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I never saw myself as having anxiety, but I’ve been feeling into it a lot lately with much shaking and teeth chattering. The shaking just keeps going unless I stop. Maybe too much of this is overwhelm and trigger, and it led to being sent to A&E with a very high blood pressure.” I assume A&E is a name for emergency. “Seven hours there crammed amongst lots of spluttering children led to horrendous flu, and now my blood pressure is perfectly normal, but heart rate still high. Not been ill like this in a decade. It’s been agonizing. Feels like endurance and suffering are inevitable and relentless.

Hi, Seth. I have a tremor mostly in my left hand, but also in my right hand. I think I’ve had it for a long time, but lately it’s come to my attention and seems to be worse. I have surgical and childhood trauma. Can SBSM help with this? I worry about it getting worse.

I can sit with bodily sensations without fearing the fear, but nothing comes up to make it complete. No movement, no sound, et cetera. It feels much harder when it’s not a specific shock trauma, but instead long term stress and pushing oneself, never feeling enough, feeling unsafe around people since childhood. What might it look like then?”

I was described by a family friend as very loving at age two, but then I bullied a child at age five and I was suicidal at age seven, downhill from there and associated for 40 plus years. Overall more overt sympathetic activation. When I think of people, I see images of me as a carcass being picked at, I feel enraged when people need anything from me as it feels they’re going to suck the life out of me. I want cry and leave me the F alone. Engaging in healthy aggression and feeling good releases, yet it’s not reducing the terror. Suggestions.

“I have a serious procrastination problem bordering on ergophobia. When I start working, I become activated. My heart rate increases, I have tension in my head, my mind becomes constricted, making it tough and unpleasant to work and write. However, I know that when my mind is relaxed and without fear, I can do good work. I like working, but I do not know how to get to that state. Please advise

All right, so today, one big broad theme is freeze. Lots of questions about freeze and different ways that it shows up in different people and what happens as we move in and out of it. To start, one of the things to talk about is the physical manifestations of freeze.

Our survival based implicit/procedural memories, by definition incomplete nervous system responses. I’m a bit confused by how we use the terms implicit memory and procedural memory. Put another way, if we’re talking about an implicit survival based, not reflexive memory or a procedural memory, are we automatically talking about an incomplete nervous system response?

What could a possible connection be between vaginismus…” That’s hard to pronounce. Constriction of the vagina when there tries to be penetration, essentially is what that is. “And then around four years of interstitial cystitis. What’s the connection between these things? The interstitial cystitis has resolved, but vaginismus has not. No trauma that comes to mind as a possible connection, although I’m realizing these issues are not due to bad luck or chance.” No. “Is there any advice you can give me, a little insight as to what could be going on?

All right. So lots of questions about what to do with activation. Again there’s too many for me to answer individually. So I want to talk in general about what to do with activation when it shows up.

You touched on the hyperactivity aspect of ADHD in last week’s call and how it’s rooted in a tight brain stem.” It’s not so much rooted in the tight brain stem, it’s that the tight brain stem is a fundamental part of it. It’s rooted in hypervigilance and a tight brain stem is a fundamental part of hypervigilance, but there’s other parts as well. Your entire sympathetic nervous system is on way too much with hypervigilance. But that tight brain stem is a good place to intervene physiologically. So I just wanted to clarify that. “Can you address the hyperfocus, hyper fixation aspect of ADHD and why that would be related to survival and trauma as well? I can get very tunnel visioned to the point of dissociation and disembodiment

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