Part 1 - Why We Have Meltdowns and What to Do About Them
For this 2-part article series, I interviewed Roseanne Reilly on why we have meltdowns, the effects of trauma and stress, and how to regulate the nervous system through somatic healing.
Remember those moments where you could have stayed calm but made rash decisions, felt helpless, or cried uncontrollably? In hindsight, you’d have loved to respond in a calm manner but it felt like you had no way out. In psychology, this reaction is called nervous system dysregulation.
I know what this feels like. For years, it perplexed me how others stayed calm and responded instead of reacting, while I would be unable to stop crying amidst an argument or difficulty. I wondered, Is there something wrong with me? Since then, I’ve worked with mindfulness teachers, energy healers, psychologists, and somatic healing experts. Each of whom has taught me valuable lessons on how to better handle challenges and view life.
In 2023, I started Reflect & Breathe, a weekly newsletter where I share stories, essays, and expert interviews—elaborating on what I’ve learnt through healing sessions, certifications, and personal experiences. Today, I’m eager to share an interview with Roseanne Reilly, featuring insights on trauma, stress, and how somatic healing helps regulate your nervous system.
She helped me discover what blocked my self-regulation, and how to reduce overwhelm. I’m pleased to bring her knowledge to you through two consecutive articles. She’s also shared a video with three techniques, which will be featured in part 2 of this interview (going live on Oct 06). I hope these help you find calm in the chaos :)
Meet Roseanne Reilly
Roseanne is a Trauma Informed Healing Facilitator and Educator, and Advanced Practitioner of Applied Polyvagal Theory, Nervous System Restoration, and Somatic Emotional Release Techniques. She is also an Advanced Practitioner of Craniosacral Therapy, a Registered Trauma Informed Yoga Instructor (ERYT 500 Hr Training), and a qualified provider of YA Continuing Education credits.
Throughout her life’s work, Roseanne noticed how a dysfunctional nervous system stood as a major barrier to sustainable personal growth, healing, recovery, and personal freedom. Roseanne formed Hands of Time Healing in 2012 to facilitate people stuck and frustrated with their healing journey. She helps you restore your nervous system, reducing stress-related symptoms and emotional dysregulation.
What are the subtle signs that our nervous system is out of balance, and why don’t we notice them?
I always say that we have to be very careful about what we get accustomed to. Your experiences can set a platform eg, if you had a (physically/emotionally) abusive/disruptive childhood or you lost a parent or witnessed a lot of ill health in the family, you possibly learned how to shift gears to keep yourself safe and alive and to have your needs met. You probably found ways to survive.
Once the body and mind get stuck in survival mode, as in, survival becomes the norm, it's difficult to recognise it as (chronic or trauma) stress. This is because it's been your lived experience and you haven't experienced anything different. You go straight into your teen, young adult, and deep into your adult years without realising that you have and are carrying these unmet needs. You may not see the survival strategies that have served you to become successful on the surface while stress continues to create internal disharmony.
Signs of imbalance are feeling stuck and alone on the inside, like you’re constantly pushing through life or anxious all the time. You may shift between states of being productive followed by feeling low and unproductive. And certain things may keep triggering you, such that you’ve built ways and strategies of responding to them that keep you stuck. The outcomes aren’t pleasant, and you may be unsure why these things keep showing up.
Over time, the trigger list grows, and your capacity to feel a sense of ease in your body, lives and relationships diminishes. The world seems smaller and unfriendly rather than a place for evolving, feeling a deep sense of connection, and having a sense of thriving.
What about things we experience in adulthood, like profound losses or life-changing events? Do they also classify as trauma?
Yes, absolutely. I explain it by talking about stress, chronic stress, and trauma stress. There's healthy stress, known as eustress, which helps us thrive. Without some stress, we’d feel stagnant. The balance comes in knowing when stress shifts into distress. Chronic stress happens when we stay in distress without ever fully recovering, and it leads to physiological issues like tension, migraines, gut issues or heart problems. The part of the brain, known as the amygdala, triggers alarm in the body and doesn’t differentiate between being chased by a tiger or chasing deadlines; due to chronic stress this part of the brain can become more easily triggered setting off a cascade of physiological and psychological responses.
When we ignore those signs, stress becomes chronic, which can lead to continuous states of hyperarousal and hypervigilance. That's really what begins to define it as trauma stress. Trauma, big T or little t, happens when events overwhelm our resources and our capacity to cope, there is a lack of adequate support and that can happen at any age. Trauma isn’t just the presence of physical conflict; it could be an emotionally abusive relationship, health battles, or unrelenting stress and anything that overwhelms your nervous system.
Chronic stress keeps you from true recovery, even when resting. The body stays tense, and the mind races and the quality of sleep becomes disturbed. With trauma stress, you get stuck in or between states of hyperarousal or hypoarousal and may never feel at ease with your body or the world. It’s like being in a constant state of ‘fight or flight’ as you navigate daily life, not to mention the often forgotten states of numbness, collapse, despair and shutdown, relating to hypoarousal.
A friend recently mentioned how they have days or weekends where they don’t want to speak to anyone. Is it normal to feel this way?
It really depends on the person and how their week went. If someone has had a more tough than normal week, needing to shut the world out for a bit of respite is understandable. It’s common to want to lay on the couch and recharge.
However, if there is a history of stress related trauma and being in constant distress and feeling burnt out has become the norm, only taking care of yourself on weekends or vacations isn’t ideal. There maybe, underlying survival strategies of overworking, and overriding and neglecting one's needs, or poor boundaries.
It can be a sign your nervous system needs deeper care and restoration. There maybe a need to check in with ourselves throughout the day to manage stress and rebuild resilience. Ignoring this and pushing through can reduce your resilience over time. You end up stuck in stress cycles, not fully recovering, as you bounce between mobilisation and immobilisation, moving further away from inner stability, vitality and safety in your body and mind.
Why is it vital to address both the emotional and physical aspects of trauma, and how do these two elements interact in the healing process?
All emotions can be connected to physiological sensations, even numbness. Sadness can feel like a heaviness in our heart, fear can feel like tightness in our chest or a weight in our hips or feet. The body has this way of feeling and showing our feelings.
When you are truly “feeling” your feelings, you are connecting with your body and where and how the emotions show up for you. That's where the whole mind-body connection comes in. This is really important because, even as a child, you still felt them as a ‘felt sense’ even before you speak. The body picks up on a change in energy, posture, tone of voice, something changes within their physiology and this is how felt senses come into play.
As we get older, we tend to move away from this emotional intelligence. We move further into the mind, talking and analysing. We are less into feeling our feelings and more into avoiding and ignoring them or thinking and talking about them. That’s when you may feel very stuck with your emotions and increasing anxiety. You may know they exist and talk about them, while still feeling stuck and wondering why, because you possibly haven't learned how to feel safe with your feelings and what lies beneath the words and sensations.
In other words, you may need to learn how to deeply feel emotions and identify associated unmet needs and what stored stress is holding their energy. This suppressed and repressed energy is closely linked to triggers igniting your stress responses.
Many of us are taught that anger is bad or undesired. How can you truly feel your anger at a deeper level if you can’t express it in the moment?
It’s interesting that you chose to talk about anger, because it's probably one of the most misunderstood emotions. When you equate anger with danger, you are already in a state of arousal, mobilisation or possibly freeze and fawn stress responses. In other words a conditioned response to anger.
So, the dysregulated connection with anger is aggression or passive aggression. Rage is having no access to the brakes within your nervous system to slow down the stress response associated with feeling triggered. Rage is a very strong unstoppable fight response.
Some people will immediately suppress anger because they fear their own anger or the anger of others and have established memories associated with it as dangerous. Suppressing anger can lead to physical illness and dis-ease or an internal collapsed feeling, since it's an important emotion. Anger generally tells us when a boundary has been broken or a need has gone unmet.
On the other hand, the passive-aggressive response to anger happens when you don't deal with anger in the moment and instead it shows up as withholding, talking ill of people, silent treatments, smear campaigns. This reflects the pain inside, keeping stress levels high and can create more stress and dysregulation and tension.
The best thing you can do is work on building resilience into the nervous system to help you take a step back and inquire about your relationship with anger. Forming a relationship with anger means feeling the physiological changes that are happening within, and recognising the need to attune to your needs and connect with your stress response. This involves pausing, taking deep breaths, and reflecting on what you need–setting boundaries and being able to do this indicates a healthy, functioning nervous system.
It’s harder to reflect before reacting if our nervous system is ladened with incomplete stress cycles ready to unleash in the present moment. Anger can be managed better when we heal the nervous system we feel safe and connected, allowing us to communicate assertively rather than through dysregulation.
The physiological side of anger is the first indicator that you are moving into a state of defence and protection. Bypassing the physiological signs leads to having less choices available to you when it comes to any emotion. A healthy functioning vagus nerve is a key player when it comes to emotional freedom.
This is why regulating your physiology really helps create space for you to have choices with all of your emotions. How you attend to something in a state of stress versus a flexible and stable collected state of body and mind is going to be different. This is decided by your stress response, and your ability to regulate or co-regulate with somebody.
For someone new to somatic healing, what gentle steps would you recommend for nervous system regulation?
Soma means the body. When opening the doorway to the body, it’s crucial to feel resourced. We all have these built-in resources and my goal is to fine-tune them to benefit you at a deeper level. When people work with me, they learn to listen to the body's language as healing intelligence rather than something to avoid. This helps guide their responses and reorient them to time and place and integrate experiences.
A good way to start is to recognize positive sensations in the body.
Here are three exercises for nervous system regulation:
To start feeling good sensations, try wrapping a blanket over your back, shoulders (like swaddling a baby) and tucking the edges around your arms. Feel your feet on the ground. Orient yourself to all that is ok in this time and place.
If connecting with your breath doesn’t cause anxiety, connect with the flow of your breath without trying to change it. Notice if you need the blanket tighter or looser. Connect with how your body responds to these subtle changes.
You can also explore gentle touches starting with gently brushing your palms together and then moving down the opposite inner forearm with your hand or gently brushing your forehead and face with your fingertips.
The aim of these practices is to stimulate the vagus nerve, which is the largest calming nerve. It's connected to our social interactions. Start slow and notice the subtle changes in your body and mind. Does it bring ease or discomfort? Stick with what brings a sense of ease. If you feel a lack of ease in your body and mind remember to seek support, there is so much you can learn to begin to help yourself.
Resourcing is the first step in somatic healing by creating a firm foundation beneath your feet. The key is to establish self-trust in your body and your resources first, then build larger relationships of trust. This empowers you, restoring your nervous system and body-mind partnership.
Anxiety eg, is often seen as a mind issue but it is connected to the brain and body. Anxiety is a long-term reaction to stress. It sets off the amygdala: the brain's alarm system. To tone down this alarm, use a bottom-up approach by addressing the body first and then the mind.
Stay tuned for part 2 of this interview (going live on Oct 06, 2024). Roseanne will talk about emotional cysts, and the role of reflection and a co-regulator. She’ll also share a video with practices to bring immediate calm in moments of anxiety and stress.
With gratitude,
Raksha