Today’s episode builds on Episode 48: Cattitude: Purr! Hiss! Freeze! and the Polyvagal Purrs approach I developed years ago to include MORE of the Divine. More of what inspires awe, love, hope and other transpersonal – beyond the person – qualities. Nature? (Cats are part of nature and so are you!) Great art? What helps you connect with suPURR (super ventral) energy?
How can you do more of these things on purpose?
If you’re a trauma survivor and AuDHDer like me, or you simply find self-care more of a “should” than a joy, this podcast is for you.
I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham, a trauma therapist, AuDHD and self-care coach, senior accredited supervisor, columnist and author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-Care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing.
Each Tuesday I share a mix of solo episodes and conversations with other self-care professionals. From other therapists, coaches, yoga teachers and authors to neuroscientists and medical professionals, many of them neurodivergent themselves and all honest enough to share the gap between their own ideal and their ACTUAL self-care.
Find Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD with Eve Menezes Cunningham every Tuesday on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn to love and care for all your parts, from the soles of your feet to your soul.
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LINKS
Deb Dana
Stephen Porges
365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing https://solestosoul.ie/book
Cattitude: Purr! Hiss! Freeze! Episode 48 of Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD with Eve Menezes Cunningham watch
CHAPTERS
0:00 Not about spiritual bypassing
1:07 Podcast introduction and rebrand
1:28 Background with polyvagal theory
2:18 Introducing a fourth state
2:59 Purr! ventral vagal safety and connection
3:25 Hiss! sympathetic survival stress response
3:58 Freeze! dorsal vagal shutdown
4:26 Naming and understanding nervous system states
5:22 Introducing suPURR (super ventral)
6:01 Feel: self-care practices to access suPURR
8:07 Love: connecting with your inner self
9:43 Heal: collective care and co-regulation
10:53 Awe, DHEA and reducing stress
11:39 Focusing on hope and positive stories
12:29 Closing and reflection prompt
FULL TRANSCRIPT
It’s not about spiritual bypassing, very much not. If you take the example of yoga, if you have a yoga practice or any kind of psycho-spiritual practice, I’m always struck, because I’m a yoga therapist as well, watching people when I’m teaching, doing it myself. I know that I can be going through an emotional rollercoaster and look very serene.
I also know that feeling all the feelings, allowing what’s coming up for to come up is so, so powerful. This is not about pretending super, awe, pride, joy, all the things, love. It’s about really connecting with all your parts and knowing that there’s so much more to you than all of the angst, everything you’ve survived, everything you’re worried about, challenges you might be facing, being able to connect with that more than, but also recognising the reality, recognising what is.
You’re listening to Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD with Eve Menezes Cunningham. It used to be the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and I’m still getting used to the rebrand after so long. Here’s little Meadbh and it feels appropriate for today’s episode where I’m introducing a fourth state.
I’ve been working with Polyvagal Theory since I learned about it in 2011. From 2013, when I adopted Rainbow Magnificat, I started using her to help me with my own inner critic, with my own healing of my nervous system and trauma recovery. Then as the other cats came into the picture, I learned more and more, did more and more training, got more and more experience, saw just how effective all these ways of working are with clients.
I’ve been presenting on it. I’ve written about it in journals. I love being paid to find pictures of the rescue cats to illustrate quite a heavy theory.
It really does help people understand it better. More recently, I’ve added a fourth. Deb Dana, who made polyvagal theory so much more accessible, it’s Stephen Porges’ baby and she made it more accessible to clinicians.
She does phenomenal work. She talks about super ventral. For ventral vagal, I call it Purr! because in an ideal world, we have that feeling of safety and connection.
We’re like a cat at ease, able to purr, enjoy life. We’re curious. We’re happy.
It’s safe to connect. Life feels good. It’s all purry.
That doesn’t mean cats aren’t able to change their state, just as we do. We’re not in ventral vagal or what I call Purr! the whole time, but the more we can have that curiosity, that compassion, whatever’s going on around us, whatever’s going on inside us, the better for our overall wellbeing.
Hiss! is what I call the sympathetic survival response, that stress response. When we feel under threat, when we feel disconnected from people, when we act out, we might fight, we might flee. These are all adaptive survival responses. Nothing wrong with it, but in an ideal world, if we can’t even find compassion for ourselves, Deb Dana says even one drop of curiosity is all we need and beginning to think what might help you, might get you back into that Purr! That ventral vagal.
Then we have the dorsal vagal, what I call Freeze! Where the system is overwhelmed and we’re in collapse. We might be numbing. We might be dissociating.
We might be indulging in habits that enable us to numb, but it’s feeling hopeless. It’s feeling overwhelmed. It’s not a happy, joyful place to be by any stretch.
I go into all of these stages, all of these states in episode 48. So if you want to listen to that, but just for yourself, just getting a sense of, I encourage people to find their own names for them. It’s just Purr! Hiss! Freeze! helps because it is easier to remember for most people than ventral vagal, sympathetic survival and dorsal vagal.
The key is remembering your nervous system is never wrong. Your nervous system has kept you alive. It’s kept you safe. It’s helped you deal with whatever you’ve had to survive. They’re all adaptive survival responses. Someone who has grown up knowing that it’s safe to connect with others is an advantage.
It’s like I heard some person say growing up with parents with regulated nervous systems is like growing up with millionaires for parents. And it kind of is, but at the same time, whatever age you are, wherever you are, we can begin to heal it.
Today, I want to introduce what I’m calling suPURR
That’s su, then PURR. And it’s for Deb Dana’s super ventral. And it’s where we bring in the more than the person, the more than the spiritual, the transpersonal and the thinking of the kinds of things you can do to make it more likely that you’ll be able to connect with this amazing energy, which of course helps us be more in ventral vagal, more in that Purr!
For the Feel part of the framework, that’s the like lowercase s self-care, the regulatory things we can do, think about things you can physically do when you have the bandwidth to bring you into suPURR or super ventral. So it might be taking yourself to the beach or to the ocean or to a mountain or to a forest or some kind of nature that feeds your soul, that helps you feel.
It might be taking yourself down the driveway to watch a sunset or sunrise. It might be taking yourself to a gallery to view some art that touches your soul. It might be taking yourself to a concert or whatever it is, think about the kind of things that help you get beyond Purr!
It might take more energy and the more you can do, the more you can connect with this, the more you can fill your environment with things that promote you remembering. Nature is wonderful for so many people, but it’s not limited to nature.
It can be, I’m going back at time of recording, I’m planning my first trip back to London in, it will be two years. And the idea of seeing some of the architecture, some of the arts, obviously people, loved ones will be amazing. But whatever brings you or whatever inspires you, whatever helps you connect with that, WOW, I can’t believe maybe you did something incredible, or it might be like a seventh wonder of the world, or it might be an amazing piece of art by someone else. Or it might be thinking about an incredible feat that someone has survived or endured, or like a new creation.
Think about what helps you connect with that suPURR beyond energy when you have the bandwidth to do that regulatory self-care. When it comes to the love part of the framework, the Feel. Love. Heal. framework I developed, let yourself just be. Remind yourself that you don’t have to go outward at all.
You can go inward. You can connect with the divinity within yourself, just as cats don’t need reminders of their divinity, of their magnificence. You have that within you.
You don’t need to change a thing. You don’t need to be striving, or doing, or producing, or anything. You can just be and marvel at your body, for example.
Even if you’re not happy with your body, your poor body has probably been through so much criticism because we live in a world where so much judgement is placed on these bodies that carry our souls through our entire lives. But if you think about what’s going on,we’re talking about nervous system regulation, we’re talking about healing the nervous system. You think about all the automated processes that we don’t even have to think about, all the amazing miracles happening in your body every day.
Just accepting how incredible it is to be alive and even now in these challenging times, let yourself appreciate it. Moving to the Heal part, that collective care, so the Love part is the acceptance, the love, the support. The Heal part is more collective care.
The Love part is that connection with that Self, that uppercase S. The part of you that is like much more than the spirit, the highest Self, that highest, wisest, truest, most joyful, brilliant, miraculous part of yourself. So the Love part is really just what helps you connect with yourself. How can you make that a bigger part of your life? And then the Heal part is the collective care, the co-regulation.
It might be that joining a Circle. I do monthly, I’m moving it from the waning Half Moon to the Full Moon, but every month a small Circle, which is really enriching my life and I’m getting lovely feedback from the participants. There might be something similar near you.
It could be joining some sort of group that enjoys going to galleries, or going on walks in nature, or creating music of your own, or anything like that. Just give yourself permission to think what gets you into that suPURR stage and know that awe is one of the positive emotions, that when we feel it, we’re creating DHEA. I wrote about it in the book, but DHEA is a natural performance enhancing hormone and feeling good, feeling that sense of awe, that incredible love and pride, hope, all these really positive emotions.
They help us reduce the impact of stress on the system, because when we’re creating DHEA, it makes it impossible to create cortisol for a few hours and it also just feels amazing. So the more you can do, like we’re living in very challenging times, for me one of the things that helps is really focusing not on the destruction and the horror and just the things that very quickly send me into dorsal vagal Freeze! but instead really seeking out feeds and stories of activists and amazing people, who are incredible and just fill my heart and just give me hope and they are beyond, like it’s awful what people are having to survive and endure, but by focusing on the amazing people, doing amazing things and recognising that the majority of people do mean well and let me know what works for you. So thank you for listening.
I’m your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham. You can find links, full transcripts, more information in the show notes at solestosoul.ie and I’m looking forward to sharing more next week.
We’ll be looking at the Divine Feminine and what it means to me and before you go now, think about suPURR, or that super ventral and scan your body, your energy, your thoughts, your emotions, your soul, your spirit, just scan yourself from the soles of your feet to your soul and just make some notes about some of the things that might be calling to you.
Spend a few minutes journaling if you want to, or just make a few notes, or pick one prominent feeling. I’d love if you want to let me know what that is for you, how you’re going to connect with that suPURR energy this week and moving forward, you can email eve at solestosoul.ie, so that’s s-o-l-e-s, as in the soles of your feet, to soul, as in your soul and .ie for Ireland. Looking forward to sharing more next week.
As you think about this episode, imagine scanning your whole body, your whole energy field from the soles of your feet to your souls. Notice what has come up for you as you’ve listened and as you think about it now.
How might you show yourself some extra love, some extra care today, this week?
Make some notes, doodle, whatever feels good. And if it feels comfortable and you want to, email eve at solestosoul.ie or comment in any of the comment areas. Feel free to subscribe, rate, review, all the things. And thank you for listening. I’m your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham. Find full links in the show notes and full transcript and let me know if you have any questions. Really looking forward to joining you again next week. Have a brilliant week.