do this big thing that you know is going to tax your nervous system for a while because you know you can afford to do it. You can afford to fall apart for a little while and not have your whole life go to shambles around you. You can afford to get stressed out or upset or disregulated and know that you can stay within that window of tolerance. So you are able to make these kind of big purchases that you know your life is going to get better on the other side of, the same way buying that 20-pack of chicken, even though it hurts to spend the money upfront, allows you to spend less in the future. So sometimes there are these big things we need to do with our lives or these big changes we need to make that cost a lot upfront. They exhaust us a lot, or they stress us out, or they tax our nervous systems a lot upfront, but they lead to changes that in the future are going to have a high return on investment for us. That said, the same choice cannot be made in a lot of circumstances if you are dealing with nervous system debt already. So maybe you are in a job or a relationship that you would like to leave in some part of yourself, but you feel like you kind of can't afford to, on your nervous system, because maybe you know that if you leave your romantic relationship, you're going to get really disregulated and upset for a while, and that might impact your work performance heavily, and you need to be able to keep your job or else you're not going to be able to afford rent next month. And this is a problem that somebody with a more secure and well-regulated nervous system might not have because they can draw from those emotional reserves, that capacity for self-regulation, or for relying on their support networks when they're feeling the hit of making the change in a way that you don't have available to you. And so, while you might know on some level that paying that upfront cost and getting out of this situation and figuring out what's on the other side might be better for you in the long run, it might be a price that you know, in some part of yourself, your nervous system is just not able to pay right now. Because keeping your nervous system regulated enough to keep meeting the day-to-day demands of your life is already a big enough challenge. And anything that throws it off could throw the whole system into disarray. And so, similar to my friend who was always paying for two chicken breasts at a time, you might end up continuously paying the nervous system cost of being stuck in a bad situation that is nonetheless keeping you in some sort of equilibrium. Even though you know that continuously paying that cost in the long run is going to be more taxing on your system than maybe leaving and finding a better situation would. But again, we can only pay what we have available to us at the time. And again, over the course of the week, we're going to be talking about a whole bunch of nervous system wealth and debt management strategies that can help us save up for things like making those big changes without throwing our entire nervous system and lives into disarray. But for now, we just want to be really honest with ourselves about why sometimes we aren't making those really big choices that some part of us knows we should. There is a wisdom our bodies often hold for us about what would push us over the edge and get us operating from a trauma response. And if our bodies know that making a giant change when we are ill-equipped to do it would likely throw us into that state of chronic disregulation, our bodies are going to resist those changes until they feel more possible. So again, this is not to say you're doomed. It is just to say that there might be a wisdom happening under the surface for you that you're not aware of that you don't need to shame yourself for. There is a very deep intelligence to our nervous systems.
Which leads us to point number four, or reason number four, why it might be more challenging for you to handle day-to-day life than someone who has a more well-regulated nervous system if you have things like complex PTSD patterning, which is the high interest rate problem. So, before we go too jargony with all the financial stuff, I'll just give you a really clean and easy example of what this looks like. If there is a $10 item that you are thinking of purchasing, but you're trying to put it on a credit card that already has an incredible amount of debt on it, essentially, that item does not cost $10 to you. It costs $10 to the person who is paying upfront for it. But for you, it costs $10 plus the interest rate that is going to be applied to it based on that purchase. So if you have something like a 40% interest rate on your credit card, the same item that costs $10 to a person who is buying it in cash costs you $14. And this is the same thing that happens for those of us who are chronically disregulated when we go to do what might look like a simple task for those who are well-regulated. We learn that for our nervous systems, which are overtaxed and stressed out already, this is actually not as simple a task as it is for someone else. So, for example, again, if you have dissociated from your financial life for so long as a trauma response, calling your bank might be an incredibly massive tax on your nervous system because you're having to regulate around a whole bunch of shame, a whole bunch of stress, whatever it is, relative to the person who does not have financial stress calling their bank. It might be a very low tax on their nervous system to do that relative to what it costs you to do that. And so what I want to make clear again here is that for those of us with these chronic dysregulation patterns, doing things that seem simple, that we might shame ourselves heavily for not just being able to do, are in fact not as simple as they seem. Because for us, unlike someone with a more secure system, they come with a whole bunch of baggage that is literally just not there for someone else. And we're going to talk more in depth as the week goes on about how to manage these high interest rates on simple tasks. But for now, we just want to get clear and associated to the fact that they exist. And so this is another moment to start giving ourselves compassion because now we can be real with ourselves about things like: if I need to call a friend who I ghosted when I was having a depressive episode, it is just going to take more out of me than it's going to take for a secure person calling a friend who does not need to self-regulate around all of that shame and fear and potential for rejection, which might hit us a lot harder than someone who has a more robust social support network and healthier self-regulation skills. It is literally just incurring a different cost on our nervous system. And if we can learn to plan for that cost, we can self-regulate around it more effectively. But that's all to come.
The last thing we're going to go over today is the problem of not being able to purchase high-quality items because, again, we don't have the amount of money we would need, nervous system-wise, to purchase those things upfront. So, what is an example of this? Well, just like if you were pretty wealthy, you could buy a car that you know is higher quality and not going to break down on you in the next 6 months. And that would end up saving you money in the long run. If you simply don't have the money to do that,
You might need to take a chance on the car that you know is probably going to start sputtering and having all these problems six months down the line, because you just need that car to get to work. And this is exactly what it's like to have complex PTSD. You are chronically needing to just meet the demands of day-to-day life through using whichever coping mechanisms are available to you, even if you know that down the line they might have consequences.
So whereas a more secure person can use their self-regulation skills to do things like hold out for really healthy relationships in their lives, if you are struggling immensely with loneliness and depression and someone comes into your life who helps alleviate some of those problems to the point where you're able to get back to a relatively functional state, even if you know that that relationship might have a lot of problems down the line, it's likely you're going to say yes to it. Because again, you are doing whatever you need to do to get out of survival mode and back to a place where you're relatively stable.
Same goes for basically anything that you latch on to as a coping mechanism. Whether that is some sort of pattern or routine that you know is not the healthiest for you. Whether that is some opportunity that you say yes to knowing that it comes with strings attached. All of these things that we do when we have complex PTSD to just simply triage and make our lives as bearable as possible with all of these compounding problems that have developed over the course of our lives are kind of like grasping on to whatever low-quality items we can find, knowing that we need them functionally and that we will have to deal with the problems that arise down the road when those problems come online.
So, I've often found that living with a chronically dysregulated nervous system, which was the case for me for most of my life, basically was like always having to triage some aspect of my life. Like, there would be 6 months to a year where I would just need to make all of my decisions around optimizing my financial health so that I could make sure that I was at the least able to afford day-to-day living. And then maybe I would be super burnt out after. And then I would have to optimize constantly for just not burning out so hard that I never kind of got back to life and that I could stay at least reasonably engaged with things like work and relationships, whatever it was. And then after spending so long attending to my mental health, there would inevitably be something else that would come up and would need my attention.
And if you have a whole bunch of nervous system wealth, it allows you a cushion to navigate through all of these challenges without throwing some other part of your life into disarray. But if you have nervous system poverty, it essentially means that every time you are responding to one of these conditions in your life, you are throwing some other part under the bus.
And so what we want to start getting really aware of here is that having CPTSD or a chronically dysregulated nervous system is in a lot of ways like being stuck in a poverty cycle. Right? There are hidden costs to having a disregulated nervous system that those who are born with more secure patterning simply do not ever see, because they are those kind of invisible costs that you only get really well acquainted to when you are forced to continuously confront them.
And so what we're going to do for the remainder of this week is we are going to go over a whole bunch of ways that we can start gaining nervous system literacy. The same way we need to gain financial literacy if we find ourselves in an overwhelming amount of literal debt. We're going to talk about strategies for minimizing the accumulation of more debt as much as we can. So, finding some sort of nervous system costs that we can drop as well as building nervous system resilience so that we're able to navigate through challenging periods with more resources available to us.
But for now, I am going to leave this topic at that for today. As always, any comments, thoughts, questions you have popping up for you as you go through this video, please leave them in the comment section below. I love you guys. I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other, and I will see you back here again really soon. [Music]