Shifting Patterns

When I started my own SSP experience, I knew before I’d even finished my listening that I wanted to become a certified SSP facilitator and share this gift with others. For many years, I’d been learning and teaching about the human nervous system. I had seen the positive impact for children, teens, and adults when they began to understand how their nervous system worked and how they could use that knowledge to have more agency over their emotional reactions and behavior. And now, I had discovered a tool that helps to heal stressed nervous systems from the inside out.

When you pair your SSP experience with some basic understanding of how your nervous system works, you can begin to intentionally and positively shift how you feel and behave. Even kids and teens can gain this understanding and increase their wellbeing when they have a supportive adult in their life.

My hope for you as you read these posts is that you will build your knowledge of how your brain and body work together and use this information to enhance the benefits of your SSP listening. These posts won’t be overly science-y - they are designed to give you just enough information so you can use it effectively in making positive shifts in your day-to-day life.

Our nervous system is made up of our brain, spinal cord, and nerves which send messages from our body to our brain, and vice versa. SSP is based on the science of Polyvagal theory, which is tied to the part of our nervous system called the autonomic nervous system (ANS). “Autonomic” can also be thought of as “automatic” because this part of our nervous system is responsible for managing many things without us having to think about them. For example, the ANS keeps our heart beating and our lungs breathing.

The ANS also helps us to automatically react to situations, people, or feelings without us having to consciously process what we should do. This system gathers information from inside and outside of our body and filters this through past memories and patterns of response.

This all influences whether we feel safe enough to let down our defenses in the place we are in, and with the people we are around. Even when we are relaxed and at ease, beneath our awareness the ANS is constantly scanning our environment for any signs of threat to our wellbeing. Essentially, the ANS works like a surveillance system.

This surveillance system has what’s called a “negativity bias” – this means that it is much better at noticing signals of discomfort or danger than signals of ease and safety. From a survival perspective, this is great news – we don’t want to miss a signal of real danger.

But that negativity bias can be a real issue in our day-to-day life because most of the time, the stressors we deal with in the modern age don’t require an actual survival response. And yet, our system is bringing our attention to all the little things that might bother us, and these can distract us from all the other things that might bring us joy and keep us calm.

This is why mindfulness practices can be so helpful - when we consciously shift our attention to things that bring us feelings of contentment and pleasure, it can balance our natural instinct to focus on the negatives. However, if your nervous system is stressed and burned out, you might view mindfulness practices as something that only works for other types of people.

Many of us, even if we are living relatively safe lives, don’t feel fully at ease most of the time. If you’re hyperalert to all the negatives around you, you may feel stuck in a cycle of constant stress. This makes you even more reactive to little things that bother you, makes it more difficult for you to connect with and enjoy the people in your life, and may impact things like sleep, your immune system, and your ability to learn, work or perform to your potential. And of course, the cycle will continue, because now there are even more things bothering you.

Our nervous systems like predictability and stability, even if that means continuing to use unhealthy response patterns that don’t serve our wellbeing. SSP can help shift these nervous system patterns.

As you complete your SSP listening over the next few months, I invite you to read these short posts along the way. They are designed to help you bring these unconscious patterns into your awareness. Reflect on how this information relates to you, and we can talk about this during our sessions. Then, we can add in some small practices that nurture your nervous system from the outside in. This helps you to become more regulated, live your life with a feeling of greater wellbeing, and experience more positive connections with your loved ones. I am eager to work with you and support you in making these shifts.

An understanding of life begins with the understanding of patterns.

-Fritjof Capra