Ep 21: Surviving and Thriving in Uncertainty and Oppression Without Toxic Positivity

“Just like our nervous system actively scans for signs of danger, we can balance it out and create new patterns by actively scanning for signs of safety and wellness…even though it’s just for three seconds.”

Episode Outline:

• Your relationship labels (clingy, controlling, anxious, sensitive, guarded, hard-to-reach) as overlearned survival strategies, not personalities.

• Nat’s example of her overlearned survival strategy of being an overachieving perfectionist.

• Two reflective questions to explore the origin stories of your overlearned survival strategy.

• When you’re stuck in survival, your worldview is fixed.

• The physical cost of survival: Zooming in to see what survival costs your nervous system and body.

• Intersecting neurobiology with assigned social identities…what happens when you experience chronic stress when your assigned identities aren’t white, middle class, cisgendered, hetero male presenting, Christian, able and young bodied.

• The relational cost of survival: Zooming in to see what survival costs your ability to relate to others you love compassionately.

• Understanding the physical and relational costs of survival can decrease shame and increase self-compassion and accountability.

• Politicizing neuroscience: Zooming out to understand survival in our culture of individualism and capitalism.

• Nat’s example of how her survival strategy is connected to transphobia, racism, and other forms of systemic violence.

• Imposter syndrome is another example of internalized oppression wounds of being forced to contort, conform, and perform for systemic oppression.

• Staying alive isn’t the same as living life, let alone living it fully.

• Balancing survival with thriving by noticing smallest moment of safe-enoughness and present-enoughness throughout the day.

• Wellness and resilience mean the agility to shift in and out of survival and into connection when you need to.

• The problem with self-love and gratitude is timing. We often force ourselves to practice gratitude or meditate before the nervous system is ready.

• One invitation to reset the nervous system that’s stuck in survival so that you can be back in your neurological bandwidth. Or, so that you feel safe enough and present enough to practice gratitude, compassion, self-love, etc.

• A framework of this invitation is sip-savor-share.

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Resource Mentioned:

• The Developing Mind, 3rd Edition by Dan Siegel

• Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce Perry

• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

• Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain
  from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child at Harvard University

• Effects of stress on immune function: the good, the bad, and the beautiful by Dr. Firdaus S Dhabhar

• Polyvagal Safety: Attachment, Communication, Self-Regulation by Stephen Porges

• Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies by Renee Linklater

• My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem

• Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans by Dr. Jenny Wang

• Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory by Deb Dana

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