Holiday Stress: Can you heal your family member's anxieties?
This time of year, we have a unique opportunity to help family or friends ease their anxieties and feel safe in a place where they might have historically felt otherwise.
When my family gathers for Christmas, we’re like a choose-your-own-adventure pack for mental health diagnoses, addiction, and various other issues.
I come carrying my own baggage, growing up with my brother in an alcoholic and abusive home. As I’ve mentioned before, our mother passed in 2011, and our father is incarcerated, so holidays look a little different for us.
This year, we met at my grandmother’s house — which is a one-bedroom guesthouse in middle Tennessee.
When you walk in, you’re immediately hit with the entire squad in one room. Someone is inevitably grumbling about space on the couch or counter space in the kitchen, and the war cries of twin two-year-olds can be heard through every wall.
It’s a place of excitement and love, mixed with the anxieties everyone unknowingly packed in their carry-on.
“When we walk back into our families — our childhood homes — we [mentally] become 8 or 14 again,” Deb Dana, a clinician specializing in Dr. Steven Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, told me.
“It’s hard to hold onto a feeling of emotional regulation when we’ve got cues of danger [from the nervous system] or things that feel difficult coming at us all at once.”
If regulated, we are, for all intents and purposes, gifting those around us with an opportunity to feel safe, relaxed, disarmed, and in the present moment.
With my own traumas and triggers to bear, I’ve been reaching for healing and mindfulness these past years.
Through various learned practices and tools, I’ve become more in tune with my body as it swings between states of regulation and deregulation.
Part of Dana’s practice in Polyvagal theory is the concept of our nervous system's three states: Sympathetic, Ventral, and Dorsal. Depending on the unconscious cues our nervous systems detect around us at any given moment, we swing more towards one side or the other.
I’ve been well versed in one end, over-focusing on when I feel anxious and activated. However, I only recently learned of dorsal, which, for me, looks like a sudden wave of sleepiness and trouble staying focused. Everything becomes a blur. For a long time, I thought I struggled with a potential sleep disorder — not an unregulated nervous system.
The idea in Polyvagal theory is that we can train ourselves to notice when we are leaning too far one way or another, giving us more living moments of regulation.
TLDR: Recognizing that we are in an unregulated state helps us come back to the present moment and connect with whatever or whoever is around us.
Regulation is not only an act of self-care but also an act of love for others.
But with all of this in mind, what’s even more magical is the concept of co-regulation.
In other words: healed people, heal people.
If regulated, we are, for all intents and purposes, gifting those around us with an opportunity to feel safe, relaxed, disarmed, and in the present moment.
“The nervous system is always getting cues from other nervous systems,” Dana said, referencing the concept of neuroception.
“When I'm regulated, I am sending a message to the nervous systems around me that it's safe and that they can come into connection with me.”
Dana describes this sensation as a “reciprocal feedback loop,” where both nervous systems begin to regulate each other and ease into a sense of safety and comfort.
Coming into a chaotic family home — whether it’s a house in Tennessee or elsewhere — we’re given a unique opportunity to help others ease their anxieties and feel safe in a place where they might have historically felt otherwise.
Now, if you’re wondering, “How the heck do I regulate myself?” when you're experiencing your own flavor of family chaos, Dana has some ideas as well.
Aside from meditation and visualization, which might be difficult to access when you’re in a small space filled with family, Dana also suggests the use of physical “anchors.”
“Probably, the easiest thing would be actual touchstones, things that you can hold or carry or put in your pocket,” she said.
“It could also be a fragrance or a scent.”
Dana calls these tools a “tactile reminder” for your nervous system to return home.
These anchors are a way to remind your body that there actually is no danger and that you’re safe to return to a place of regulation. For Dana, she uses beach stones, which remind her of the safety and relaxation she feels by the water.
Once we return home to our bodies, we can start sending those unconscious signals of safety to everyone around us. Maybe the couch grumblings become less frequent, or someone else in the family is able to relax their shoulders a little more.
Regulation is not only an act of self-care but also of love for those around us.
Even more so, Dana emphasizes that this gift isn’t something exclusive to meditation gurus or trained therapists.
“Every human has the has the capacity to offer this powerful regulating energy to the people around them. It’s a human gift.”