The Principles - Part 2 | 003

Welcome to part two of this two part series where I guide you through my principles, and I share some practices on how it is you can deepen your awareness of your experience of yourself. Now, if you haven't already listened to part one, pause this, go back and watch the previous episode, because these two episodes go together. And in a way, they're like a mini workshop. And I also encourage you to download the experiential guide so that you have all the resources in place and you can follow along and deepen your understanding of the way I work, and how it is I'm inviting you to bring what you're learning here into future episodes and into just your general experience of yourself as you're exploring the ways you navigate life. Now, I like to start off every episode just by pausing and noticing the very first principle. So let's take a moment just to notice what in this moment you're experiencing. Now for me, as I shared in the last episode, there is this constant exploration I'm having around, recording these podcasts in a way where I'm aware of the fear and the terror and, you know, wanting to run and hide and stay small, while another part of me wants to really be here and dive in and share what I have to share. And it's really cool recording right now after having just recorded the previous episode, where I actually don't feel much of that nervousness or fear. And I'm noticing a quite a lushness in my face. And I'm finding my words a lot more easily. And I'm really excited to continue on with this episode with my next three principals. So we started with pausing and noticing and again, I can pause and notice my excitement that's here the flashiness in my cheeks. There's a spaciousness that I'm noticing around my heart. I'm aware of my dog Rios snoring down by my feet here. And there's this real sense of like, oh, yeah, let's go. I feel myself leaning forward. What about you? Are you more on alert? Are you feeling this activation present? Are you noticing a fluttering or a sensation in your body? Is there a sense of disconnect? Not sure yet what I'm talking about yet? You're still a little bit curious. So you're here? Or are you really curious? Are you in this exploratory state, and you've got your notebooks out, and you're there ready to take more notes and understand more of what it is that I'm talking about? And you're really dropping into these different perspectives and different experiences of yourself? And you're like, Yeah, Nicole, let's go. Let's dive in. So just noticing what in this moment are you experiencing?

Now, the next principle that we're going to start off with here is awareness and curiosity. Now I see awareness and noticing is two different things. And this may be different than how you use these words. But for me, I noticed something, it's more like a glance at something. So I noticed that something exists. Whereas for me awareness stems more in the details of what exists. So what I like to use as an example here, I might notice someone has a tattoo. But I'm not aware of the details until I look a little more closely at what colors are involved, what lines, what textures, what shapes. Alright, so it's in that awareness that I get to really notice more of the nuances and the details that are at play. So I can pause and notice what I'm experiencing. And then I can deepen my awareness around the details of what's at play. Now, what I want to start with here is us becoming more aware of our patterns. In the first episode, we spoke to the threat response cycle, and the physiology and the autonomic nervous system and the way all of that comes into play. And this is quite a refined practice to notice those components. It's a lot easier often for us to notice when we're in our patterns. So let's take a moment and make a list of a few of your patterns that may exist for you on an ongoing basis. Now, for me, I'll make a small list here, one of my patterns is I'm fine, right? I shared that in my very first episode where I come from a long lineage of strong, independent women where we come across as always being fun I in and having it together and being in this strong sense of ourselves. And, of course, this is also a part of who I am. And this is what you'll notice some of your patterns, and maybe many of your patterns are a quality of who you are. But what we can start to pay attention to and deepen our awareness around is when those patterns are rooted in survival. So I may be in my strong independence. But the survival qualities are I feel myself protected in that I keep people at a distance, I put a wall up in between them and me, I keep myself hidden. As I shared in the round my podcast, right, I keep myself somewhat hidden, I stay somewhat small to stay in as an experience that feels a little safer, a little more familiar, that isn't as risky. And keep up this persona that I'm fine. Good to go. So that is a dynamic of one of my patterns that can show up. Another pattern I may have that gets in my way, sometimes is that I'm always right. It's interesting, because, for me, I like to look at patterns as a spectrum. And I have a fair amount of defensiveness and I protect myself by showing up like I'm always right.

Now, if you can't relate to that pattern, you might be on the other end of the spectrum, which is someone who always just agrees, right, there's the people pleasing, there's the fawning that can happen. I put fawning as a survival pattern, I don't put it as part of the autonomic nervous system, because that's all our physiology, whereas our survival patterns are rooted in a lot more than just what happens in our physiology. I mean, everything is a lot more than just our physiology. But just pointing out that to mean, fawning is a survival pattern. Alright, so make a list, pause, feel free to pause this and make a list of your survival patterns. I just named two of mine, or I guess three, if you add the staying small as a survival pattern, I have it all together, but I also stay small, right? I'm protected in a way where I'm always right. And I'm also really defensive, you know, you can't get past this wall. If I'm always defensive, you can't actually see me if I'm always defensive. So when we get to know our survival patterns a little bit more, we get to notice how these patterns are often rooted in keeping us air quote, safe, by protecting us in some form. Or our patterns may show up in ways where they actually like to manage or control situations a little bit more, right? It might be a mix. So for example, my I'm always right. If I'm always right, then I'm protected. But I'm also controlling the situation a little bit more by keeping things in my realm of always being right, then you know, I can't be hurt, because everyone else is wrong, I can blame them. So that I don't have to feel any shame or discomfort or whatever it might show up for me and the vulnerability of maybe being wrong. Hmm. Right.

So there's also these flavors that can show up around our patterns that stem in US distracting ourselves. So once you've made your list of patterns, do a little inquiring, and notice which have more of a flavor of distracting. So pattern of that can be like, Well, anytime I feel stressed out, I go for a run. I think it's a resource, but actually, I'm just distracting myself, so that I don't have to feel the intensity of this activation that I feel. And I feel a little bit better after but actually what I'm doing is distracting myself interesting. Or I love to always just do more risky sports or risky activity, because it makes me feel alive. But what I'm actually doing is distracting myself from feeling things. Interesting. Okay? So take a look at your list and get to know your patterns and see if you can notice the flavors in which they distract you from feeling something or are managing things and controlling things, right? If you for example, are someone who tries to make sure everyone else is okay. You know, everyone else is taken care of so that you're okay. There's a great way that you control the situation to make sure you're okay and not having to feel some of the edginess of what happens if someone else isn't okay. And then you're not okay and what happens within that. Or how it is is that you are protecting yourself. So get curious about these patterns. You may already be familiar with or maybe this is new to you, you're just getting curious about the ways you show up in the world in flavors of survival. Now, a lot of other people will call these survival strategies. And although yes, they are very strategic, I like to see them as patterns, because what we're going to explore next is us untangling and getting curious about the patterns that are at play, I really see these ways we move through the world is this unfolding of a pattern, and the more we can untangle the unfolding, the more we'll find where we're stuck in the threat response cycle. So this is why I call them patterns, not strategies. If you like the word strategy more go for it, because they are, again, very strategic. And the more we can become aware of them, and the more we can become curious about them, the more we can reveal the threat response cycle and what it is we're stuck in. And the more we can support ourselves to move through that, and peel through the layers of our trauma, to allow ourselves to need the survival patterns less and less.

Now, before we dive into getting curious about how these patterns unfold, something I want to name here is a word called titration. And something maybe you'll remember science science class, do you remember having two chemicals, and when you mix them together, it created a big explosion. That is not titration. Right. And one of the ways I work is in a very subtle way where we're exploring edges without creating big explosions. Now, this can be very different than a lot of other modalities because we as humans, like results right away, and we think it needs to be big. And we think that, you know, we need to create this big, dynamic explosion, for there to be real change. But the thing is, the way our brain changes is through subtle nuances, our brain and our body are communicating through our nervous system. And for us to rewire how our nervous system is communicating in between, or sending the messages in between our brain and our body has to be done in these subtle ways I say has to because you know, that's the word I you chose right there. Because, you know, there's lots of other modalities that say they have lots of other incredible results through big experiences. So I'll take back the has to, but I believe it has to be done in subtle ways. Now what happens when we're working in these subtle ways is because our brain is always looking for what is most familiar, or what is easiest. When we work within the nuances and we work within the subtleties. It allows the rewiring to happen without it being so dramatic. And it allows a real cellular change to happen. Because we're legitimately rewriting the story but not so dramatically that the system's like whoa, what how do i reoriented something that's so different. Instead, it's the subtle nuances that will still be experienced as this very different reality, because we've moved through the threat response cycle. And there's no longer this same experience of the threat being as big as it used to be. But it isn't this big explosion. So titration is when we take these two chemicals, and we take one, and we slowly bit by bit, add it to the other until eventually both chemicals are mixed together. But it didn't cause the big explosion, that change happened, the chemical pull, I can't remember my chemistry terms anymore. But the structure of the chemical is no longer the same. Yet. It didn't cause that massive explosion for that change to happen.

So why bring this forward? Because I want to encourage you to play with your own edges and your own explorations in a way, where you're really noticing the nuances of where it's a bit risky, but not so risky that you're having to force yourself to do anything here. What we're doing is we're really playing within the subtlety of how you are experiencing yourself and what else is possible. So take your time with this. Go slow, less is more and really play with titrating. And I'm going to do my best to teach it in a way where you can really notice the nuances and the importance of exploring in these subtle ways. So, to begin, now that we have more awareness of our patterns, what I want to invite you to do is notice how you move into your patterns. So let's say you're more in that exploratory state, you're feeling pretty connected, and something happens, or all of a sudden, you get a little more rigid. So chances are, there's something that sparked something in threat response cycle, but you don't want to feel bad. So instead, you move into your pattern. So let's say for example, someone approaches me and asks me, this is a good one, what do you do for a living, and instantly, I feel my spine get really rigid, I hold my breath a little, I feel my brainstem get a little tighter, my eyes kind of pull back, and I start talking more from my throat. And I don't really feel as much of my body anymore. So I've just moved into a way of protecting myself, I felt my physiology change, and move into this bracing. And this rigidity, and my voice changes where I'm speaking is from a different place. And now I kind of feel like a little bit of like a robot as I'm trying to explain what I do. Because what I do is so complex and hard for me to put words to right. Now, I noticed myself shifting within my physiology, and my whole experience changes. And I'm showing up with this person in a much more protected way. I feel myself shut down from a lot of my experience, while also noticing a flush Enos in my face, and nervousness, and all I want to do is get the hell out of there, or change the conversation and talk about something different. So I'm aware of this pattern where I want to distract myself from feeling shutting down, I want to distract myself from answering the question by shifting the conversation. And I also have this impulse of wanting to flee and no longer talk to this person. So my general pattern here would be to shift the conversation back to them, that would be my general kind of end of the pattern would be like, Look, I'm going to change the subject and bring it back to something that they can talk about, so that they can talk about themselves versus me having to talk about myself, and then I can stay in this protected place, keep them at a distance, and we can carry on and have more of a surface conversation not about what I do. Right. So what I just described, there is an awareness of my pattern aware ness around how I shifted into that pattern, and then kind of the end result, right. So the end result is me protected them talking about themselves, me not having to be vulnerable or be seen, and then I'm good, I'm fine, I can carry on with the conversation. But those beginning phases of where my physiology shifts, that's where the juiciness lies. This is where we get to get curious. So what I'm inviting you to do is get curious about how you notice yourself in your patterns. How do you change? How do you transform into your patterns? How does your body change shape? What kind of behavior do you find yourself in?

What kind of sensations are present? Are there images that show up? Are there emotions that are there, there's so much for you to pay attention to that allows you to paint the picture of your pattern in such a wordy way. Now, something that I want to point out is that when you're in the heat of it all, when it's happening, it should be really hard to pause and notice and bring awareness and curiosity to what it is you're experiencing. Right when we're in it. We're in it. Now something I would like to invite you to do. And this is where the podcast can be so powerful, is I'd like to invite you to reflect on your experiences. Because the more you pause and notice when you reflect you get way more time to be in your experience and In your explorations. So I don't in any way expect you to be able to pause and notice and bring awareness and curiosity to your experiences when you're live in the heat of the moment. Have a dynamic with someone or something. Instead, take the time to reflect. Now what's really cool is our only our higher brain has a sense of time just a part of our brain has a sense of time. So when we reflect on our experiences or imagine and the experience, we have an experience. So when we use a memory of something or even just a word so let's see It is let's try a little experiment here. If I say the word, dark alley, what shows up for you? From? For some of you, you're like dark alley? Uhm, yeah, I like walking through dark alleys, I can see the stars, I can hear the the croaking frogs. Like, yeah, I love darkness, whereas others are like, there's definitely a potential threat there, right. And I have to brace and be in fear and walk through that alley as fast as I can. So by me saying dark alley, do you have an experience that happens? Maybe the body gets rigid. Maybe you hold your breath, maybe you get an image that shows up, right? So we can use just a word. And chances are, you'll have an experience around it if you've got some stuff entangled around it, even if you don't. So using reflecting or imagining as a way to explore your patterns in the future podcasts, this is something I'll continuously do, I'll get you to pause. And notice as we're talking about something on the podcast, what do you notice as you're listening, that's information for you to sit with and inquire into. Now, choosing one of your patterns, what I'd like to invite you to do is see if you can notice the way you transition into the pattern. Now this can take some practice. And there's often a lot of steps that we missed to start off with. But I want to invite you to take your time to notice, okay, here's the full expression of the pattern. But what happens before that, what happens before that? What happens before that, what happens when you start to untangle the stages of how the pattern unfolds, is chances are, you're going to find the flavor of the threat response cycle, you're going to find that place where you're first in the threat response cycle, and then when you move into your pattern to not feel the intensity of the thing that you're stuck in. So this is one way I'm going to invite you to explore.

So let me given another example. If I think of my pattern of my defensiveness, that's a great one to, if any, any of my friends are listening, you know, my defensive flavors, and it's changing as I soften more and more into the edges of my vulnerability around being seen. But I've my end range is the defensiveness. The way I experienced. My defensiveness is like rigid wall in between me and the person I'm with. I noticed myself stand up really straight and take up a lot of space. You can even hear it in my voice. There's this deepness there, or even a little flavor of aggression there. And I'm leaning forward a little there's this, like, don't mess with me kind of quality, right. And in that defensiveness, I feel protected. I'm good to go. Let's go game on. But if I want to get curious about this, I want to backtrack a little what happened the moment before I felt myself move into that rigidity. Ooh, there's this like shakiness. There, I feel my my body softened a little away from that rigidity, and the defensiveness. And there's actually a little bit of nervousness, and my eyes want to move around a lot more. And there's this kind of urgency of like, trying to figure out what to do. My heart race is a bit more. Now if I think about what happens before that. There's actually this like, low sense of riskiness. And like, I just got, I was seen, I just got seen. And there's this startle to being seen. And this, the sense of vulnerability there and confusion there. So there's my nugget, that's what I want to sit with is this confusion, and this startle and this riskiness, and this fear, and I can feel some emotion coming up behind my eyes as I feel into that, because there's this confusion there because I want connection, yet, I'm afraid for connection. So I'm already getting more information of this pattern. I mean, I know this pattern really well. And I've done lots of exploring around it. And what's really cool, the more we are able to notice how our pattern unfolds, we can start to notice these flavors at the beginning sooner. And we can actually pause and be in the space of that experience instead of ending up in the depth of our pattern where I'm in my defensiveness. So that's a lot of what shows up for me now. I noticed when there's this flavor of riskiness of being seen. There's this flavor of a startle, and this vulnerability and confusion in this dance in between wanting to more to move towards the vulnerability of being seen, but confusion because I want to also protect myself. And I'm able to stay within that flavor, and be within that dynamic and play with expressing that with my friend that I'm kind of navigating this edge with. And in that is, yeah, a lot of emotion. There's also a lot of grief, which I'll speak to in a moment. And also still a sense of connection with the person versus the further I am in that vortex or that pattern, I tend to call them vortexes is then I'm disconnected from the person and protected, you can hear it my voice I switched so quickly into like, No, I'm fine. I'm defensive, I'm fine. And I don't need you. Thank you very much. Right. So this is one of the ways that we can get curious about our patterns that show up in your day to day or the patterns that you start to explore through the podcasts as we move forward with the experiential podcast, right.

Now something else that you can notice is, the way your patterns show up can kind of be like, a thermostat is a great explanation that was once shared with me with one of the participants in my program I used to, or I do still speak to it like a spectrum, where sometimes it's on full blast, and sometimes it's on a little bit less. And there's a gradients to the ways we show up. But a thermostat is another good way to think about it, it's kind of like your pattern can be on full blast. And what shows up. If you imagine that pattern, they're a little bit less. So it's similar to what we just did, where we kind of noticed the pattern and the unfolding of the way you move into the fullest expression of the way you are protecting yourself or managing and controlling or distracting yourself. Whereas this is just another way where you can just be like, Oh, I'm noticing, as I meet this new person, I'm sharing one of my other patterns here. As I meet this new person, I clearly have a lot of protection that I'm ongoingly exploring, as I meet this new person, I'm noticing this bracing and this protection, and I'm a little bit on an alert while I'm meeting this person, this is just part of me that's experiencing this, but I'm noticing it. So what happens if I reflect on that person I just met and how I showed up with them. And if I imagined myself in that a little bit less, oh, there's so nervousness there. And there's this draw to wanting to move towards them. So very similar to my defensiveness, right, I want to move towards them, but it feels a little risky. And I can pause and be in that experience of the riskiness of moving towards someone when I'm used to actually just being protected. And being a little more on alert and suspicious of the person. Right. Now, this is another way that you get to explore your patterns. And there are many other ways that I invite people to explore their patterns. These are just some of my favorite ways that are easy enough for us to do in a titrated way, where we can just deepen our awareness of how we're showing up and bring curiosity to how we're showing up. And it's through that curiosity that we can start to have choice because instead of being in the full expression in the past of the pattern, we can be in a subtler version of the pattern. And we can explore the choice that we have within that the edges that show up around that. Now, this might be all very new to you. So I encourage you to pause and notice what's showing up for you what is making sense here. If nothing makes sense here know that that's okay, you have so much more time to explore these patterns of yours. That's what this podcast is all about is for us to deepen our awareness around our experiences and the patterns we show up in is a big part of our experiences. Now, the next thing I want to point out is that your patterns aren't there to be fixed. They are there for a reason. Your patterns are there because they're protecting you from feeling the intensity of what was involved. When you got stuck within the threat response cycle. Your patterns are supporting you and not feeling the intensity of your trauma, or they're at least there to help you navigate your trauma. Now, the more we realize that that the patterns and these parts of you that are stuck in time stuck in these ways of navigating the world and these survival techniques, they are there for a reason. And this is important to recognize because something that I find shows up and I named this in the earlier episode is that we have judgment towards Are patterns, we often want to change them. We want them to be different. We want to find the answers to fix what we perceive to be wrong with us. And what shows up when we try to change what it is we're doing that conflict, right, your survival patterns are there to serve and protect you to manage and control things to distract you from feeling things. And if you come in trying to change them, without understanding what's at the core of them, you're going to run into some major conflict and probably end up having a harder time. Now the more we can pause, and notice that there are many dynamics at play, the more we can create space around it all.

Now, what do I mean by that the dynamics that are at play, when we pause and notice is at the core of it all is our trauma, you don't even need to know what happened to you whatsoever. It's more about recognizing that there's a part of you stuck within the threat response cycle. Now, surrounding that trauma is your survival patterns, these survival patterns are there with reason, with intention to help you because of your trauma, then we have this experience of how we feel towards our survival patterns, where this conflict flies, where we're caught trying to fix or feeling shame or feeling judgment towards ourselves and the ways we navigate life. And this can be the dynamic that we're stuck in, we get stuck in our judgment of ourselves, or shamed towards ourselves trying to fix ourselves, trying to be a different person than what we are. Or we get stuck in our patterns. And it's this constant dance we're doing in between those two experiences. What I'd like to invite you to do next is pan out and see the many layers at play. Now, when you pan out, that's where we get to see that, of course, you're frustrated at the ways you show up in the world. Of course, you want things to be different. Of course, you're on the seeking mission, trying to find the answers, signing up for all the programs, reading all the books, of course, you're doing that it makes so much sense, right? Because you want things to be different. So you get to pan out and see how you feel towards your survival patterns, and hold a bit of space for all these different experiences. It makes sense, you have shame, it makes sense that there are so many dynamics at play, and it's challenging to navigate them all. Now, by panning out like this, what we get to do is we become the empathic witness for the many realities that exist within us at one time. By panning out, we can observe how we feel towards our survival patterns. And we can differentiate that that is different than our actual survival patterns. Our survival patterns and our trauma are often stuck in time, they often don't even know that you right now exist. But then you have you right now who has some judgment and wants things to be different and has shame. Or maybe you have compassion towards all the ways you've learned just show up in the world, yet you still have an agenda, and you want things to be different pan out. And notice that you still have an agenda. When we're the empathic witness for ourselves, we don't have an agenda, we simply hold space for what it is, we hold space from this place where we know we're whole. And you might even notice as you're listening to me, describe this, that when you pan out, you might notice that there's a little more ease here. There's a little more ability to see the many layers and dynamics at play. It's a lot easier to feel yourself present here. Maybe you are connecting more with the experiential, excuse me, the exploratory state. From this place where you can hear sounds, again, where you can see color in a different way, while recognizing you have many parts within you that are stuck in survival, but you're also all now the more we're able to pan out and land on this experience of wholeness and become the empathic witness for ourselves. The more we can pause and notice from a very different way.

And the principles that I'm inviting you to explore can continue to be explored. But the more we're doing that from a place of wholeness from the empathic witness, the more we're creating a sense of grace for being human, or being messy, and all of our survival patterns, having trauma, because we all have trauma, right? And we're all able to then be more spaciousness in the experience of it all. Now, what's really beautiful when we discover what it feels like to pan out, when it's not just the theory that I'm presenting here, and you have a felt sense of like, whoo, this? Yeah. The more we live further from this place, the more we can also have empathy for others without trying to fix them without having the judgment. And then when we have judgment, it's one of my other grade patterns, judgment. That's a good protector. But when we have judgment, and it's like, oh, I'm in one of those inner circles again, okay, wait, I'm in one of those inner dynamics, I have judgment towards someone else's survival patterns or toward my own survival patterns. Can I pan out and acknowledge Yeah, it kind of makes sense that I have judgment, I am human after all. And I can observe the judgment, but also have spaciousness around the judgment, oh, now there's less need for judgment interesting. There's more of a recognition of why the judgment is there. And I can see the core pieces of the judgment protecting me from feeling the vulnerability of being seen, clearly, the whole being seen piece is a big thing that's in my face right now. Right. Now, something else that's really beautiful about this experience of wholeness of being a whole sovereign being while having many other dynamics within that, that our common survival is that the more we pan out, the more we connect into the infinite love, and the infinite grief that exists here on this planet. Now, the more we notice that, the more we connect into the interconnectedness of us all. And we really noticed this dance that we're doing here together, from a place of love, from a place where there's so much grief as well. And we can hold it all as empathic witnesses, as we navigate being human, and being caught in these many patterns that we all find ourselves in. And what I love about what I do, and what I'm offering you to explore here, is there can be this real beauty, and humility, really, to being human. So I hope this lands in a way where it sparked some curiosity or some aha was, and I encourage you to take some time to digest and reflect on what I'm sharing here, and come back to these episodes to continuously support you in exploring whatever it is you're exploring. And I hope you'll also join me for future episodes where we'll be doing a whole lot of this together with other people who are practitioners who also have survival patterns. And with people like you who can join me on the show so that we can untangle some of these patterns and really explore what's at the core of it all, and how do we pan out and hold it from this place of wholeness and show up as sovereign beings, because we're all sovereign beings. We've just lost sight of that. So I look forward to exploring more with you. I'm really intrigued to see how all this lands. And let's keep exploring our experiences. Let's keep pausing and noticing. Let's keep deepening our awareness and having curiosity for what is let's come at it from recognizing that there's actually nothing to fix and that we're already whole. And let's see where it takes us.