BW 150
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[00:00:00] welcome to the Brave Widow Show, episode number 150, episode 150. Can we just take a moment and celebrate this amazing milestone? I started the Brave Widow Show, November of 2022, and we are at 150 episodes. Crazy and amazing. Before I dive into the episode today, depending on when you hear this podcast, I wanna let you know I only have four spots remaining for one-on-one coaching.
If you've been on the fence, if you've been thinking about doing the coaching, if you've been thinking about transforming your life this is your sign. This is the time to schedule your consult.
You can go to brave widow.com and schedule your consult call. After those four spots are booked, [00:01:00] then I'm booked, and I've been teasing something called Brave Widow Academy that will be coming up in the future. All of my one-on-one clients will automatically get access to the Academy program as it comes out, which will be an incredible value.
If you're thinking about one-on-one coaching, this is the time to join. It's the time to get your consult in. It's the time to stop waiting and to start actually investing back into yourself. You can go to brave widow.com and schedule your consult. . All right, so in the last couple of months I've started posting videos on TikTok, and I've avoided TikTok for a couple of years, for a few reasons that I won't get into today.
But a couple of months ago, I did start posting on TikTok, and one of the things that I do like about it is there's a ton of interaction. I have a ton of comments. People sending dms, [00:02:00] people responding to messages. Like it's a really great place to post videos and get feedback on what is resonating with people.
So it has given me so many ideas for things to talk through on podcasts, for webinars, to host in the future. And I have just really been loving it. It's been such a great experience. So if you are from TikTok, hello and welcome to the Brave Widow Show. And if you haven't connected with me there, then go over there.
I'm having a lot of fun with posting and responding to people's comments and making videos off of comments, and it's just been a very organic, intuitive way to connect with other. Widows. And so it's been really good. So from that experience one of the questions that I get over and over is what do I do when I still feel like I'm in [00:03:00] survival mode when it still feels like my nerves are on fire?
When I just feel overwhelmed, and it's been months, it's been years. I've had people comment and say, it's been 10 years and I still feel like I'm in fight or flight mode. Today I'm gonna dive into, I. Why this happens at a very high level. There's another podcast that I'll mention of why this happens, what's happening with our brain.
So we're gonna cover that at a high level, and then I'm gonna give you the practical tips of what I would tell people to do when you are feeling like you are in fight or flight mode.
Emily: Welcome to the Brave Widow Show, where we help widows find hope, heal their heart, and dream again for the future. I'm your host, Emily Tanner. After losing my husband of 20 years, I didn't know how I could ever experience true joy and excitement again for the future. I eventually learned how to create [00:04:00] a life I love, and I've made it my mission to help other widows do the same.
Join me and the Brave Widow membership community and get started today. Learn more at BraveWidow. com
Now, one of the most. Helpful tools that I've developed through coaching widows over these past couple of years has been what I call the four seasons of widowhood.
Now, you've heard about the five stages of grief, and while most people have heard about that originally, the five stages of grief were not created for people who were grieving a lost loved one. It was created for someone who was receiving a terminal diagnosis. Like stage four cancer, or another diagnosis where the prognosis is not good.
That is what the five stages of grief were created for. And so when [00:05:00] as widows that the five stages don't really resonate with us, we don't even really maybe even go through all the five stages. There hasn't been anything that I have found that has been a really good roadmap of what does it look like for people who are grieving to rebuild their life like.
How do you actually do that? What are the steps? What are the stages? And so I originally came out with the four stages of widowhood, but then someone accidentally called them the Four Seasons. And the more I thought about that, the more I thought that is really more what they are. They're seasons.
Seasons are very transitional. I often mention that here, like when we're going from winter to spring. One day it could be 40 degrees and snowing. The next day it could be 75 and sunny. And we go back and forth and back and forth and people get sick because of all the weather changes. [00:06:00] And that's just how it is.
So similarly to the seasons and how they change where I live here in Arkansas. That is how widows and people who are grieving may experience the different seasons as I have outlined them. So today what I wanna share with you is typically people who are in that first season maybe even the second season.
So you've got devastation or survival mode, which is the first season, and then you've got desperation or maintenance mode, which is that second season. And if you've listened to the podcast very long, you know that I firmly believe what Grief Recovery Institute teaches, which is that the key to grief recovery is action, not time.
So it doesn't matter if it's been months, it doesn't matter if it's been years, it doesn't matter if it's only been a few weeks, you can still be [00:07:00] in season one or season two of widowhood. Time is an ingredient in how we move forward, but it's not the only thing. And so people who have not taken action, people who are waiting for time to make it better, because that's what we're taught to do unfortunately feel very much stuck.
So what I want to do today is to talk to those people who feel stuck, who feel that they've been living in this. Fight or flight mode, this survival mode that they can't like actually move forward. Their grief really isn't getting better and they just feel like they're on edge all the time. So if you're exhausted, if you are anxious, if you're constantly bracing for something, I want you to know that you're not alone.
Today I wanna help you understand why your body still feels stuck in survival mode and what you can do to feel safe [00:08:00] again,
when something traumatic happens, like losing a spouse, the alarm system in your brain gets. Activated. This part of your brain is called the amygdala. Now I don't expect you to remember that's what it's called and that what it, that's what it does. But the amygdala is basically your brain's threat detector.
Its job is to keep you safe.. If you've ever been in a situation where something startled you or scared you and your heart started pumping super fast and your adrenaline shot through the roof and you know you ran away from the danger, or you got into a fight to protect yourself, or you just did something you didn't even know that you were capable of, think about maybe even those stories you've heard of a child got trapped under a car and a woman just got like superhuman strength and was able to move the car or lift the car or get their [00:09:00] child out of danger because their adrenaline and their nervous system just went on overdrive out of this response.
Your amygdala is responsible for that. When your brain senses that you are not safe, the amygdala goes into overdrive even if there's no physical danger around you, in that moment. So what happens is that part of your brain gets activated and your brain and your body are constantly scanning for what?
What else could go wrong when you have lost your spouse? Which has been rated like the most stressful traumatic life event a person could experience. Your brain doesn't just say, oh, that happened. Now it's over and we're safe. Your brain is my reality has just shattered into a million pieces. What [00:10:00] I thought was safe, what I thought was normal isn't, and now nothing else is either.
And so your brain goes into like overdrive, hyperdrive, constantly scanning your surroundings, constantly evaluating any potential threats because what it has known as safety and security is now gone. Your thought partner gone, your safety net gone. The person who was there to carry the burden of life with you on their shoulders gone, and so now you don't know how to balance and how to juggle.
All of these decisions, all these responsibilities, all of these things that seem like might change your life forever if you just make like the smallest wrong decision,
even if you had not gone through this [00:11:00] experience. Our brains try to keep us safe. They're scanning for potential threat, and so our brain does not like things that are not familiar. This is why when you think about doing something new for the first time, your brain automatically just starts spitting out all these what ifs.
Let's say you're gonna take piano lessons for the first time. And you're nervous, right? 'cause you're like, oh, is the piano teacher gonna be nice? What if I mess up? What if I can't do this? What if it's too hard? What if I can't learn this? What if people laugh at me? What if, I tell people I wanna do this.
And they're like, oh, that's cute. What do you think? You're gonna be a piano star or something? Like you're, it's just nonstop. Your brain's just what about this? What about this? What about this? So that's just normal life. Okay? Pre-grief. Pre-losing your spouse. That is how your brain would work, because it doesn't like anything new.
It likes what's familiar. [00:12:00] It likes what's comfortable. So now it's already operating in overdrive. It's already under the belief that nothing around you is safe and that it has to work to keep you safe. And so your brain and body is constantly feeding this fear of what if? So you might be familiar with fight or flight mode.
You also can go through what they call freeze or fawn mode. Okay? Maybe you've heard of paralysis analysis. Maybe you've heard of people pleasing. Maybe you've heard of anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, all of these things which can be fed by how your brain and your body are responding to trauma and grief.
Essentially, what is happening is your body forgets how to feel safe. It forgets how this isn't just an emotional thing that happens. It is physical. So the thoughts that are running through your [00:13:00] brain the electric signals that it's sending down into your body, into your nervous system, into your muscles, all of that, your brain is feeding into your body.
I'm not safe. I'm not safe. I'm not safe. What about this? What about that? We don't know that person. We don't know how to do this. This is something new ah, no wonder. People have a hard time just functioning, much less, being able to do all the things that we were before because your brain is constantly feeding your body.
We are not safe. You gotta be ready. You gotta be ready for that tiger around the corner. We don't know anything about filing taxes. We don't know anything about calling a plumber for a leaky faucet. That's not safe. Whoa. So what I want you to hear is that you are not broken. You're actually functioning normally, okay?
Your brain and your nervous system is trying to protect you. It's like that part of your brain goes, it's okay. I know how to keep you safe. We [00:14:00] weren't safe, and that was really scary, but I know how to do it. I know how to do it, which is keeping you all keyed up and keeping you ready. Be ready for that next thing that's gonna happen, brace yourself.
It's coming. Your brain is telling you, I know how to take care of you. I know how to keep you safe, trust me. And what you're actually experiencing is very normal. The challenge is that you can't live on adrenaline forever, and that these signals the, your brain continues to feed your body over months and over years, over time, eventually will manifest itself physically in your body to the point where you develop illnesses.
If you develop diagnoses you never had before, and you are more prone to experiencing accidents, this is actually something that you learn in grief recovery method. When I coach widows this, when I teach widows this, [00:15:00] we actually map out your illnesses. Your accidents, your injuries in correlation with your grief that you've experienced and the losses you've had over the course of your life.
It can be correlated that closely, which is crazy, but it's true.
So in my coaching program and inside a brave widow, when you are in this first season or when you are feeling like, I just can't get out of this fight or flight mode, I can't ever just woo, let my shoulders down and relax. I never feel calm. I'm restless. Or maybe it's just something in the back of your mind that you're like, I think I don't know why.
I just I have no peace. I just have no peace in my coaching program, an in brave widow community, I teach widows a process called the Chaos to Calm method. And there are several key components, and I don't have time to teach you [00:16:00] all of that in the podcast today. But what I am gonna teach you today is part of that method, which is how to intentionally bring your body to a state of relaxing.
How to calm your nervous system so that you teach your brain and you teach your body, I'm safe. You don't have to work in overdrive anymore. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. I'm safe. I'm safe. I'm safe. I'm safe. And for some of you just hearing that may have brought tears to your eyes because you have felt unsafe for such a long time, and I hear that every day.
So how do you know if you're stuck in this survival mode? If you're stuck in this like adrenaline overdrive fight or flight stage? I'm gonna give you some signs of ways to identify whether you might be stuck. You have trouble sleeping or relaxing, you are easily [00:17:00] startled or irritated. You feel numb or just detached, like life is just happening around you and you're just stuck here feeling nothing.
You may feel like you have to do everything alone and on your own. You are hyper independent emotionally. You may be shut down.
You're used to just saying you're fine when you're anything, but
what I want you to hear is that these are very normal trauma responses and you don't have to stay here, so it's okay. You're not broken. Nothing's gone wrong. In fact, you can thank your brain and you can thank your body for working normal, for keeping you safe, for trying to do its job of protecting you.
And it's okay. You can take control back. You can be the one in charge. [00:18:00] So how can we start to really just soothe our nervous system and really teach our brain and teach our body that we are safe? The key here is that your brain needs to experience safety before it believes that you're safe. So what I coach widows and what I encourage you to do is to bring your brain and bring your body into this place of intentional safety.
We're gonna train your nervous system how to calm itself. Okay, so one of the ways we do this is by putting our body in a situation where we're almost forcing it to calm down. So in those moments, especially where you can feel your heart rate going or you, your heart rate going, or you feel anxious or you just really feel on edge, we are going to bring our body into a state of.
I say forcing it to be calm, which doesn't sound very [00:19:00] calm, but that's what we're gonna be doing. Okay. And what I'm gonna share with you around this breathing exercise, of course, I'm gonna put a disclaimer if you have trouble breathing or if you have any physical conditions that may. Make this difficult to work with your physician, work with your provider on a safe way that you can do these things.
Okay? So I'm not a physician. I'm not your physician, but I'm gonna share with you things that have helped me, and if you can safely do them. Then safely do them. Okay. So one of the things that a couple breathing exercises that I do, one is just a humongous sigh. Okay? And when we sigh, it actually we get to release.
And one of the things that we can do is like scrunch our shoulders. In if you're not watching this on video, it might sound a little crazy, but clench your hands into fist. Bring 'em up near your shoulders, squint your shoulders up near your ears, [00:20:00] and just hold it. Just tense it up tight tight for three to five seconds.
And then take a deep breath in.
Run that all out. And un scrunch your shoulders. Un unclench your fist. Maybe shake your shoulders around a little bit, maybe roll your shoulders a little bit and just take two or three, just deep breaths while you're breathing in
as much as you can, and then slowly push it out.
And what you're trying to do is to bring your awareness into your body. So much time. We spend time in our head and we just spin and we spend and we come out, really come out of our body and come out of awareness of what we're doing, especially. For those of us that tend to live in our, if you've ever been accused of having your head in the clouds all the time and you're just like really aware cerebrally of things, but not physically.
Okay. So some really deep breaths where we're holding, we're clenching, we're scrunching tight, and then we're like relaxing and we're letting our arms [00:21:00] hang down and our shoulders hang down and we're trying to like sink down into our body and just being aware of how we feel. Being aware. How does the chair feel underneath me?
If you can sit on the floor, sit on the floor, sit on the bed, sit on your bed, how does it feel? Close your eyes if you wish. What does it smell like in here? What does the air feel like? What does the feel of the fabric beneath my fingers or the leather of the chair or the. The texture of the flooring underneath my fingers, like how does my environment feel?
How does it sound? What does it smell like? Like as many senses as you can. You're trying to just sink back into your body, back into feeling the environment around you. Another breathing exercise that I like to do is what they call box breathing. And essentially you're gonna breathe in for a certain count, so [00:22:00] you're gonna count four is a good place to start if you can get up to seven.
I like to do seven, but it's called a box because it's four counts. Okay? So you're gonna breathe in for a certain count. Hold your breath for that count. Slowly breathe out for that count and hold your breath for that count before you breathe it back in. So if we were gonna do three, it would be like, just to make it simple, I would breathe in for three.
1, 2, 3. Hold my breath for three. 1, 2, 3. Slowly breathe out. 1, 2, 3. Hold my breath for three. And just repeat that, count over and over, whatever that number is, that is comfortable to you, but requires you to focus and pay attention on your breathing and what breath work does. Is it helps to slow our heart rate down because our heart can't [00:23:00] pound pound whenever.
We're not breathing in. We're not like gulping air. We're not breathing in a lot of air, right? Like when you're taking these really big, deep breaths. Those are things that you do when you're calm. You're relaxed when you're trying to get into a relaxed state. So this is a way of introducing your body into intentional safety.
When you're worked up and your adrenaline's going and you're anxious you become short of breath at times. And so we're doing the reverse, which is okay, now we're gonna take some really deep breaths and we're just gonna feel as relaxed as we can. Oh, I'm so relaxed. I'm safe. I'm relaxed, I'm calm.
You can do a guided meditation on YouTube. I especially recommend this if you cannot sleep well at night. They have what they call black screen sleep talk down meditations, [00:24:00] which I know is very long. Black screen obviously, 'cause we want a black screen. When we're trying to sleep, but we wanna sleep talk down, which is basically they talk you down from your head to your toe and help you come into an intentional state of relaxation and sleeping.
But you can also do all kinds of guided meditations and you could just search 'em up on YouTube. They're free. There's lots of different ones. Find a voice that works for you, find a rhythm that works for you, but just do that multiple times a week to intentionally bring safety and relaxation into your body.
Okay? That's breath work. The second thing that we can do to begin to soothe our nervous system and have intentional safety, our body-based activities, again. When we're struggling in our mind and our mind is going 90 to nothing, we often wanna turn to the body and focus there. Okay, so some body-based [00:25:00] activities again, are things that are in introducing safety, introducing calm, introducing focus on something other than all the stuff that's spinning around in your mind.
So this might be things like walking, swimming, yoga. Even things like singing. Some people find a lot of healing through singing which is amazing. But what is something physical based, body based that you can do to get your body moving so that you are focused on what it is you're doing? One of the things I absolutely loved when I used to be really big into yoga and I, one of the things I loved about it is because my mind was in the clouds a lot, and I think about my dreams a lot and my future and all the things that are happening, right?
But the practice of yoga and what the instructors consistently reinforce is, bring your thought, like focus on your hands on the mat. [00:26:00] Feel your hands on the mat. Your mind's gonna wander. Thoughts are gonna flow in. Just let 'em float on by. Just acknowledge them, push them back out. Focus back to your hands on the mat.
It's a constant call to refocus to what your body is doing. And for someone like me, I really needed that focus right here, right now, in the physical, in your body.
Okay. The third way that we can soothe our nervous system is environmentally. So it could be doing something out in nature. It could be gardening, it could be sitting on the back porch. It could be something like reading. It could be getting a massage or a pedicure, just
whatever environment allows you to feel safe, calm, and relaxed and again, [00:27:00] if you're like, I don't have an environment like that. That's okay. We're gonna practice trying out different environments and while we're there, we're gonna do things like breathing. Maybe we're gonna do some stretching, maybe we're just gonna roll our shoulders and kinda roll our necks and stretch our necks and do other things that just really invite our body into a state of being relaxed, of being at peace, of feeling safety.
The fourth thing that we can do to soothe our nervous system may be things that are what I call tangible. I. So for me, when my husband had died, we lived out in the country on 37 acres. It was me and my kids out there, and I had never felt unsafe there before. Heck, half the time I didn't even lock my doors.
That was. Kinda always been the joke in my family is like, Emily never locks her doors. I've just always [00:28:00] felt safe, like I've just never really felt unsafe in my own home. And we live out in the country. There's really no one else out there. But immediately I. After Nathan died within a few months, I had an over the top security camera system put in that was hardwired so no one could hack it and wasn't on wifi and had a, DVR recording and had this, and had that.
And, I had a alarm that would ring if someone was pulling up into my driveway so that I could see who was pulling up like. Just, it really was overboard for what I needed, and I went from like zero to a hundred, but I needed something. I felt like I needed something tangible, something physical to help me feel safe.
I also had a savings account where I just started putting as much money as possible in there. Even though I was the breadwinner, I was the person working for the last 12 [00:29:00] years. Even though nothing had changed with my income, I just felt like it's not enough. I need more, I'm more safety, more security, more like if I lose my job, it's over.
I don't wanna go bankrupt. There are tangible things that can help you feel safe and secure for you. It might not be a camera system, it might not be a savings account. I don't think you necessarily need a lot of things physically or tangibly to help you feel secure, but it could be something like maybe you are beefing up your savings account a little bit.
Maybe you find something like a weighted gravity blanket. Just the weight of that on you in the evenings helps you feel like secured and safe, and it's really great if you have restless legs or something like that where you're wiggling around a lot in bed. Just having that weighted blanket on top of you is really helpful.
Whatever that is, if there's something tangibly that helps you feel secure, then [00:30:00] if it's feasible for you. Let's put it in place so that it's not something spinning around in your mind, it's physically out in the world. The fifth way that we're going to soothe your nervous system and start to bring you into a place of intentional safety is saying the words. Talking with someone that you trust, journaling and saying those words out loud. Maybe it's praying and maybe it's just getting out all of the hard, awkward, weird feelings about God that you have now. God, I thought I could trust you, but now I feel like I can't and I feel bad for feeling that way, and I don't know what to do.
You can be honest. You don't have to pray and be like, God, you're so amazing and my life is great, and I just thank you for being wonderful. In my tough times, like you could be honest,
but true emotional healing and grief does not happen If we don't say the words, we [00:31:00] don't talk about it. We don't process it even if we get choked up. One of the things that I love that I learned at Grief Recovery Institute again, is when you get choked up, is forcing the words up and out no matter how hard it is.
Because it's that important for you to say the words out loud, and for you to say them to another human being is exponentially more helpful than not saying them at all, or saying them only out loud to yourself.
And if it's hard for you to say the words. Hard for you to talk about how you feel hard for you to even say the words out loud to yourself. I start with just writing all my thoughts down. I'm a writer more than I am a speaker, which might be surprising because this is the hundredth and 50th episode of the podcast.
But I'm more of a writer and a lot of times it's hard for me to evaluate what [00:32:00] am I thinking? What's ping ponging around in there? I, it's, I don't know. I don't know. It's just a lot. There's a lot going on and I just need to do like a brain dump and just get it all out. So whether it's writing by hand on a piece of paper.
I use my notes app a lot on my phone, and I'll just write out all the thoughts, just bullet points one right after another bam, get 'em all out. And then I go back through and I read over them and I'm like, wow, I really thought that I have so much compassion for myself. That's the thought that's been swirling around in my mind.
No wonder I'm having a hard time. So even if it's hard to say the words out loud. Get 'em out, write 'em down, write 'em, type 'em, hand, write 'em. Whatever is more intuitive for you, do that and then try reading what you wrote and then try saying that to another person. Maybe it's a close family and friend who won't judge you.
Maybe it's me in the coaching [00:33:00] program or in the Brave Widow community. Maybe you go through a grief recovery method. Program, which I highly recommend. If you haven't done, highly recommend it. Can't say it enough, recommend it. Go do it now. Okay. So those are the five ways that we start to soothe our nervous system, and we bring our body into a place of intentional safety, number one, breathing exercises. Number two, physical activity. Number three, environmental. Four. Tangible security. Five saying the words.
I wanna leave you just with a few more thoughts here. Whenever I talk with a widow and we do a consult and I'm trying to help them evaluate where to start, I am always curious to know how far they are in their widow journey, but how far out they are never tells me where I need to start them.
What I'm always looking for is have they done, have they said the words out loud? Have they [00:34:00] processed their grief? Have they experienced emotional healing? And if they haven't, we always start with that. That is always our foundation because here's the truth, you can't dream, you can't plan, and you can't heal when you're living in a place of constant pain and panic.
This is many times why widows feel like I'm trying to move forward. I'm trying to take that next step and I just fall right back down. Part of that is part of the process, and I help coach widows through that, but many times it's because they haven't built the foundation. They haven't said the words.
They haven't truly processed their emotional hurt and pain. And so grief like quicksand just pulls 'em back in, just pulls 'em back in.
So you can't dream, plan or heal from a place of constant panic. Also [00:35:00] rest. As I described in earlier in this episode, your brain is on overdrive. It's sending messages down to your body. It's putting your body on overdrive. Your adrenaline's going, you're keyed up, you're braced for something bad to happen.
You're physically exhausted, so rest. Rest is not laziness. It is medicine for a grief, traumatized nervous system. The first step in grief recovery isn't doing more. It's slowing down. And for many of you, that feels very counterintuitive. No, I can't slow down. I gotta do more. I have more responsibility Now I have more to dos now.
I have to go, like I gotta get it all done. And you are exhausted. You are burnt out. You are miserable. So to do more, we first have to do less, and I know that is not always easy, but it is simple.
So if you are ready [00:36:00] to get out of survival mode, if you're ready to start healing emotionally, if you are ready to enter a place of calm and peace and safety, I would love. To talk with you over a consult. I would love to bring you into the Brave Widow Coaching Program and teach you the entire chaos to calm method so that you can truly go from a state of chaos and overwhelm, and your nerves being on fire to a place of calm and peace and safety.
You have a choice. It's your decision to make. I invite you to book a consult with me. It's free, and I'll give you your specific plan on next steps of how we help you heal and move forward. You can book that consult over bravewidow.com.
If you're newly widowed and aren't sure where to start, you need the brave new widow's starter kit [00:37:00] inside brave new widow. You'll find a starter guide to help you through your first few months. A quick start guide. You can share with family and friends so they know how to help you. And a collection of some of the frequent topics that widows want to learn more about. To get the brave new widow series.
Just go to brave widow. Dot com slash start it's free and you'll get instant access. That's brave widow.com/start S T a R T. See you there.
