Live w/ Dr.Charryse 🧠: Regulating Emotions During Seasonal Shifts”

Sup Cadre? I hope everyone is doing well. I am here in Charlotte, right outside of the news station. Today is actually World Mental Health Day. So heading in for a beautiful opportunity to talk about all things mental health and what we're seeing, what we're noticing, you can only imagine. But all that being said, I'm always glad that you're here and that you decided to come and join me. As you come in, let me know where you are in the world. Always want to say hello to your region and how are you doing?

I didn't even say rate your week. You can definitely rate your week if you want to. One being the lowest, ten being the highest. But I really want you to consider. Thank you. For those that are showing hearts. Back to you. Hello, Northern Minnesota. Hello, Jules. I really want you again to consider. Where are you? How are you doing? So important to make sure that you are consistently checking in with yourself. Can we also acknowledge that fall can be a fairly tricky time of year? It's a time of year where if we are not careful, it's very easy to feel overwhelmed and frustrated and not know why.

And your body wakes up and may not feel like its normal self. I know, for example, a couple days ago I woke up and felt really anxious and I was like, I don't really have any reason to feel anxious. And I had to stop and pause and just remind myself that this time of year. Good morning from Brooklyn. What's up? It's just, it's a dynamic, right? So I want to talk to you today about emotional regulation and vagal resilience. Those of you who this is your first time on this live, welcome. I'm Dr. Shareease.

Those of you who are familiar, I'm always going to pull in a little bit of neuroscience because I want you to understand what's happening in your body and your emotions in connection. Because the benefit of that is it reduces the way that you may blame yourself. We often don't feel the way we want to. Right. And then think, what is wrong with me? Why have I not done enough? Or I'm doing all the right things or I should be better. And that's not necessarily true. Your body is designed to respond a certain way based on your life stressors, based on your natural chemistry, based on your emotions, historical patterns and a number of things.

So let's talk emotional resilience and emotional regulation and vagal resilience just to level set your vagal resilience is essentially the vagus nerve is a part of the nervous system that Runs through the entire body. And when we make sure that we listen and we connect and we tune into that part of the body, it's what allows us to kind of calm down or at least make sure that we're not in a constant state. While I'm beginning, tell me one thing that you're noticing about your emotions over the last few weeks.

Okay. Vagus nerve. It's the body's internal peacekeeper. It's the major part of what we call the polyvagal theory, which explains how our body's nervous system influences our ability to feel safe. Safe, connected and calm. We all have a window. We talk about a polyvagal window when we're highly stressed. That window is very small and it's very easy for us to feel thrown off when we are in a better place. That window has more space. And as long as we stay in that space fairly well, we can operate well.

So the foundation of emotion emotional regulation is we don't want to suppress what we feel. We want to create a level of internal safety that allows us to stay present even while things may feel chaotic around us. So that means even without any fancy equipment, we do have a built in nervous system that can change the way your brain and your body communicates. All that being said, what that means, no matter what's happening in your life right now, no matter the stress that is right in front of you, the worry, the concern, the uncertainty, the overwhelm, you have innately a nervous system that has the ability to support you when things are extremely difficult.

Here are two tools that you can use today and any other day to help strengthen your vagal tone, which is going to help you manage stress better. One is the vagal switch practice. So you inhale for four counts. You know I'm a big proponent of deep breathing. You hold for seven and you exhale for eight. The four, seven, eight method. And then while you do this, you want to lightly tap on your sternum or place a hand over your heart. The touch and the tap are just as important as the breathing. Because those parts of yourself are, are reminding your body we're okay.

Right? The moment you place your hand over your heart, the moment you tap there, it's letting you know, hey, I know what you're feeling. We're okay. Yeah. Heart rate has been higher than normal. Starting a new job. Wow, congratulations. But I also imagine that after 20 years, that feels like a really tall order. Hello from pa. Hello to pa. So the vagal switch practice. Inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. Now let's say that you can't hold for seven. You could inhale for four, hold for five, exhale for six.

The goal is you just move up and that the exhale is a little bit longer than the hold. Right. Don't over complicate it, but work your way up. Number two, gesture anchoring. These are things that help your vagal tone and help you feel physically, not just cognitively. Make sure that you can regulate your motion so you choose a very subtle gesture like pressing your thumb into your ring finger, which absolutely connects the vagal nerve. Or resting your palm over your chest. And particularly my fingers are up.

Palmer down with a light pressure. Try this with me. I want you to think of something that is distressing to you. When you have it, give me a heart and I'll know you have your topic. Something that is stressful. Once you have it, I want you to take your thumb and your index finger, press it slightly together for 60 seconds and just breathe at your own pace into the nose, out through the nose or out through the mouth. Keep pressing it together, almost there. And then release. What did you notice while you were breathing and pressing your thumb and your index finger together?

What sensations did you notice? What did you experience? For me, I could feel this tingling down the back of my neck. I could feel my heart rate just slowly start to come down. Whenever we can take what we call somatic practices, which are things that have to do with our body, soma meaning body. And we can include touch and pressure points with cognition and breath work. It is the most encompassing and one of the richest things that you can do to bring yourself down. Because what you might realize is that we can't always talk ourselves into feeling better.

Right? Your self talk is absolutely crucial. It is absolutely important. But if you're mind and your body are not integrated, you're saying one thing to yourself and your body is still very feeling very chaotic. The body is so overwhelming that it's often going to take over and make it difficult for you to manage things here. So if we talk about things from an integrated dynamic, I always want you paying attention to the quality of your thoughts, the quality of your actions and what you're noticing in your body.

Okay? So remember, emotional regulation is not a mental exercise alone. It's a full body process. So when you learn to regulate from the inside out, you're building your vagal resilience, the ability to return, to calm more quickly, to rush yourself. But you want to work your way down and then that allows you to recover from stress in a better way. Here's what I want to encourage you to do one or two times as you go throughout the rest of today and throughout the rest of the week. Incorporate one of the practices that we talked about.

When you start to notice yourself feeling anxious or irritable or uncomfortable or restless, really work on that vagal switch practice which is that 4, 7, 8 breathing or some type of gesture anchoring where you're creating some kind of gesture or or pressure point that allows you to get in touch with your body to breathe and speak to yourself with kindness. Your words are so powerful. I want you to speak life to yourself. And again, no matter what you're going through, no matter what is coming your way, you have everything that you need inside to manage this moment.

All right, I hope you have a fabulous, fabulous week. As always, thanks for joining me and the rest of the codger sphere and I look forward to catching up with you very soon. Have a good one.