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

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] Sawadee ka, and welcome to the Come Back to Care podcast. A place where we’re re-imagining parenting to be deeply decolonized and intentionally intergenerational. If you’ve been looking for ways to practice social justice in your daily parenting and nurture your child’s development while re-parenting your inner child, I’m so glad you’re here. I am your host, Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, a decolonized and licensed clinical psychotherapist, somatic abolitionist, and founder of Come Back to Care. A dot connector, norm agitator and lover of liberation. In this podcast, we turn down the volume of oppressive social norms and outdated family patterns so that we can hear our inner voice and raise our children by our own values too. We come back home to our body and the goodness within. We come back to our lineages and communities. And we come back to care… together. So come curious and come as you are.

[EPISODE]

Welcome back to Season 3, Episode 21 of the Come Back to Care Podcast. I’m so grateful that you are here. It feels just-right to reconnect with you after the season break.

In this episode, I’m inviting you to explore this question: how do we survive and thrive in times of uncertainty and unrest? Especially when your body and nervous system don’t usually feel safe, perhaps, because your assigned identities are not white, middle class, cisgendered, hetero male presenting, Christian, able and young bodied. How do we get unstuck from survival so that we can live, rest, and play when it’s safe enough… without slipping into toxic positivity?

We’ll start by unpacking three hidden costs of being stuck in patterns of survival and discussing two invitations to get unstuck. You and I will then discuss one way to cultivate well-being when our struggles are collective, structural, and historical. Then, we’ll wrap up the episode with one activity I invite you to experiment with even before you practice your usual gratitude practice, self-compassion practice, or self-love practice.

We’re kicking off Season 3 of our podcast with neuroscience and developmental psychology rooted in social justice action and decolonial analysis. The usual!

The hidden costs of survival: psychological, physiological, and relational

To begin our exploration together, I invite you to think of the labels other people and you yourself have used to describe the way you show up in relationships. Some examples might be clingy, controlling, anxious, sensitive, guarded, hard-to-reach…you get the idea. Whether these labels are endearing or hurtful, they’re usually somewhere on the spectrum of “too much” to “not enough”.

Although these labels aren’t Gucci or Dior, they come with a hefty (psychological) price tag. The most expensive part about these labels is when we absorb them and internalize them, believing that they’re our identities. You might say “Oh this is how I always am. I’m always anxious.” Or “Yes, being quiet and polite runs in the family. It’s who we are.” When we’re stuck in these labels, we stop getting curious about their origin stories.

Maybe being anxious was something you had to overlearn to protect yourself from rejection, abandonment, or criticism when you were little. To say it differently, you had to be anxious otherwise you wouldn’t be here listening to this episode.

For me being controlling as an overachieving perfectionist was my survival strategy to protect myself from being looked down upon as a transgender woman. Growing up in Thailand, one common stereotype of trans women is that they aren’t intelligent, aren’t capable…only funny and crass. So I learned early on that to survive all the bullying at school, I needed to be quick with my wit, quick with my words, and quick with my feet. Oh yes, I learned to cut the bullies with my words and then run away from them really fast too.

So my overlearned survival strategy of being an overachieving perfectionist is neither good nor bad. Just like your survival strategy isn’t good or bad. Being a perfectionist comes in very handy or adaptive when I teach because it helps me to be very thorough. But being a perfectionist with my colleagues and fellow community organizers? Not so adaptive. Because I’m not leaving room for flexibility, grace, mistakes, and other people’s authenticity. In this context, my survival strategy is more outdated than adaptive.

Okay, your turn. If you’d like to get curious about your relationship labels and their origin stories, I invite you to reflect on: what are some of the overlearned survival strategies underneath those labels, and what are their origin stories? And to unsubscribe from the good-or-bad-either-or binary thinking, when is your overlearned survival strategy adaptive? And when is it outdated?

I’ll repeat the reflective questions again:

• what are some of the overlearned survival strategies underneath the relationship labels and what are their origin stories?

• when is your overlearned survival strategy adaptive? And when is it outdated?

I hope that this quick self-reflection can loosen the stickiness of these labels a bit.

When we’re stuck in these labels, it’s like the camera lens we use to see the world is stuck. When we think of our relationship patterns as our personality, we can’t zoom in to see that they’re actually survival strategies we had to overlearn. And we can’t see how these survival strategies affect our nervous system. We also can’t zoom out to see the bigger picture of the social, political, historical, and cultural contexts we’re in.  

And when we’re stuck in these labels, we’re stuck in survival. Investigating the origin stories is one step towards getting unstuck and getting out of survival mode.

Now that we’ve reflected on the origin stories of our overlearned survival strategies and unstuck our camera lens, let’s zoom in and out a little bit. Let’s zoom in to look at our nervous system and unpack the physical cost of survival. Then, let’s zoom out to look at the bigger picture of the social, political, historical, and cultural contexts we’re in and unpack the relational cost of survival. 

When you’re stuck in your relationship habits or survival strategies of being anxious, controlling, people pleasing, or numbing and shutting down, at your cellular level your nervous system is screaming “danger, danger, danger,” sending you into your fight, flight, freeze, people please or shut down reactions to protect yourself from pain or any overwhelming experiences. The body releases adrenaline to get your heart rate up and it also releases the stress hormone cortisol to get the blood pressure up because the threat is here and you gotta be ready to fight or run away. Your body’s stress response system also shuts down other systems in the body that you don’t need in that moment to fight or to run away like digestive systems, reproductive systems, and your neocortex…that thinking brain that we use to make decisions, make plans, and exercise good judgment. Notice how survival affects so many systems in the body from immune systems to the brain. Typically when the threat is gone, the hormones, heart rate, and blood pressure return to their baseline. And the immune, reproductive, cardiovascular, and other systems get back to their business-as-usual. If you’d like to learn more about the science I’ll link to some foundational books and research papers from renowned clinicians like Dan Siegel, Bruce Perry, Stephen Porges, and Bessel Van Der Kolk in the episode show notes for you at comebacktocare.com/episode-21

But imagine what happens when the threat is constant because your assigned identities are not white, middle class, cisgendered, hetero male presenting, Christian, able and young bodied? When you walk outside, your skin color or gender expression puts a target on your back, so your stress response system is constantly in hyperdrive to keep you alive.

When I was a young adult pre-surgery or pre-transition, I didn’t have cis-passing privilege to protect me. So when I walked outside, I always walked really fast with tensed fists. I kept one fist holding a pocket knife in my purse. My eyes would be so tense from looking around and scanning the environment. This was almost 15 years ago and my body still remembers this feeling of hypervigilance around my eyes and tightness around my jaw, hands, neck, and chest. Fast forward to now, I have my cis-passing privilege and generally people have more understanding of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals, so I really don’t need that same survival strategy all the time anymore, at least not to that level of intensity. I’ve worked really hard to upgrade this semi-outdated protection or survival strategy so I can walk outside and smell the flowers along the way. And I’ve learned to really enjoy taking a walk, looking at the trees, and greeting all the squirrels I spot along the way. Then, Covid hit in 2020 and violence against Asian people surged. And guess what… all of my old survival strategies- all that hypervigilance and clenched fists- came right back like riding a bike.

I’m sharing this personal story to highlight that for certain bodies and assigned identities, the threat is constant. Many people I work with from the Global Majority often say jokingly but seriously that they never feel safe. Or they might numb out and say “we do what we need to do. It is what it is. We know how it goes.” If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Your stress hormones are in your body longer than they’re supposed to be. Your nervous system is so inflamed from being in fight-flight-freeze-people please-or shut down all the time…even when you are safe-ish. Your nervous system is working overtime to protect you. It’s stuck in survival mode to stay ready so it doesn’t have to get ready. Better to be safe than sorry kind of thing.   

So stress becomes chronic stress or toxic stress. According to the article Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child at Harvard University quote: “Sustained activation of the stress response system can lead to impairments in learning, memory, and the ability to regulate certain stress responses.” End quote.

Dr. Firdaus S Dhabhar, a leading researcher on the effects of stress, shared that prolonged stress has harmful effects on the brain and body including chronic inflammation, accelerated aging, exacerbated stress-related disorders, and increased susceptibility to cancer.

All of these references and resources will be in the episode show notes for you at comebacktocare.com/episode-21.

Being stuck in survival takes a serious toll on the body as well as on the mind.

So far we’ve talked about the psychological and physical costs of being stuck in survival mode. The final hidden cost of survival is the relational cost.

When we’re in fight-flight-freeze-people please survival mode, we often don’t feel safe enough to care, to be curious, to be compassionate, and to be connected to ourselves and others.

It’s not because you’re terrible and mean. To put those behaviors in the context of our neurobiology, Stephen Porges, a leading researcher of Polyvagal Theory, said quote “Trauma compromises our ability to engage with others by replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection.” End quote. In survival or protection mode, you’re no longer in your neurological bandwidth where you feel safe enough to care, to be curious, to be compassionate, and to be connected to yourself and to others or to be the highest version of yourself. When you’re outside your neurological bandwidth, you’re likely not the kind and compassionate person, partner, or parent you know you can be.

The total cost of being stuck in survival mode to our psychological, physical, and relational health is so high.

To quickly recap, we started this section reflecting on the labels we apply to our relationship patterns, labels like too anxious or too controlling. We zoomed in to look at the origin stories of these relationship patterns and zoomed in even more to explore what’s going on in the body and nervous system.

I hope that this exploration can turn down the volume of the self-shaming inner monologue you may have about your survival strategies that are protecting you. And you can turn up the volume of your self-compassion inner monologue. Your tendency to be anxious or controlling or guarded or sensitive came from somewhere, right? Just like I had to overlearn to overachieve, overdeliver, and be a perfectionist to survive. But this survival that keeps me alive comes at cost both to my body and my relationship with others, especially those I love the most. This awareness and compassion can come in very handy to help us get unstuck from old patterns of survival.

Another way to get unstuck from survival is to zoom out and look at the big picture, or the social, political, and cultural contexts across generations. So that the personal is contextualized in a collective. This is how we politicized the personal together.

Alright, zooming out…here. We. Go.

The Western culture of individualism and capitalism forces us to believe that our anxiety, chronic inflammation, compromised immune system, and autoimmune diseases are our faults alone. But the quote unquote good news is we can buy solutions to heal ourselves all by ourselves. Solutions like self-help books, mindfulness apps, and coaching programs to be more disciplined and to adjust our mindsets.

When you’re burnt out, try this new sheet mask and yoga retreat so that you can be quote unquote healed enough to go back to work and be a cog in the productivity machine of capitalism.

This culture often leads us to mistake collective and systemic struggles for individual problems.   

To give just one example, Renee Linklater, a member of Rainy River First Nations in the traditional territory of Treaty #3 and the author of Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies, argues that treating addiction in indigenous communities with self-help programs without regard to intergenerational grief, loss, and the trauma of colonialism is simply incomplete and violent.

Context is critical in our decolonized healing and liberation work. Because contextualizing my survival liberates me from shaming myself for being flawed, othered, less than, or defective…when, in fact, I’m simply not the poster child for the oppressors- white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

Sometimes when my colleagues tell me “Nat, relax…it’s just a presentation. No need to write a dissertation on the topic,” instead of shaming myself for being a perfectionist who’s controlling, overdelivering, and overachieving… I remind myself that I’m this way because I had to overlearn it to survive transphobia, racism, and other forms of systemic violence that are still alive and well.  

In those moments, I use one of my favorite quotes from Resmaa Menakem the author of My Grandmother’s Hands: “What’s hysterical is historical,” to interrupt that inner monologue in my head that says “You’re an overachieving perfectionist” from morphing into the next line in the script that says “See? You’re a mess. Who do you think you are being a therapist or a podcast host?”

Imposter syndrome is one example of how context is critical for understanding our survival strategies. As Dr. Jenny Wang, a clinical psychologist and an author of Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans, explains that imposter syndrome is not a sign that something is wrong with you.

In our podcast we often talk about how many of us have to abandon parts of who we are in order to contort, conform, and perform for white, patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist norms. We need to talk a certain way and look a certain way to appear professional and keep our jobs, otherwise we risk losing access to food, housing, and health insurance if we’re lucky to have them all in the first place. We’re coerced to conform to survive. And when we play this game of survival for so long, we internalize the idea that it’s the only way to be, that we have to center the gaze of men or whiteness and decenter our real, messy, complex humanity. Or, when we are forced to abandon ourselves over and over again and it’s not safe to be all of who we are, we forget where home is…where we stand because the only position we know is proximity to whiteness. Of course we feel like a fraud, Of course we feel unworthy and undeserving. When we have to collectively dissociate from who we are, this imposter syndrome is not just personal, it’s systemic and collective.

How does that resonate with you?

Staying Alive isn’t Living

As you can see our nervous system is so good at protecting us and keeping us alive. It’s been doing this job for the past 200 to 500 million years according to Polyvagal Theory.  

Your nervous system has been working overtime for many years to keep you alive and protected…without getting any bonuses or vacation days too. It’s like when you’ve overlearned to be a hammer for so long, you see everything as a nail. You react according to your survival strategies in your relationships with your parents, partners, colleagues, and children. You’re stuck in survival.   

Both you and I know that staying alive isn’t the same as living life, let alone living it fully. You and I know that protection isn’t the same as connection.

So how do we be well and live fully when the environment can be so unsafe, uncertain, and chaotic? How do we survive and thrive when threats are systemic and violence is intergenerational?

One way I’d love to share with you in this episode is to actively notice the tiniest moments throughout your day where you feel safe enough, connected enough, alive enough, and present enough even for three seconds. For example, these three seconds can be when you’re washing your hands and the water sparks a moment of connection you might feel with the water and the earth and your ancestors. Although you just came out of a stressful meeting where you felt invisible and small, these three seconds with the water remind you that you’re connected with something larger. You remember that you belong and you’re connected. You might notice that the tightness in the back of your throat and the collapse in your chest from that meeting soften a bit. You might sigh, make sound, and stand a bit taller. You come back home to your body and the wellness within.

You feel into your sense of well-being and groundedness in… that… moment. This moment doesn’t take away that fact that the meeting you just had was stressful. Yet, you don’t have to blow up, run away, people please, shut down or whatever your go-to survival strategy is. You can interrupt your nervous system’s habit to go straight into survival and protection. It’s almost like you take three seconds to be well and to reset your nervous system. So that you can meet the next moment with more energy and presence instead of blowing your pain through the next person you’re meeting or dumping the stress out on them.

Notice that this action is small. It’s short. I practice it as micro self-care throughout the day to reset my nervous system and avoid carrying all the stress and exploding with the pent up energy of it all at the end of the day. Deb Dana, a clinician specializing in Polyvagal Theory, calls it “Glimmer Tracking” which we’ll go over in more detail together at the end of the episode.

Okay, your turn. What would be your version of a tiny action that when you do it and notice it…you feel safe enough, connected enough, alive enough, and present enough even for 3 seconds? Do you notice it when you’re hugging your child during school pickup? Or, when you’re cuddling with your pets and partners on the couch after a long day and you feel their bodies’ warmth and weight ground you and relax you and you can melt into that connection?

If nothing comes to mind just yet, no worries at all.

Because our nervous system is so good at keeping us alive, many of us have what’s called a negativity bias. This bias helps us be very sensitive to any signs of threats and dangers so that we can stay protected. But the downside is that when this security system is overactive, we risk losing sight of moments that we feel safe, present, connected, joyful, creative, and alive. Remember when you’re a hammer, everything tends to be a nail?

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.

The picture I love painting for the parents I work with is that we’re not getting rid of the Spanx of protection because systemic racism, gender-based violence, and ableism are still out there. But when we start noticing cues of safety, when we start doing micro self-care throughout the day, it’s like you buy a new Spanx that’s three sizes bigger. You’ll still have the support you want but there’s more room to breathe and move. If you don’t wear Spanx, I got you. It’s like buying a new armor that’s three sizes bigger. You’ll still have the protection you need, but now there’s room for wellness and safety too. That’s how we can begin to soothe the overworked nervous system and balance surviving with thriving.

What is well-being?

You might have already noticed a familiar flavor of both-and in our discussion instead of either-or. You can go into protection or survival when you need to. However, you’re not stuck there and you don’t have to be in your fight, flight, freeze, people please protection all the time. Because you can also shift out of protection and into connection. Or, you can shift out of surviving and into thriving. You have the flexibility and agility to shift in and out of these states. You can feel excitement and anger without getting stuck in your nervous system’s fight or flight. Or you can feel sadness and disappointment or you can grieve without getting stuck in your nervous system’s shutdown response. You can feel and be present with your intense feelings without getting lost in them. You can find your way back home to that neurological bandwidth where you’re curious, connected, compassionate, and present. According to Dan Siegel, a renowned psychiatrist, this agility is an indicator of resilience.

Automatic habits often hold us hostage to our past. They make us view the present moment through the lens of past pain, they make us “stay ready so we don’t have to get ready”. So getting unstuck from the past conditioning and habits we overlearned is, to me, a form of radical self-love.

The problem with self-love and gratitude is timing

Now that we’ve looked at how to take care of our nervous system, let’s layer social political analysis on top of this nervous system talk. Because we can’t just quote unquote heal our nervous system, heal in isolation, and call it a day.

Our culture of individualism and capitalism often commodifies care and sells it back to us as gratitude journals or bath bombs. I’m not dismissing any of those tools if they work for you, I promise.

I only want to point out that sometimes we might be forcing ourselves to use these tools before our nervous system is ready for that gratitude, self-love, and self-compassion. Tools are tools. I don’t have any problems with them. But timing matters. When we use these tools matters.

When you try to write in that 17th gratitude journal you bought this year or sit still on your brand new yoga mat to meditate and you’re not feeling it... You’re not into it. And a part of you knows that you simply can’t gratitude your way out of anxiety or meditate your way out of despair. Then, you might feel awful about yourself, wondering why you can’t force yourself to practice self-care and self-love.

I’m speaking from personal experience here. Because by the time I sit down and open my gratitude journal, my nervous system is kind of fried from being in my fight or people please survival mode all day. And if I’m being radically honest with you, I often detect a hint of resentment too which morphs into “Ugh, this is stupid. Why bother?” Then, I happily close my $25 gratitude journal and walk to my freezer and grab my ice-cream instead. And I justify it to myself by saying that I just need to wind down first. And now I can’t even enjoy my ice-cream because I feel terrible about not being able to do my gratitude practice quote unquote successfully and feel the peace, love, and light the journal promised me when I bought it.

And I’ll clarify real quick that I’m not shaming anyone who eats for soothing and comfort. Yet, there’s a difference in satisfaction when we’re eating our feelings away versus when we intentionally enjoying eating ice-cream.

So my nervous system is still stuck in survival when I sit down with my gratitude journal. It’s not like I can turn that switch off to immediately become grateful. Literally because when I’m in my fight, flight, freeze, people please, I’m not operating from my neurological bandwidth where I’m usually curious, connected, compassionate, and kind. My neocortex or my thinking brain isn’t functioning at capacity either.

Neurologically speaking, I’m not at a place to pause, be curious, and be reflective about the things I feel grateful for that day. My nervous system is still in hyperdrive. And when my nervous system is stuck in survival and screaming internally “danger, danger, danger,” it’s really hard to be still, be reflective, and think about what I’m grateful for. So, the tool, gratitude practice, is great. But the timing isn’t.

My invitation is before you practice your self-love exercise of choice- meditation, gratitude journaling, dance- work with your nervous system to get unstuck from the fight, flight, freeze, people please survival mode first. So that you shift from protection to connection where you’re back home in your neurological bandwidth where you’re reflective, curious, compassionate, and connected. Once you’re anchored in your bandwidth, then practice your wellness exercises. So that you’re not suddenly turning the switch of protection off cold turkey to will yourself into feeling grateful.

Glimmers

To anchor in your bandwidth, one practice I’d love to share with you in this episode is called Glimmer tracking by Deb Dana.

Glimmers are small sparks of safety and connection where you feel safe-enough, present-enough, and alive-enough to meet the world.

Glimmers are evidence that our nervous system is spacious enough for us to shift in and out of both safety and survival when we need to. And we don’t have to be defined by our wounds.

To enjoy these glimmers, I invite you to "sip, savor, and share”.

Let’s start with sip. To take a tiny sip of your glimmer means to pause throughout the day and smell the flowers so to speak. So that you’re intentionally pausing to notice moments when you feel safe-enough, present-enough, and alive-enough. These moments are not necessarily all about happy moments. By taking a sip, you notice these moments like when you’re holding a warm cup of coffee in the morning before your kid wakes up and the chaos of the day follows. That warmth in your hands might bring a gentle smile on your face. After you take a literal sip of that coffee, you sigh ahhhh. And making sound like this reminds your nervous system that it’s okay to take up space. Then, you might notice that you want to stretch your neck and roll your shoulders down to wake your body up gently. That’s sip.

Since our framework is sip, savor, and share, let’s talk about savor. Savor means you might give yourself gentle permission to linger and luxuriate in this sense of wellness, connectedness, aliveness, and safety for three more seconds. This is savoring it. Strengthening your nervous system’s new pathways to notice wellness when it’s been so used to survival. This week you might savor for 3 seconds. Next week 5 seconds and so on. You have this embodied sense of safety that you can tap into throughout the day when your nervous system is exhausted from being in fight, flight, freeze, people please survival mode.

Other examples of glimmers could be a dinner with friends, quiet time during my baby’s nap, a nod of acknowledgement from colleagues, sunshine, after-dinner walk, watering plants, cuddling with cats, making delicious soup, putting on plush fleece socks (it’s getting cold here in Chicago), meditating in candlelight, rinsing hands under cold water, or even finding a funny meme on the Internet.

What kinds of glimmer moments come to mind for you? The more you practice, the easier it is to notice these moments. It’s almost like once you buy a red car, you see red cars everywhere.

The final step in our sip, savor, and share is sharing this observation with those you trust like your partners or your child. You might tell your child when you’re eating dinner together saying “you know today was long and my meetings were stressful but one glimmer I noticed was the warmth in my hands and a gentle smile on my face when I was holding my coffee mug this morning.” If it’s appropriate, perhaps you invite your child in this observation too by asking them “how about you? How was your body telling you today that you’re having a good time or you’re feeling great about yourself?”

I invite you to sip, savor, and share by noticing the smallest moments of aliveness and presence. If you’d like, you can write down one glimmer per day so you have a growing list of resources or nourishments you can tap into when it’s safe to get unstuck from habitual patterns of survival.

Deb Dana also recommends you pick a time in your day that you know is the easiest to sip and savor your glimmers and start there.

Final (unfinished) thoughts

Ah, to wrap our episode up, actively noticing cues of safety throughout the day is one way to balance our overactive nervous system that tends to get stuck in survival. Systemic oppression forces us to contort, conform, and perform for white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy and capitalism. I truly believe that we can begin to heal from these internalized oppression wounds and heal our inflamed nervous system by balancing surviving and thriving without toxic positivity. I believe that this is radical self-love. This is personal liberation that we owe to ourselves and our ancestors who couldn’t do the healing work. And we can do this personal liberation work as we’re advocating for change at the systemic and collective level.

You heard liberation starts at home. It starts in these tiny steps in our neurons all the way up to our neighborhood. White supremacy might say being small isn’t impactful because progress has to be big. Or capitalism might say noticing these tiny moments of safety is unproductive and therefor silly.

To that I want to share another favorite quote of mine from Sarah Ruhl quote: “Smallness is subversive, because smallness can creep into smaller places and wreak transformation at the most vulnerable, cellular level.” End quote

As always, in solidarity and sass. Until next time, please take care.