thoughts
Making Friends with your Bottom-Up Brain
When we receive messages of safety through these lower, older regions of the brain, it allows for a settling of the system, an orientation of openness and the ability to be more receptive, curious, and creative. This doesn’t happen through thinking to ourselves “I am safe,” but through felt cues of safety interpreted through the body. Therefore, if we want to effectively connect to the functions of the cortex, we need to work from the bottom-up. In brief: if my physical and survival needs aren’t met, and I don’t feel a sense of relational safety and belonging, my access to learning, reflection, and slower, more responsive types of thinking are limited.
How Leaders Shape their Ecosystems
When I start with myself and attend to my own nervous system and emotional state with awareness and care, I am able to become a grounded presence that is inherently regulating and supportive to the people around me. When I intentionally nurture a culture of belonging in the classroom or team or organization that I lead, it creates an inherently regulating and collaborative environment. Then, when I am called upon to support individuals who are struggling, address difficult situations that arise, or deal with problematic behaviors, I am doing so with a strong foundation of a resilient nervous system and a full bank of trust that I can pull from in order to navigate challenges or have hard conversations.
The Compassion of Neurobiology
As a leader, educator, parent, partner, or anyone who interacts with other humans on a regular basis (i.e., all of us), an understanding of the ways that our nervous systems are shaped by stress, trauma, and relationships and how they directly influence our behaviors can help us shift from a stance of judgment and blame to one of compassion and curiosity. When we move from interpreting unskillful behaviors as character flaws to seeing them as symptoms of dysregulation and unmet needs, the way we interact with others (and ourselves!) can change.
Resilience Isn’t What You Think
Tenacity. Grit. Determination. Perseverance. Fortitude. Toughness. Invincibility. There is a rigidity innate to these words, a hardness that evokes images of armored soldiers and exhausted mountaineers. To me, the message of these words is: work harder, try harder, keep going, do more. There is a time and a place for these qualities, but they are different from resilience. If resilience isn’t these things, then what is it? How do we cultivate it? And how does that change our stories and expectations for ourselves and others?
medicine for difficult times
Compassion offers a real, tangible way of engaging with the world that allows us to keep our hearts open to our own and others’ suffering. It motivates us from a place of love rather than fear or guilt, and it provides a resting place to return to when we are overwhelmed in the face of it all. Compassion is a muscle that we can actively strengthen, a practice we can return to, not just an intention that we hold.