M2 : Lesson 3: 5 Reasons why we may feel worse before better
Additional Resource: Please click here for Dr. Cat’s popular class, “Why is it Taking Me So Long to Heal?”
Please click here for Dr. Cat’s popular class, “Why is it Taking Me So Long to Heal?”
Transcript
Module 2 less than 3, Why we may feel worse before better? The bumpy ride climbing up the Polyvago ladder. In this video, we’ll discuss why sometimes we feel worse as we regulate our nervous system. We’re gonna discuss 5 reasons why the ride up the ladder might be a bit bumpy. Number 1, riding the polyvago wave of regulation.
Number 2, biochemical changes and withdrawal. Number 3, emergence of suppressed emotions and beliefs. Number 4, parasympathetic healing phase. Number 5, trying to heal too fast and overdoing it. One thing I want to make sure that all of you are prepared for is the experience of riding the polyvagal wave of regulation.
The only way up is through sympathetic fight and flight activation. And if you feel like you might be stuck in the dorsal vagal state, then I think it’s important to recognize something about this map. Dorsal vagal collapse. Is that the bottom of the ladder. In ventral bagel safety is at the top of the ladder.
The only way to get to the top of the ladder is to climb through the sympathetic activation state. This means that you cannot just jump from being collapsed. All the way up to ventral vagal safety. And what I see with my clients is that as they have to climb through sympathetic activation, It can cause difficult symptoms, and it will feel like you are not making progress. It will feel like you’re not making progress.
It often results in increased fight flight, anxiety, anger, and emotions. This is normal. This is part of the sympathetic activation. It’s part of the healing process. So please take note of this that you can remind yourself that you are indeed safe, even if you are experiencing more activation.
I want to represent Riding the Polyvago wave in another way other than just the latter. This chart on the left is another common visual metaphor of the Polyvago theory. Describing how you have to move through different states of activation. You’ll often hear me refer to this, and my work is riding the Polyvago wave back to safety. Similar to the latter analogy, you see on the wave diagram that as you go from safety, through sympathetic and back down through dorsal vagal.
If you see this little line here, you have to go from safety. Up through sympathetic and the dorsal vagal. Right? Well, eventually to come back to safety, you need to ride the wave back down through sympathetic and into ventral vagal. And learning to trust that the activation you feel as you come out of collapse that it’s totally normal is this is gonna help you as your body discharges all of the bound up stress in your nervous system.
So we need to learn to find a way to tolerate the activation in our sympathetic nervous system, to tolerate the feelings of anxiety, irritation, and fear, All of that is just energy trying to release out of your body. Let’s go into this a little further. Bumpy ride number 1. Riding the Polyvago wave as energy is mobilized. First, your symptoms might increase like we just talked about.
You’re gonna have likely more anxiety or crying or insomnia. Your energy is moving through your body finally discharging the stress response and dumping adrenaline through movement. So it’s important to move during this stage. Even if you’re afraid of consequence of movement, it’s important to move a little bit. We’ll go through some ideas in the somatics module of Safeways to move to help discharge this stress response.
We need to move the energy with trust. So somatic movement, dancing, and shaking are some of my favorite things to do, also something known as TRE or trauma release exercises, yoga, or even high intensity interval training. So please bring compassion and tolerance to yourself and others because you can see now why it might be difficult to just move from shutdown back to feeling safe and happy. And because we have to move through these various states of nervous system act activity. We don’t just usually jump from the bottom of the ladder to the top.
We have to climb each rung of the ladder. We have to ride that entire wave. There’s other reasons why we can feel worse before better, so let’s move on. Bumpy ride number 2, biochemical changes. Stress chemistry decreasing in your body can make you feel worse initially For example, cortisol is anti inflammatory.
And when cortisol is high, which happens in stress, You usually feel a little bit better physically, but when cortisol drops, as you move out of the stress response, it can cause temporary inflammation and even a pain increase as we adjust. There’s often a chemical withdrawal on a cellular level because adrenaline feels really good. We become addicted to it. And our cells literally go through a withdrawal as adrenaline starts dumping out of our system. And we have to be patient as our body stabilizes with the new biochemistry.
Bumpy ride number 3, suppressed emotions emerging. As we build a capacity for stress, our subconscious often allows unconscious, repressed memories, emotions, and beliefs to be seen consciously. Realizations of your life direction might start to become more clear However, this can result in stress as lifestyle changes are being made. The realization that you’ve been doing you don’t really wanna be doing can cause a lot of stress. So you need to be grounded in your level 1 tools before making major life changes as you go through this stage or else your nervous system can take another hit.
So if you’re not in a stable place with self regulation, I recommend do not make any drastic lifestyle changes too quickly, like with relationships. Sometimes people in this stage realize I don’t wanna be in this relationship. But I think that if you’re not resourced enough, it’s not a great thing to make another drastic change until you’ve practice some nervous system regulation tools, got yourself calmer, and then make the lifestyle changes that you know are appropriate for you. We also might have kickback as we go against our habits of being stressed, or we change major belief systems. Your brain thinks you’re better off in fear than in trust.
It doesn’t like change. Bumpy ride number 4. The parasympathetic healing phase. This again is your rest, digest, repair and fighting infections detoxifying. So you might feel flu like as your immune system comes back on.
You might have fevers. You might have all sorts of detoxification symptoms. Feel tired. Your body is doing the healing. Can you just trust it?
And how do you know that you’re in this phase and not getting worse? Well, have you been getting more of a sense of safety in calm. Have you been using your nervous system tools? Have you been doing the things that you know should be helping you? And you’re wondering why do you feel worse?
If you know you’ve been moving towards safety, but you start feeling physically worse, trust the process of your body. This is called the healing phase, and it is normal. Also, if you’re interested, the German new medicine theory or dramatic healing knowledge describes this parasympathetic healing phase really nicely. You can Google it, and it really can help you trust the process of feeling worse before better. And bumpy ride number 5, going faster than you can integrate.
This is a big one. I’d say this is one of the most common things that I see that I think keeps people from making progress despite doing program after program and tool after tool. Are you rushing and obsessed with doing this program? This is a form of sympathetic dominance, and when our nervous system is in go go go gotta figure this out. Gotta fix this.
We are not in a healing state. So how are you moving through this program? Are you speed watching this material and moving on to the next module too quickly before mastering the tools of the earlier modules? Do you have multiple self help books and programs you’re doing at once? Are you on Instagram all day?
Scrolling, looking at nervous system regulation, watching your programs, trying to figure this out. That is not helpful. It’s one of the biggest issues I am seeing right now is chronic social media, self help plus your own tools and thinking about it all day. It’s not helpful. And are you just thinking all day?
How do I fix this? What’s wrong with me? What’s going on? Instead of living, instead of resting. Symptoms that you are doing too much, even though you’re trying to help yourself, might be increased muscle tension holding your breath or feeling out of control, experiencing dissociation and fogginess or too many emotions, emerging too quickly as you’re trying to process your trauma.
Now remember, your nervous system More than anything, it needs rest and integration. Even more than these tools and practices, these tools are not meant to be used all day. We’re gonna go over this more in module 3 in ideal schedule. You should be thinking about these tools maybe an hour to an hour a half a day. The rest of your day should be living and relaxing, not trying to fix yourself.
In the next lesson, we’ll go over a summary of this material and your homework for module 2. See you there.