Internal Autonomic Conflict

Related Practices:

Closely related to Coming out of Appease. Related to Not Consuming Other People's Waste Energy. If you recognize that you are appeasing, and are looking for next steps in addressing this, one part of this is learning to disrupt the activity of appeasing (accomodation, peace-making behavior), and to experience the underlying distress states that appease generally habitually masks. In order to do this, it is first necessary to increase your ability to direct attention purposefully. You might begin with Spotlight of Attention, which is part of the film Heartfulness. From there, as you get clearer about which defensive state is underlying, you can begin learning how to work directly with these states, for which the following frameworks are likely useful: see Calming Anxiety, Coming out of Flight, Coming out of Fight, and Coming out of Freeze. In tandem with this process are exercises that are designed to help you develop a stronger clearer sense of boundary clarity. These range from the gentle, such as Healing Neglect, to the more intense, such as Empowering your F*ck No, and Boxing. These are part of the process of Learning to Set Clear Boundaries. At some point in your journey, you may find that you need to Allow Yourself to Grieve. You might in fact want to Apprentice to Grief. Throughout this process, you will need Self-Compassion. As your body begins to release accumulated emotion and memory, you may find it useful to engage in Dream Tracking. At the level of theory, this general conversation is related to all things Polyvagal. See the Polvagal Theory film. See Clinical Applications of Polyvagal Theory. If you'd like a brief introduction to the theory, visit our Brief Illustrated Guide to Polyvagal Theory. For a comprehensive exploration of the theory with its developer, see The Future of Medicine and Mental Health, with Dr. Stephen Porges, PhD. See Polyvagal Mapping. With general regard to healing trauma, see Healing Trauma. To better understand the analogy of water, see Core Neurobiological Self. And finally, if you are interested in looking at the social dimensions of oppression, and why it constructs a society where people need to appease in the first place, check out Deprogramming the Colonial Mind and How Whiteness Operates.