6 Nervous System Calming Skills to use After a Breakup

6 Nervous System Calming Skills to use After a Breakup

Almost all of us have been there—the heartbreak felt after a breakup can be truly overwhelming and dysregulating. In the aftermath of a breakup so many things change—your schedule, your activities, the people you spend time with, the person you text about your day...  All this sudden change can leave you feeling very anxious, devastated, and at a loss for how to soothe yourself. Sometimes it feels like the only thing that would really soothe the emotional pain is the person you are no longer in a relationship with. However, that is not the case. This blog will give you some basic skills to use to help self-soothe your nervous system and help it return to a more regulated state in the wake of a breakup.

Why are we targeting the nervous system?

During a breakup, the sympathetic nervous system—responsible for your fight/flight/freeze response—becomes activated due to the sense of loss (or abandonment) and the emotional intensity of the situation. This can lead to an increase in stress hormones being released that can affect your sleeping patterns, eating habits, heart rate, breathing rate, ability to concentrate, ability to make sound decisions, mood instability, etc. The sooner you can begin to

work on tending to your nervous system and allowing it to return to a regulated place, the better. 

Here are 6 things you can do to calm your nervous system after a breakup:

1)    Get physical exercise:  Moving your body helps to reduce the amount of stress hormones you have circulating, and it also causes your brain to release endorphins (feel good chemicals) which improve your mood. Even going for a walk can provide you with the benefits above. Trying yoga or dance or other somatic movements can also help to calm your nervous system and increase body awareness and help you relax.

2)    Grounding skills: Here is my favorite—grab yourself a hot drink (favorite coffee or tea, hot cocoa, etc). Hold the mug in your hand and notice how the warmth feels. Notice the weight of the drink, notice the texture of the mug. When you take a sip notice how it feels as you sip—is it warm? Can you feel the heat when you swallow? What is the texture of the drink like as you sip? Then notice the smell of the drink. Does it remind you of anything? Notice what the drink looks like—describe the color of the drink and the mug, do you notice steam rising from the cup, etc. Noticing your five senses grounds you in the present moment and reduce anxiety and calm your nervous system. You can try this with other objects as well.

3)    Connect with healthy loved ones: The power of connection is real! When you feel supported and cared for your brain sends your body signals to relax and calm down. Being able to talk about how you’re feeling with your friends and family can help release emotional stress and can help you gain new perspectives.

4)    Show yourself some love: Nurturing self-care activities can increase a sense of self-love and self-compassion. Try taking a long bath, going for a walk in nature, lighting candles and listening to soothing music, get a massage, etc.

5)    Deep breathing and/or guided meditation exercises: Deep breathing and meditation directly calm your nervous system. They allow you to strengthen your ability to stay grounded in the present (rather than spinning out in anxiety). They help you to relax and bring about a feeling of wellbeing. Try square breathing—breathing in for a count of 4, hold for 4 counts, out for 4 counts, and hold for 4, then repeat ten times.  For guided meditations—there are tons of free meditations on YouTube and Spotify. You can also use an app like Headspace or Calm.

6)    Try therapy: Talking to a professional about how you’re feeling is so helpful. Therapy can help you process your feelings, learns new ways of dealing with your feelings, identify relationship patterns that may be problematic, learn new ways of relating in relationships, etc. If there was an abusive component to your relationship history, trauma therapy (like EMDR) could very helpful too.

Focusing on calming your nervous system is an important part of healing; however, it’s important to remember that your healing process is unique. Be patient with yourself and allow yourself time to grieve and process your feelings—heartbreak hurts, but you can move forward!

About the Author

Hannah Dorsher, MA, LPC, NCC, CAT, EMDR is a therapist in Fort Collins, CO who specializes in helping those struggling with anxiety, self-esteem, toxic/unhealthy relationships, anxious attachment issues, break ups, and trauma. Contact me here.

What is an Anxious Attachment Style?

What is Anxious Attachment?

You may have been hearing more about attachment theory and attachment styles lately as this theory has started to become a little more popularized with social media. While there are multiple attachment styles, today we’ll focus on the anxious attachment style. Anxious attachment usually develops because of inconsistent parenting/caregiving (more on that later). This attachment style can make relationships feel tumultuous and/or reactive. Luckily, attachment styles are not permanent and can be changed! Keep reading to learn more about the characteristics of an anxious attachment style, the effects of an anxious attachment style on a relationship, and how to begin to heal attachment wounds that lead to an anxious attachment style.

Characteristics of Anxious Attachment:

At the core of an anxious attachment style is the fear of abandonment. People who grow to develop an anxious attachment style likely experienced inconsistent caregiving and frequent emotional misattunement—meaning that the caregivers were not in sync with the child’s emotional state and did not offer the appropriate comfort that the child needed at that time. Parents of these children may have also used their children to fulfill their own needs for love and connection and may have been overly involved or intrusive in their child’s life. This creates the dynamic that the parent’s needs are the focus, not the child’s.

As a result of these caregiver experiences, the child begins to develop an inability to trust that people will be dependable. Below are some common traits of anxious attachment style:

·      low self-esteem

·      clinginess

·      strong reactivity to perceived threats to connection/abandonment

·      jealousy or suspicion of their partners

·      intensely sensitive to, and sometimes threatened by, emotional shifts in their partner

·      hypervigilant to anything that is a perceived threat to connection or that seems like abandonment (like a constantly hyperactivated alarm system)

·      needing frequent reassurance from their partner

·      difficulty/fear being alone

·      reliance on others for emotion regulation and soothing

·      development of “protest behavior” in order to feel connected

Effects of an Anxious Attachment on Relationships

People with an anxious attachment style tend to put a lot of pressure on a relationship in that a relationship feels necessary for them to feel soothed/loved/safe, but having a relationship also causes them a great deal of anxiety and stress. The relationship can feel very up and down and intense because of this. Often, they will react intensely to perceived threats to connection, even if the threat is very small or not really an actual threat (ex: a partner takes a hour longer to return a text message, when they usually respond quickly—this will likely cause the person with anxious attachment to feel insecure and anxious about why their partner took longer to text back. They may perceive it as a sign that their partner is rejecting them or abandoning them).

Direct communication about feelings and needs may be difficult with this attachment style as well. As children, people with this style learned that their needs are not important and usually develop ways other than direct communication to get their needs met. Protest behavior patterns are one way that people with an anxious attachment style sometimes learn to communicate. Protest behavior is behavior that is designed to reassure a sense of connection; however, it is not skillful and can be harmful to the relationship. An example of protest behavior with the texting example mentioned a few sentences back would be calling their partner repeatedly to get a response, or waiting longer than their partner did to respond as a “keeping score” tactic. Obviously, neither of these behaviors directly communicate the person’s feelings or needs to their partner

So what can you do if you feel like you have an anxious attachment style?

Thankfully, attachment styles are not permanent. It’s totally possible to change your attachment style and work towards something call “earned secure attachment”. This is basically what is sounds like—through self-growth work you can earn a secure attachment style even if you did not have the foundation for a secure attachment growing up.  Here are some starting points to healing your attachment wounds:

1) Learn your anxious attachment triggers and reactions, and practice new skills. Think about your past relationship and identify the triggers to your attachment behavior. Note what emotions you were feeling when triggered and the behavior that followed. For instance: perhaps every time your partner was even slightly late without calling, you felt extremely anxious and called them repeatedly until they answered and then reacted angrily. This gives you a starting point for where you may need to improve your emotion regulation skills. Rather than calling repeatedly and becoming angry, you could work on self-soothing strategies and communication skills to share why their being late bothered you.

2)    Learn to identify securely attached people. Being in relationship with securely attached individuals can help you to change your behaviors as well. Practice opening yourself up to trust a securely attached friend, family member, or partner (or therapist!). Over time, this can help you learn that some people can be trusted, that intimacy can be safe and stable, and that when you communicate your feelings and needs you feel important and heard.  This may feel like taking a risk, but if you are identifying emotionally healthy people, the risk is more times than not going to pay off.

3)    Start therapy. A therapist can help you walk through this process.  Therapists are great people to practice having a secure relationship as you practice being vulnerable and trusting another person. Attachment focused therapists are skilled in understanding the dynamics of your attachment styles and can also provide you with new skills and ways of thinking about yourself and others that can be helpful for your healing journey.  

While attachment related behaviors and patterns can put strain on relationships, attachment styles can change. If you relate to any of the anxious attachment characteristics perhaps working in therapy could be helpful in healing wounds and patterns that interfere with your self-esteem and your relationships. Don’t hesitate to reach out to a therapist to start on your path towards healing your attachment wounds!

About the Author

Hannah Dorsher, MA, LPC, NCC, CAT, EMDR is a therapist in Fort Collins, CO who specializes in helping those struggling with anxiety, self-esteem, toxic/unhealthy relationships, attachment issues, break ups, and trauma.

4 Ways to Break Toxic Relationship Patterns

Breaking Toxic Relationship Patterns 101

So you have found yourself single once again…. Or maybe you find yourself in a relationship that you just know isn’t healthy—the bad times outweigh the good significantly—and you know that there is an expiration date on the relationship—It’s just a matter of time. You may be thinking, “why does this keep happening to me,” “why can’t I seem to ever have a happy, healthy relationship!”.

            It’s not uncommon for people to have a pattern of unhealthy relationships. Having a history of unhealthy relationships is problematic in that it creates a feedback loop for the individual in the relationships—meaning that we tend to start creating stories about ourselves, about others, and about relationships based on our experiences. For example, if you have been cheated on, the story your brain may create could be something along the lines of  “it is stupid to trust people” or “I am not good enough”.

Our stories affect how we participate in the world going forward—especially the dating world. The way you feel about yourself influences who you are attracted to, your behaviors in a relationship, and even the behaviors you will tolerate (or won’t tolerate) in a relationship—we tend to attract people with similar levels of health. An unhealthy relationship can contribute to further damage to self-worth, which then goes on to influences the type of relationships we participate in. If the cycle is allowed to continue, the negative stories are reinforced even more (ex: “see, I really am not good enough because here am I getting cheated on AGAIN”). Or we may even sabotage what could be a healthy relationship (it’s easy to create conflict when you have a hard time trusting your partner which could lead to the end of the relationship). And the cycle goes on.

            So, how do we break this cycle and elevate the health of our relationships and ourselves? We need to change our stories. Simple, right? Conceptually yes, but in real life this takes a little time and consistent practice. Here are a few things you can do to change the stories that may be keeping you stuck in unhealthy relationship patterns.

1)   Identify the stories that you hold about others, about yourself, and about relationships. You can do this by considering the common phrases in your self-talk—the internal dialogue that is probably running continuously in your head. Start by writing these down in your notes section in your phone, or in a notebook for a few days. Just notice which phrases come up frequently. They may be “I am” statements (“I’m such an idiot”); they may be commentary about others (“people are liars”) or about relationships in general (“relationships just never last”). Once you have identified some of your common themes you can start to rewrite your stories.

2)   Question the story. Once you have written your main stories down, take a good hard look at each of them and ask yourself where this story came from? Which experiences created this story? Ask yourself “is this story completely, unquestionably true”… it probably isn’t. For example—is it 100% true that ALL relationships never last? No, obviously this is not true 100% of the time. When we start to questions are stories we poke holes in them and can start to loosen their foothold in our brains.

3)   Ask yourself what a person who has healthy thoughts about themselves and relationships would think in this situation. Think of a person you know or can imagine that has high self-esteem and has had healthy relationships and think about how they would think and act in a given situation. For example: if you find yourself thinking you are not good enough for a healthy relationship, stop and think what would a person with healthy thoughts about themselves think and do in the situation?

4)   Create compassion for yourself. These stories rarely just develop out of nowhere—they often find their genesis in the wake of traumatic experiences. Compassion is important in fostering self-love. A good first step is just to say a few compassionate phrases out loud to yourself each day, or whenever you notice yourself thinking something unhelpful. An example may be something as simple as, “I am worthy of love” or “I am doing the best I can right now”.

It may also be time to work through these patterns in therapy. Therapists can offer an objective view, helpful insight, and will gently challenge thoughts and behaviors that may be holding you back. You deserve happy, healthy, fun, fulfilling relationships, often times this starts with a healthy, happy YOU!

Colorado residents can click the button below to contact Hannah Dorsher to schedule an appointment today.

About the Author

Hannah Dorsher, MA, LPC, NCC, CAC I is a therapist in Fort Collins, CO who specializes in helping those struggling with anxiety, self-esteem, toxic/unhealthy relationships, attachment issues, break ups, and trauma.