When your creative potential is stuck in fight or flight (148)

Hello, hello, my friends. I'm super excited today because we're gonna talk about something that I absolutely love talking about, although I'm a little nerdy, so I don't know that it's that fun for everybody, but that's the nervous system, how we get dysregulated, and how our trapped emotions are actually keeping us in this state of fight or flight or fun. So let's get started. First off, I'm Aubrey. If I haven't met you yet, I have a podcast called Creative Entrepreneurs Unblocked.

I also am a photographer. I love doing birth photography, but also do family sessions. And I'm a mindset coach for creatives. So I'm a subconscious release technique coach. And I get to use that a lot to help creatives move past this phase of feeling just completely trapped, stuck, stagnant, feeling like they have creative blocks or imposter syndrome.

And a lot of times burnout. So I'm going to stick with the topic, but I do want to say that each of these things can come at any stage in your business or in your hobby life, right? You don't have to be in a business to experience these things. Sometimes it keeps you from starting a business. Sometimes it keeps you from just sharing what you have to offer with the world.

So just understand that no matter where you're at, there's absolutely something here for you, because I can guarantee that some of what's going on is your mindset. Actually, probably 80%, 90%. So when we talk about the mindset and the nervous system and how things get stuck, okay, a lot of us have experiences from our past that kind of stay there. It's like we don't fully process them. There's a lot of reasons why this happens.

One is we're not really grown up in a society where people feel good about processing emotions, right? Sometimes it feels wimpy or feels like, why even bother when people aren't going to accept it or when people are going to feel defensive about you being upset, right? So many ways that that plays out, especially in young childhood. So sometimes we kind of get stuck in this vibe of like, well, I'm just not going to share it. I'm going to keep it inside.

A lot of us internalize things. I internalized most of my emotions for the first 25 years of life. That was a long time, but I think it ages me. I am 40. I'm almost 41, but it's good because now I've been able to take a step back and say, you know what? That really didn't work out so well for me. It felt good in the moment, but later on, no, absolutely needed to process things as they came up.

But yeah, so one way, as I mentioned, is that we just kind of get stuck in this nobody cares, I'm going to keep it inside kind of vibe, which can totally be fixed. Another thing that happens with processing emotions is that we just don't feel like. We can process it because it feels untouchable, right? It almost feels like, and your mind will do this to you. Your subconscious mind will say, you know what? I like feeling depressed.

This feels very homey to me. I don't really want to fix it. I don't really want to get on top of it. I think we'll just stay here, right? So you kind of get stuck in this like phase of not being able to pull yourself out. That happens to so many people. It happens every day. And it's like you can't really get out of it while your mind is subconsciously saying, I want to stay here. And the reason why it wants to stay there is because that's your nervous system.

That is your autonomic nervous system that's saying, you know what? We like feeling this way because we're safe here. We're not taking risks. We're not putting ourselves through any kind of challenging tasks today. We're just going to sit on the couch. You know, it's not so challenging. Feels really good here, right? Or it feels so safe that it's like, why even bother, right? What else could go wrong? Nothing can go wrong when all you're doing is laying around.

You're not putting yourself out there. You're not sharing your work with others. You're not sharing love with others that they can also say, meh, not my thing, right? There's no way for you to be disappointed when you don't take any chances. And our nervous system is the biggest culprit to that feeling. So yeah, you can absolutely get stuck there, but guess what? You don't have to stay there.

So what we can do is we can look at these situations and we can say, okay, how do I get myself out of this situation? We're going to do a little self-reflection. The work that I do with people, we absolutely do more than self-reflection because I help you figure out what those programs are. But let's talk a little bit about what kind of things come up in that situation.

So when I talk about programs, subconscious programs, these are thoughts, negative thought patterns that are playing on repeat in your mind. And so when that happens, you kind of have like this just background voice that's like, hey, by the way, you always fail, right? By the way, you're not good enough. There's someone better than you, right? Or, excuse me, but you suck at this, right? You're not lovable, anything like that.

And I know when you hear it out loud, when someone says it, like I am to you right now, you might think, I don't know if that happened so much, or it might actually trigger something in you that feels super sad, that feels disappointed, that feels like, ouch, that really hurts, like you're being called out. So there's different ways that that could go. And some of it is just self-awareness. Like where are you at in your journey where you're super self-aware of this inner voice?

The good news is we can turn these voices off. We can make sure that they kind of get silent. We don't hear them as much. They don't dictate our lives as much. That is the beauty of doing this work. Because first we have to recognize it. First we have to pull it out, right?

You can't just like do the work without actually doing the work, right? So one of the things that we would do is we would take one of those programs. Let's say it's, I'm not good enough. This is a pretty common program for most people, to be honest with you. If I run a group session and we do this program, some people will feel like, oh, it's not really me, but I'm going to participate. dissipate and they can feel the shift. They can feel a weight being lifted.

So when we look at I'm not good enough, we can kind of break that down and say, okay, what kinds of emotions are you attaching with I'm not good enough? And in my personal work, the way that I would do this super, super correct, like precise, I guess would be the word, is I use muscle testing to find those emotions that you are attaching to that story. So I might say, okay, so I'm not good enough. There's some anxiety there. There's some anger, there's some depression, some disappointment.

So I might walk you through the process on how to release I'm not good enough with those emotions. And actually, why don't we just go ahead and do it? I didn't know I was going to pick up on something like that, but apparently someone out there needs it. So let me walk you through how we would do that. Okay. So the first thing that you're going to do is just listen to me while I explain it. So you're going to take a deep breath in and hold.

I'm going to say a statement. You're going to think it. And when you're done thinking the statement, you're just going to blow it out. So you're not going to really say anything. You're just going to. Okay. So let's try it all together since I know there's a program here that we get to release least today. So go ahead and breathe in and hold. I release all anger with I'm not good enough. Good. We'll do another. Breathe in and hold. I release all anxiety with I'm not good enough.

And what tends to happen is. Even if you don't recognize that as your own, usually when you go through this process, you can feel a weight being lifted. And we're really just letting go of that thought process and we're allowing there to be space for a new thought process, which will probably be a little more positive because your conscious mind gets to weigh in on that thought instead of the opposite where your subconscious always takes over from that thought.

So back to nervous system dysregulation. What happens is we have these thoughts and they are keeping us in this little place. And I say little intentionally because it is impossible to grow to your potential while you are living in nervous system dysregulation.

So when we're keeping those there it really limits us we have to be able to release those in order to get out of it now you may wonder like how do i know if i'm a nervous system dysregulation and there's a lot to it there's some signs and symptoms that you may have that someone else doesn't have but i'm going to tell you a few things that i think are pretty common one you might feel super triggered. Like over dumb things, we'll say.

I don't want to say all the time because there's a lot of us who internalize stuff and we don't feel triggered all the time. But some of you, maybe you notice doing this when it's not really a big deal, right? Someone steps on your toe by accident and it's like, what's your problem? Sorry, that was the angry Aubrey. But yeah, like there's just a part of you. Then later you're like, yeah, I think that was maybe an overreaction to something. It's probably not a big deal.

That might be an indication that you are in nervous system dysregulation. Another thing that doesn't get talked about very often, you may be so stuck that you just don't do anything, right? This is that freeze or fawn stage where you are just feeling like, you know what? I'm just not going to do it. It's just not really anything that I want to get up and do today, right? That sucks. Really sucks when you know you have something to do because later on you still have the guilt, right?

So now we've got extra in there. We've got guilt also inside. And there's a lot of programs associated with that, too. But yeah, there's that. And then sometimes it just comes out as like vacant, you know, like maybe maybe you're just so nonchalant. You're not really in touch with things going on around you. You're not really feeling any emotion because you're just kind of turned off. And this definitely shows up in our relationships more so than we think.

A lot of times our spouses or our children or our parents even will notice like, what's going on with you? And you're like, nothing, nothing's wrong with me. Nothing's wrong with me. But really, there's this side to us that is really emotionally shutting off. And this is a defense mechanism. This is a safety thing, right? This is I need to feel safe and I don't. So I'm just going to close off and nothing bad's going to happen here.

But it's more of an emotional close off versus lying around like you would on the couch. And just feeling like you're not going to do anything, which I would associate more with like a depressed kind of state. Whereas this one, maybe you're out doing things, but you're just like, you're just not really reacting big. You're not laughing. You're not having a good time.

You are super internalized. So those are some things that happens with nervous system dysregulation. And that's just kind of the emotional side. There's a lot going on physically that people don't notice too. So, I mean, we could talk about that for days, But physically, you might have other symptoms. You might have like sweaty palms all the time. Your heart might be racing. Or on the other side, you might not have any energy at all.

Not from an energetic standpoint, but from a physical standpoint, you might literally just not have the energy to do anything. So a lot of people might think about other things like, okay, how are my hormones? How is this? Did I eat enough? Did I do this? And the thing is, is a lot of times we can fix these symptoms by being able to tap into that subconscious mind.

So there's a whole other level of it that, you know what the biggest benefit of doing that work is, is that you really feel like you're coming home to yourself. You really feel like that person that, oh, this is me. That's right. I love doing this. That's right. I love speaking up. I love singing in the shower. These are things I haven't been doing. Whatever it is, you like really feel like that identity portion of your life is back in your wheelhouse as opposed to somewhere else, right?

Sometimes, I think it's safe to say, sometimes we do not recognize ourselves.

And that's also pretty crappy. So being able to come back home to yourself is a beautiful thing that happens when you are able to regulate your nervous system, when you are able to release these trapped emotions that are not serving you, and these subconscious programs that honestly have never served you, they've never done good for you, but they absolutely need to be worked on. Okay, so that's just a different way to look at it.

This is the way that I always approach it with my clients, is like what kinds of things are going on in your life, and I can pick out their symptoms, systems listen to them talk and I can hear back either the vibrations of their voices off or I can hear back how they're holding those in so you may say to me yeah I just don't feel like doing anything and I can hear like I'm exhausted. I don't have anything in me. Like I'm de-ensigned. I can hear those things. Those are all subconscious programs.

And so because we're able to pull those out so easily and seamlessly, we can do the work right away to help break those down so that they're not there reminding you all the time. So this is such a beautiful thing that we do in this kind of work. And if you guys have any questions, definitely reach out. I have a crap ton of podcast episodes. I think I have almost 150 now where you can go on there and listen to these stories.

I will link some of my coaching calls where you guys can hear me do this kind of work. It's amazing. The people, mostly people will say, I feel like a weight has been lifted. And then they'll say, I feel like there's space and it feels good, right? If you love Joe Dispenza's work, you're going to love this work because it is along the same lines.

So first and foremost, when we can change those programs and we could change the pull that we have inside from these trapped emotions, then everything in life will begin to shift. Whether that's physical, emotional, energetic, whatever's going on, it will shift to allow that space to allow you to come back home to yourself and be the person that's super authentic, that lives in this vibration of feeling more healthy, more vibrant, and just really you.

So I hope this finds you well, my friends, and have a beautiful day. We'll talk soon. I hope this podcast spoke to you in some way. If it did, please go ahead and leave me a review and subscribe so that I know you're enjoying what you hear.

And further, if you know somebody else who owns their own creative business and struggles with anything that we spoke about, please pass this on because it is my hope that we will be able to build a community of like-minded individuals who love on each other and appreciate the many facets that make our creative business so unique. And lastly, check out the show notes to find my free Facebook community and other useful links to work with me. All right, friend, see you soon. Music.