When was the last time you felt truly present…?
Have you ever looked forward to the weekend, maybe you’ve had something exciting planned, but by the time you get there, you don’t feel the excitement, joy or contentment you had thought you would?
Guess what? You wouldn’t be alone in feeling like this.
Recently, I was catching up with a friend. We spoke about the pressure and stress we were both feeling at work and how are weekends had been. This is where our experiences started to divide.
Where I was able to feel present and enjoy the activities I’d planned for my weekend, my friend found it hard to enjoy spending time with their children and partner. They looked forward to the time away from work, but found it hard to enjoy the time with their family.
My friend felt numb and disconnected but couldn’t understand why they felt that way.
Feeling emotionally disconnected or numb is a clear sign of unmanaged, or unmanageable stress.
Why do we feel this way?
Our parasympathetic nervous system has two parts. One part of the parasympathetic nervous system (ventral vagal) helps us to connect with our environment and with others. The other part of our parasympathetic nervous system (dorsal vagal) becomes engaged when we feel stressed.
If we are experiencing stress and our response is to become collapsed or immobile, we find it hard to connect with the people and world around us. We move towards the dorsal vagal part of our parasympathetic nervous system.
A healthy nervous system is one which helps us ebb and flow with life. Ride the ups and downs and meet surprises and challenges head on.
For some of us, when we are stressed and we are unable to, or don’t know how to move ourselves towards safety, we can get stuck in our stress response of freeze or collapse. We end up getting stuck in our dorsal vagal nervous system state.
When we are in this state, even when we are doing activities we would normally enjoy, or we are spending time with people we would normally enjoy being with, we find it difficult to feel that joy or happiness that we are expecting to.
Instead we feel as if:
- we are going through the motions;
- putting on a happy face;
- hiding our true feelings; and
- trying to muster up energy, even if we’re feeling exhausted.
When we are going through all of the above (and you may have your own experiences), we don’t have the capacity or space to feel the emotions we want to feel. We are unable to access the emotions of joy and happiness because our nervous system is busy trying to suppress the emotions we are trying not to feel.
How do we create more presence?
When we are overwhelmed, it can be tempting to shut down or numb out because we don’t feel able to manage what is going on around us. It’s not necessarily because we want to avoid what is going on, it’s because we don’t feel safe enough, internally, to manage what is going on.
Here are 3 ways to practice creating presence in your life...
Orienting
Orienting helps us to connect with what is around us and keeps us in the present moment. This can be done through each of our senses: sight, touch, smell, taste and sound.
Follow the below sequence:
1. Name one thing you can see
2. Name one thing you can hear
3. Name one thing you can touch
4. Name one thing you can smell
5. Name one thing you can taste
Address your needs
When we are not present, we often override what our body and nervous system needs. Practice presence by taking a pause and asking yourself the following question when you feel overwhelmed or disconnected:
What do I need/want in this moment?
Don’t overthink it or try to override you initial instinct.
Soothing touch and awareness
When disconnected, we are not always aware of what is happening within our bodies. We can’t read the signals that our body is sending us. If you start to feel yourself becoming disconnected and want to regain presence, try soothing touch and awareness.
Gently rub your arms or stroke your belly and consciously notice how your body feels and the sensations that occur.
Managing stress needs us to be present to what is happening both around us and within us. When we are challenged, we need to be able to stay present so that we can make better choices about how to manage our stress.
Behaviours that have us disconnecting, numbing out or shutting down only lead to us storing stress in our bodies. This reduces the capacity that we have to deal with any further stresses and keeps us in a cycle of stress.
In extreme cases, if we don’t address our lack of presence and stress, we will head to burnout - and I know that you don’t want that.
But it’s not only about being able to manage further stresses. If we don’t address our lack of presence or stress, we also won’t have the capacity to feel joy, happiness, contentment or peace - all the emotions that can help us move into a ventral vagal nervous system state.
If you’ve been feeling disconnected, unable to feel joy, or disengaged from your loved ones, even when you’ve been looking forward to spending time with them, reflect and ask yourself when you last truly felt present in life and whether it’s time to look for a different way to manage your stress.
Much love,
Harmesch x