Be More Cat

When we talk gently, when we talk kindly, for me it was wanting to keep Rainbow MagnifiCat as much as possible in rest-digest mode as she acclimatised to her life outside the shelter and with me.

And as I spoke to her really kindly and gently, it changed the way I spoke to myself and so I've kind of built on it and now I give presentations on rescue cats and Polyvagal Theory. So notice yourself. Is there a way in which just imagining yourself as a beloved cat, puppy, baby, lizard, whatever you love, could improve your self-talk?

Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday I share trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself and your Self with that uppercase S, that highest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant, miraculous part of yourself, helping you create a life you don't need to retreat from.

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You can also find out more in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and access a wide range of resources for everything from trauma and ADHD, anxiety, stress, confidence, resilience, menopause, self-care for solopreneurs, burnout, all sorts at selfcarecoaching.net.

Today's episode, episode 70, is to celebrate International Cat Day and so I have an obvious shout out to Rainbow Magnificat, Mighty Maeve, Terry Crews Cat and Angel Houdini and all the wondrous felines that can inspire us all to be more cat.

I've been using rescue cats to help me explain the nervous system and other elements around my work to clients and groups for over 13 years when Rainbow Magnificat, bringing her back from the shelter, changed my life.

The idea of being more cat sounds simple and it is. Can you imagine if you had the cattitude, the confidence of a beloved cat?

You can find out more about this element of my work and access a range of tools and resources at selfcarecoaching.net/feline and you can also listen to the Purr! Hiss! Freeze! episode and the Smelly Cat episode and others of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and there'll be links in the show notes.

In a nutshell, Polyvagal Theory and beginning to talk to myself in a more soothing way, like understanding more about how tone of voice impacts how safe we feel, how, like if you imagine someone yelling at you, it's an immediate stress survival, sympathetic survival response. When we talk to ourselves like that, we're living way more of our lives than we need to.

When we talk gently, when we talk kindly, for me it was wanting to keep Rainbow as much as possible in rest digest mode as she acclimatised to her life outside the shelter and with me and as I spoke to her really kindly and gently it changed the way I spoke to myself and so I've kind of built on it and now I give presentations on rescue cats and polyvagal theory.

Notice yourself. Is there a way in which just imagining yourself as a beloved cat, puppy, baby, lizard, whatever you love could improve your self-talk?

And we'll move more deeply into the feel part of the Feel… Love… Heal… framework by just recognising that you can do lots of things to regulate your nervous system and to use active self-care to feel better in pretty much any situation.

Feel…

Now I encourage you to go back to the Purr! Hiss! Freeze! episode but, ultimately, to find your own names as you learn to map your own nervous system.

I use Purr! for ventral vagal because everyone knows what a cat is like when it purrs and it just it's open to connection, it's feeling safe enough, it's letting itself feel good and that's what we want in ventral vagal.

We want to be there as much as we can but obviously, life be lifing. We can't. But still, those moments, those micromoments in Purr, they're helping heal your nervous system. Find something for yourself to represent Purr.

Some people use songs, some people use weather that they love, a place, whatever it might be. Something as a shorthand for yourself for ventral vagal. Think purr, think in extreme purr, a cat welcoming a belly rub. It takes that vulnerability. It shows how safe it is and how much it wants connection and also complete confidence in her boundary setting abilities (and activating murder button as soon as the belly rub no longer suits). Think for yourself.

And then for Hiss! it's that sympathetic survival element. Thinking about when you notice yourself moving into the Stress Response as you map it. Think again, go back to that episode, but as you think about the warning signs for yourself, use one of them perhaps as a replacement for Hiss! to give it your own name.

And then for Freeze! the dorsal vagal, that kind of collapse, overwhelm, that, what's the point? I always think of when I take Rainbow and Meadbh to the vet. Rainbow (because Meadbh doesn't do this) is divine, obviously.

All creatures are. And she loves to be held. She loves to be carried around and picked up and purrs away. But she does not like when I shut the bathroom door after her and she doesn't like that at all because she knows it means we're going to the vet.

Even though I've put the cat carrier in the bathroom so she can sniff it and explore it and all the rest of it. I put her in the carrier explaining the whole time that we're going to the vet, it will help her blah blah blah (play with others without catching anything / feel better etc) and she's not happy at all.

Once the carrier is closed, she continues to meow but as soon as I open the front door and put it outside she goes silent. I travelled the whole way from Essex in the southeast of England to Westport on the west coast of Ireland with complete silence.

And from Dublin especially, it was horrific because it was dark and she's a black cat and I couldn't see her eyes at all and she was just so silent. I was trusting that she was OK but it's that dorsal vagal collapse. She knows by the time the carrier is shut and it's outside that there's no point fighting. She's going to the vet. Or, in this case, she was coming to wondrous Westport where she lives a glorious, joyful life.

But in that state her nervous system was overwhelmed and she gave up. So for you, think about what you want to call it. Freeze! That state where it's all too much for you. You don't want to stay there, you want to move as much as possible into ventral vagal.

As you ponder the things, people, places, behaviours, all the things that make you want to purr, that make you feel safe and connected enough to welcome belly rubs or your equivalent, remind yourself that it’s completely normal to move back and forth between these states the whole time.

You have, even if you haven't had a trauma history or if you haven't got ADHD, I know most of my listeners and viewers do, you've been conditioned pretty much your entire life, including before you were even born, to work against your nervous system so that people could sell things to you and people could control you.

Your mammy was likely conditioned away from her inner knowing when she was pregnant with you and she was likely overwhelmed by lots of conflicting information or medical professionals, well-meaning as they may have been, or loved ones, again well-meaning as they may have been, or just the culture at the time.

Parenting advice changes so much. She may have been very, very stressed during your pregnancy at certain times as well as really excited and like feeling great. Ideal world, she would have been completely supported by the culture and by medicine to honour her knowing in terms of what felt good for her and her baby (you).

You've had this kind of stress since before you were born, this moving away from what you know. A cat knows to move towards that sun puddle or that cosy spot. We all are mammals, we all have this inherent knowing but we've been so conditioned against it, it can be really challenging to allow ourselves to be more cat, to give ourselves those micro moments of feeling great that work together to heal the nervous system.

It's especially important with trauma and ADHD. As an example, as I was making a few notes for this episode, I was thinking, “It's a lovely day! It's not as hot as it's been, but it is really lovely and the grass and the lavender and the roses. I want to sit outside and make a few notes!” And my immediate thing was, “You can't, you have to do, do, do, do, do, do!”

And it's like, “But I wanna!”

And it's like, “Oh my god/dess, why am I stopping myself doing what feels good?”

It's like, what, I didn't have time? It takes a few seconds to take off my shoes and socks and it's just a few metres from the house to the bench outside where I can sit with my feet firmly planted on the beautiful grass, feel grounded as I write.

I want you to think about ways in which you can give yourself as many moments of feeling the grass on your bare feet (if you like the feel off the grass on your feet, you know what you like, you know what you don't like).

Ventral vagal moments, those purr moments, it's very different for different people. There are lots of things that loads of people like but the more you get to know your own nervous system, the more you befriend yourself, the more you recognise that you are worthy of getting to know and love, the better.

And again, you only need those micro moments to reconnect to yourself, your Self with the uppercase S, others, the divine and everything else. And it's those tiny, tiny moments of what feels good. They really do build up.

Love…

For the love element of the feel love heal framework, it's about acceptance, allowing yourself to just be, remembering that you are purrfect or pawfect just the way you are.

Have you ever met a beloved cat that didn't know its worth?

Take cats as your inspiration and remind yourself that cats haven't been marketed to their entire nine lives. They haven't been told that they need to look a certain way or have certain things or a gazillion other ridonkulous standards and arbitrary measures for deserving love, safety, connection, rest and purriness, ventral vagal wellness.

You have the power, right now, to accept yourself exactly as you are. And to know exactly what you need in any given moment as you take those first steps or you build on them towards self-love and acceptance. It may be giving yourself permission to nap when you're tired, eat when you're hungry or drink when you're thirsty.

Or a gazillion free, simple things that all give yourself that message that you, just like any cat, are divine and worthy of love, safety, connection and all the things that enable you to thrive.

Take back that power. Maybe choose a photo of your favourite cat whether it's yours or someone else's. Use it as wallpaper on your phone as a reminder to be more cat as often as you can.

Heal…

And for the Heal… part of the Feel… Love… Heal… framework this week, think about ways in which you can take your cat inspiration into your family, communities, the world at large.

It might be something as simple as encouraging your child (whatever their age) or parent (whatever their age) to accept and love their whole selves, to notice especially with parents if you, as we get older and we realise of course they were doing their best and the conditioning that they had and that they weren't able to overcome necessarily, notice how you can help them heal just by encouraging them to be more fully themselves and recognising how their entire being is lovable and worthy.

It might be offering (if you are in a position to do so or supporting if not) potential media training that helps people of all ages to remember that everyone is worthy and they are worthy just like everyone else.

To potentially cover just a bit around what we're facing every day not just with TV advertising like in the olden days or magazines but through our screens the whole time. What we listen to, what we watch, what is like the sponsored ads all of it.

A little bit of media training (whether you do it yourself or you take someone else's) can radically change your life. To remind yourself that you have way more choices than you might think.

Think about like the expression it's like herding cats. Cats are very much their own, I was going to say people, their own selves.

You can take back so much power by listening to your body, listening to your nervous system in any given moment, listening to your mind, listening to your heart, listening to your soul and doing what's right for you.

And using that to help others be more themselves. To find safety and connection within their truest expressions of themselves.

If you're a Sole to Soul Circle member (you can join today if you're not already and you'd like to be) your Deeper Dive bonus content tomorrow is a special yoga nidra to help you be more cat.

Learn to love and appreciate your whole self.

Thank you so much for listening.

Next week it's Black Cat Appreciation Day so we're talking… sharks.

I bet you thought I was going to say Rainbow MagnifiCat. She'll be mentioned and potentially there'll be a cameo from her.

She's wandered in and out for this. I was really hoping to have an actual cat to share with you but cat. I hope that you have a glorious week and next week like I say we'll be talking sharks for International Black Cat Appreciation Day and we'll be doing shadow work and the Deeper Dive for Sole to Soul Circle members will go into a practice around that.

Thanks again for listening. Please like, comment, subscribe, share, rate, review, follow, all the things, whatever feels good for you and the Feel Better Every Day Podcast is produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham. I hope you have a gorgeous week.

Find yourself a glorious comfortable sun puddle to rest in and some wonderful joyful things to play with and let yourself be more cat.