353. How Learning “What Is Mine To Hold” Set Me Free

Standing at the threshold of a new year, we ask a hard, freeing question: what is mine to hold, and what is mine to let go? We look back on a year of conversations that shaped our hearts, then lean into a fresh practice of healthy detachment that protects, rather than weakens, secure attachment. With Karen Casey’s Let Go Now as a guide, we explore how choosing to act instead of react creates the quiet where love grows—and how stepping away from chaos can be the most compassionate move in the room.

If you’re ready to unhook from other people’s storms, honor your limits, and carry a softer, truer strength into 2026, this conversation is your companion. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help more listeners find their way to peace.

Chapters

• 0:05 Year In Review And Top Episodes
• 1:56 Detachment Versus Attachment Foundations
• 5:25 Prayer And Principles Of Letting Go
• 8:25 The Christmas Eve Test Of Detachment
• 13:26 Heart A-Fib, Limits, And Fawning
• 17:29 Betwixt Time And New Year Reflection
• 20:25 Andi Colber’s Window Of Tolerance
• 25:11 Process Miracles And Grief To Freedom
• 28:22 Flow Of Strength: Tender And Tough
• 32:00 Britt Piper On Polyvagal Basics
• 36:54 The Nervous System Ladder Explained
• 41:10 Building Flexibility Over Removing Threats
• 47:02 Closing Reflections And Daily Practices
• 49:35 Community, Support, And Next Steps
• 51:32 New Year Blessing And What To Release

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

Hello and welcome, Drum Roll Please, to our final episode in 2025. It's hard to believe that we, I, have published 52 new broadcasts this year. That's amazing. We had so many amazing guests, thinkers, luminaries. So many. And we had three replays that actually have had the highest listening score. They are, are you ready? If mama ain't communicating well, if mama ain't emotionally healthy, and if mama ain't behaven. Those came from the very beginning of our podcast journey back in 2018-19. And those are from my second book, Overcoming Hurtful Words. Rewrite Your Own Story. Our fourth most listened to episode this year was inside the big lessons of burnout. Yeah, with Dr. Ariana Malloy. And our fifth most listened to podcast was Seeing Resurrection is No Small Thing with Andi Colbert, one of my favorites and one of yours. I thought it would be fun to revisit some clips from some of our shows in 2025, to just revisit highlights and thoughts and really moving portions of our conversations in 2025. But I want to begin with a treasured book that I keep very close by in my life. And it's by Karen Casey, Let Go Now. Embrace detachment as a path to freedom. Now, you might think, Janelle, one of our tenets here is attachment theory. We're all about developing secure attachment. You preach on it, teach on it. But as I learned in my many years sitting with lovely people, attachment is essential. But as essential as it is to earn our secure attachment, part of that journey is learning healthy detachment. She writes this in the very beginning. How do we embrace detachment? Why should we even want to? Those are questions that prompted my desire to write this book, she says. Detachment, according to the dictionary, means separation. Embrace means to come together. How can we do both in the same moment? Great question. So she writes, to begin with, I think, we have to cultivate our willingness to let go. That is, to detach from the trials and tribulations of our contemporaries if we want to find the quiet peace we long for. A peace that will allow us to truly love, to truly embrace, and to appreciate those who journey with us. In this process, we also give those companions the freedom to grow and to find their own way. Thus, their own eventual peace, too. I don't think we can come together as loving equals without embracing the willingness to detach. She continues, we live very codependent lives, from my perspective. This is her sharing her opinion as we do as authors. By this I mean that too many of us let even the whims of others in our families, our communities, our workplaces, even in other parts of the world, define us. Determine how we feel, and then decide what we will do next in many instances. Learning to detach allows us to live the life we were meant to live. I repeat. Learning to detach allows us to live the life we were meant to live. By allowing other people's behavior, good, bad, or disinterested, control us, we miss many opportunities for movement and expression in new directions. The converse is also true. If we attempt to control the other persons on our path, wherever they may reside, keeping them attached to us through any means. And most of us are very practiced at this. We immobilize them, thus preventing the growth they deserve and have been prepared for already. Detachment isn't easy. If it were, there would be no need for a book offering to help you develop the skills to do it. And trust me, Heartlifter, Karen Casey's book is one of the very few I've ever found that really talks so succinctly and efficiently about healthy detachment. She continues, and it may not have appeared on your radar screen as something you wanted to cultivate prior to picking up this book. As we already noted, we are accustomed to being enmeshed with others. Letting our lives be constantly influenced by their behavior. I'm not suggesting this influence is always bad. There are good influences too, probably every day. We can and do observe healthy, detached behavior in some of our friends, and perhaps they showed up on our path to serve as our teachers. It's not always easy to discern good from the bad. However, it is the intent of Karen's book, Let Go Now, to illustrate those behaviors we want to mimic and those we don't. She offers this beautiful prayer. Wherever we are, God is present. Whoever comes our way is part of our learning curve. We have the power to change how we think. Appreciating the journey of everyone else is what gives my own journey a purpose. Peaceful feelings follow peaceful actions. The chaos of others need not attract us. No argument demands our participation. Acting rather than reacting is blissful. To witness another's journey is all we are ever called to do. Our teachers are everywhere. Silence may be the best response we can make in myriad situations. There are two kinds of business your business and none of your business. Taking no hostages is the surest way to peace. I want to share a little story. I think it's highly relevant as we close out 2025. It it's certainly a very strong word picture in my life. And I always feel like perhaps it will be in yours as well. So my husband and I went to a local Christmas Eve service. We're currently not in any one church, but we live near many, many. And so on Christmas Eve, it is our custom, it always has been, to go to a Christmas Eve service. And I've done that since I was a wee little child. And so we attended one. It's a big church, so I do know a lot of people in it, but it's so big. People are coming and going and coming and going. And we just came in and said hello to a few friends and then went and sat near the back because we were having guests a little bit later. None of our family came home this Christmas. So we like to host people who are so lovely and hospitable to us during the year and let us come in and be part of their family. And so we were gonna have to skip out a little early in order to have dinner ready and be ready as host. And so we sat down near the back. It's very dark in the church because they have, you know, pregame show going, as I call videos and things like that. And as I sat down, I just was about a seed or two over from a woman, an older woman, perhaps not as old as I am, but older. Maybe a mother of someone there or mother-in-law, I'm not sure. And within a few minutes of the service, I heard her just begin to weep loudly. And every little nerve cell in my body came to attention. Every empath inside of me was like, okay, this woman needs help. Alert, alert, alert. And I had been cooking and cleaning and doing all the things and was already tired. I'm already tired because I am in such a time of restoring my body. And I sat inside of my mind, because of the work that I've been doing, is this mine to hold? Is this mine to hold? Do I or don't I? And there were a lot of thoughts. I'm summarizing. My play, my my head is a very busy place. And but I noticed, because that is what we're learning to do in our lives, to be emotionally healthy and mature spiritually, is to be aware, to recognize everybody's business is not my business. What is mine to do? What is mine to hold? The need is not the call. I was taught very early on in my spiritual journey. The need is not the call. The scriptures tell us you will always have the poor and the needy among you. What is mine to hold? And so I had a bit of a war going on in my mind, which was definitely distracting me from being present with my husband in the sermon and in the worship, because all I could do is hear her weeping in my left ear. And so I began to reach my arm over to place it on her back. And as it got close, I did say, I hope you know how much God loves you. But I didn't touch her. I I brought my hand back and put it in my lap. Now you're saying, What's the big deal? Do you know why is that a big deal? Why are you talking about that right now? And why are you talking about that in light of the end of the year and healthy detachment? Because as Karen just wrote in her prayer, our teachers are everywhere. Silence may be the best response we can make in myriad situations. There are two kinds of business, your business and none of your business. Taking no hostages is the surest way to peace. I felt that was a tremendous moment of growth in my life. Truly, over the last five months, since my heart going into this atrial fibrillation flutter situation, I have been examining what is mine to hold. I always told my clients, I'm all in with you. My heart is your vault. Then my heart decided to rebel and my heart decided to use its voice. And it stood up one late July morning and said, Janelle, I can't do this anymore. It's just all too much. It's too much. Something has to give. And I listened and am listening to my own heart. Do I treasure and value all of the stories that have been spoken to me? I always will. But there was obviously something I needed to learn to do so that I would not completely absorb all of these stories and take them on as my own. Because you see, sometimes we have to embrace detachment and we have to examine timing, right? Things in our life come and they go. Just like the waves in the ocean, they come and they go. We live in seasons. Ecclesiastes three gives us that in fullness. There's a time for this, a time for that, a time for this, a time for that. And it goes on and on. You can read that in Ecclesiastes three. And everything is beautiful in its time. But then there's a time to let go. Here we are at the threshold of a new year. It's as my daughter, older daughter explained in a beautiful post that she wrote on her Substack, Dandelion Seeds. We're in the betwixt time. We're in those few days that are left in one year and in the days that are coming in a new year. It's a holy time. It's an opportune time. It is a time when we typically reflect. We look back and we look forward. There's no pressure here. Sometimes in life, I might not do this till mid-January or early February. Or I might not do it at all, depending on the year. This year, because I am already in a very introspective season where God is really inviting me to examine my life and look forward into what's coming in my future, what's my third act? I am looking back and looking forward at the same time. But as we come to this beautiful moment when the clock strikes, strikes midnight, and we move into January first, my husband's birthday. I love it. What is it that you need to let go of? Where do you need to exercise healthy detachment? Let me read meditation number one from Karen's book, Let Go Now. Detachment is simply watching the events that are unfolding around you, getting involved only when your journey is part of the experience. Not reacting to the people or the situations that so easily attract our attention is not an easy skill to develop. And a skill it is. We must practice driving and chipping and putting a golf ball in order to be good golfers. We have to hit thousands of tennis balls against a backdrop to play tennis competitively. And we have to sit for long, long hours at the piano keys in order to become proficient pianists. We would not expect to be very good at any one of those activities without practice, lots of it. But we seldom grasp until after many failures, sometimes years of failures, I'm raising my hand, that we have to practice and rehearse again and again, lean in here, the art of not reacting, of detaching from the actions of those around us. How often we hear, or worse yet, say, he made me do it, she made me do it. It's her fault, it's his fault, it's their fault. Wrong. No one can make us do anything. That's a big one. Only we, that's you and me, have the power to do or not do whatever we do. Only we, you and me, have the power to do or not do whatever we do. That's the good news. In fact, we are in charge of ourselves. No one else is. The freedom that accompanies this realization will lift our spirits throughout the day. She writes, getting involved in the actions of others isn't in my best interest most of the time. I will walk away when I need to today. Was that easy for me on Christmas Eve? Oh my goodness. In fact, that was the culmination of the last five months of a deep dive, if not years, but particularly these last five months of just nosediving deeply into what is mine to hold. And today we're adding. What is mine to let go?

SPEAKER_04: 20:04

What is it?

SPEAKER_01: 20:07

Some things are not easy to name, but I have 52 episodes just this year that can help you name perhaps what it is that you need to let go of. For me, I am letting go fawning. F-A-W-N-I-N-G. I will be giving you so much more information on fawning, but it's one of our survival mechanisms fight, flight, freeze, and fawning. I have learned since July 30th when my heart stood up and said, mm-mm, no more, no mas. No, no, no. And through my earnestness and my prayers and my seeking of God, he brought to me Dr. Ingrid Clayton's book, That's what he'll do. He will bring you your teacher when you are ready. I've underlined almost every sentence in her book. I'm hoping to one day be able to have her here for us. But in the meantime, I'm letting go of fawning and I'm learning what is mine to hold. Karen writes, Detachment promises quiet contentment. Choosing contentment over agitation seems like a simple choice, but apparently it isn't for many of us. All we have to do is take a brief inventory of the many encounters that we had yesterday or today. How many of them were peaceful? Did we take the high road very often? Were a few of those encounters riddled with words or actions that embarrass us in retrospect? Were there some we regret yet today? It's been my experience, Karen writes, that the encounters that are not peaceful fall into two categories. First, there are those that are the direct result of my trying to make something my business that is not my business. In other words, of trying to control that which is not mine to control. The other category can best be described as letting someone else's behavior determine how I feel about myself. Man, this becomes a cesspool, and I have wallowed in it far too many times, she writes. Fortunately, I'm learning to make better choices. Now I can walk away most of the time when I need to. How about you? She writes, the first few times we make the choice to be peaceful rather than right, it feels like denial. But with practice, it will become the preferred choice. Give it a try today. Okay, one more. Meditation 12, page 21 on Let Go Now. Detachment is an acquired habit. Obsession with the actions of others, wishing he or she would change, wanting more attention or perhaps less, wishing our significant others would let us decide their fate is so exhausting. When we are caught up in this cycle of obsession, we are seldom even aware of how we are letting our own lives slip away. But slip away, they will. Learning how to let go of others and their lives takes willingness, a tremendous commitment to staying the course and constant practice. If we don't keep this as a goal for our lives, we will miss the opportunities God is sending us for our own unique growth. We can only do justice to one life, ours. Being detached from someone does not mean no longer caring for them. It does not mean pretending they are no longer existing. It does not mean avoiding all contact with them. Hear me here, I'm saying this is me talking. Karen continues. Being detached simply means not letting their behavior determine our feelings. That is such a big assignment. It means not letting their behavior determine how we act, how we think, how we pray. Detachment is a loving act for all concerned. No one wants to be the constant center of someone else's life, at least not for long. Two people lose their lives when either one is constantly focused on the other. That's not why we are here. We can journey together today from the shared journey we learn, but being enmeshed with one another rather than complementing another's journey will destroy both parties.

unknown: 25:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 25:21

Maybe that's why, Heartlifter, that our top three episodes of the year had to do with mama not being able to communicate well, mama not being able to be emotionally healthy, mama not being able to behave. And then seeing resurrection as no small thing with Andy Colbert and Body First, a revolutionary approach to trauma recovery with the dear Brit Piper. So I just wanted to revisit a few thoughts from these episodes to help us really enter and cross over the threshold into 2026 with a truer sense of clarity and understanding. So first we'll visit Andi Colbert, author of Strong Like Water, Try Softer. And in this particular conversation with Andi, we're talking about her book Stronger Than Water. And we are revisiting an understanding of the window of tolerance. And then I ask her about a quote that she uses from the Scarlet Letter, where Nathaniel Hawthorne describes Hester Prynne and the fact that she had no idea the weight she was carrying until she felt the freedom. And I I think this is very appropriate for us as we consider what we want to let go of in order to receive and move into a beautiful version of ourselves in 2026. Here we go. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes, She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom. We're talking about the good old Scarlet Letter. And she had not known the weight until she felt the freedom, I think, defines my life and so many of our lives when we have experienced childhood trauma, which you did. And you're very open about it and talk about it. And why that quote?

SPEAKER_00: 28:17

I just I want to know why you chose that quote. Because it's it says it all.

SPEAKER_02: 28:24

Well, yeah, thank you for, I don't think anyone, I mean, the book's been out for almost five and a half years. No one's ever asked me, I think, directly about that quote, which that's a really um great insight. And and I just want to say, yeah, I mean, I think all of this just, you know, this direction you're going with the role of mothering, and even uh, you know, the way in which we all um and I and I know that this is probably more geared towards women, but even in a way, men do the work of sometimes having to do reparative self-mothering, right? Absolutely. Yeah, and I think about that like I've had to do some of my own self-fathering. And I also have had to do some of my own self-mothering. So really like honoring this not only as like the actual things that happen to us, but then the reparative pieces needed, like the God-given sort of um, you know, divine feminine, really, like that honors like this need of um this ability, this tenderness, right? And this and this type of compassion. Um, and then also that we even as women have this um fierceness and are really made right while also embody those things. And so these beautiful energies, right, that like God has designed us with. There's a fullness that even in God's image, there is a reflection of the fullness. So I just think that's a that's that's beautiful. And then you're tying it, you know, this thank you for what you said about the window of tolerance that has been, first of all, a deeply transformative topic for me, like concept. I I first, you know, I uh always talk about that, you know, first uh Dr. Dan Siegel really coined this concept. Um, but a lot of how I teach it has also been really braided into three things like the polyvagal theory and then very, thank you so much, I very directly also uh incorporate my experiences in trauma therapy specifically, because of how much it's like I get to actually see in a way that is very um, it feels very clear and embodied to me the the way the window of tolerance um plays itself out in trauma therapy. Um so all that to say, coming back to your question, yeah. No, but I love it, and I love how you're weaving these things together. But this particular quote, um, I read the Scarlet Letter in high school, and I, you know, it was impactful in that, you know, I was obviously still quite young and and and thinking about a lot of different ideas. But I it's so common, not only for me in my own life, because I didn't, I did not personally know the level of my own trauma until I became an adult. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Right. I was sort of the embodiment of that quote. Like I had no idea the weight I was carrying. I had no idea how little how little I would was able to fully exhale, how there was such a lack of feeling like I could fully be myself.

SPEAKER_00: 31:44

That there was who is myself, right? I mean, you say that, like to be even human alive. What the heck does that even mean? I'm asking myself that at 65, and still that's why I'm so happy you're here to really help us, I guess, know the weight.

SPEAKER_01: 32:02

Yeah. So we can feel the freedom.

SPEAKER_02: 32:06

Yeah, yeah. And this particular thing, I think this is the role, and again, why it's such complex and and deep work, is that sometimes we come to know the weight because someone else begins to reflect back to us in a way that a lot of times we never have experienced before. Like maybe especially with like things like developmental trauma, childhood trauma. Yeah. But even later in life, if you're having significant ruptures relationally or trauma, like this lack of being known or seen. Yeah. And what that creates like almost like a vortex in our body, where it's like we don't have the like, we're not tracking. You know, the one of the words for that is interoception. We lack the ability to track with the experience of our body.

unknown: 33:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 33:05

And this is a really common thing that happens with especially things like developmental trauma, but other types of trauma too. This is what we mean when we say that the body is a literally, you know, when Bessel Vanderkoop talked about keeping the score. Oh, yes, this is one of the implications that I can't literally tell the weight.

SPEAKER_00: 33:27

No, no, no, no, no. And it's sometimes it's even physical weight, like we gain weight, right? There's a there's it could be spirit, soul, body. Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 33:37

Yep. There's so many different ways so that I can't tell you necessarily, or someone couldn't necessarily say, Hey, here's the extent of my pain, or here's why they haven't probably even come close to fully making sense of what they've gone through. Or if they have, that narrative is lacking the fullness of the reality of actually maybe what did happen. Yeah. Because in service of survival, we often cut ourselves off. We or we cannot help but our body instantaneously and unconsciously moves towards more of a place of disconnection in order to keep going to function.

unknown: 34:25

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 34:25

Or numb the heck out of it. Right. Exactly. Yeah, but we don't even know why we're numbing for me, anyway. You know, sure.

SPEAKER_02: 34:32

Yeah. And and so when we begin, and this is where this quote, you know, captures it in some ways more quickly than a lot of people experience it.

SPEAKER_00: 34:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 34:44

Because sometimes it's not just like weight than freedom. Sometimes it's like weight.

SPEAKER_00: 34:48

Sorry. I'm so sorry. Rarely is it, right? I mean, I'm sure you there are, you know, God moments. God is God, God is real. We are in holy week, resurrection is coming.

SPEAKER_01: 34:59

There are times where, you know, fully in the scripture, he touches someone or the woman touches his garment, and you know, voila. But there were 12 years up to that moment. So I think it's very rare when it is miraculous, but we certainly believe in the miraculous. Sure.

SPEAKER_02: 35:17

Well, and I, you know, Sarah Bessie uses the term, it's been a while, but she says process miracle. I love that. I think of a lot of therapeutic work as a process miracle. That's a next book. I like it. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah. Well, props to Sarah Bessie for that. But I think all of this work is that. And and what I mean too is that we notice the weight, and then often, like, then it's grief. Yeah. Then it's then it's feeling the feelings, then it's making sure we have the resources and the care. And then finally we may begin to metabolize. Love it. That's why I love you. In that process, we begin to notice the freedom, and we begin to notice also oh, this is how bad. This is how big. This is how much was taken from me, how much I didn't receive. Um, and often, you know, I often I have a quote that I've I've shared many times, but it's something to the effect of saying sometimes people think they are really, really tough. But what's happened is they've learned it's they've normalized being treated badly or being harmed. And they in their mind have come to make sense of that as like, oh, I'm just really tough. I can put up with this. When really what it is is we've come to expect that that's the only thing I deserve. Oh, this is what it means to be tough.

SPEAKER_01: 36:52

Andi speaks about the flow of strength in her book, Strong Like Water. I highly recommend it as a resource for you to perhaps like me, you yeah, we are tough. We have grit, as we say. He has girls raised in the south, grit. We have grit. And yet it is often misidentified. She talks about situational strength, transitional strength, and integrated strength. She writes, in other words, what if our innate ability to survive distressing, overwhelming, or traumatic experience is strength? But so are tenderness, compassion, feeling our feelings, and learning to rest. What if it's not a question of either or, but instead both and this, she writes, my dear reader, is what brought me to conceptualize the flow of strength. The flow of strength idea is meant to help us visualize that like water, our response to challenging circumstances is meant to be fluid. The more supported and safe we feel, the more we heal and grow, and the more flexible we will become. Like a skilled sailor, we learn to adjust to changing seas. At various times and in particular situations, different types of strength will be needed. This is completely completely normal. To really enhance my conversation with Andi, we brought to the table Britt Piper, a somatic practitioner. And in her book Body First, a revolutionary approach to trauma recovery, Britt helps us to really understand through her own story of healing the power of polyvagal theory and how that brought new discoveries on how the body keeps the score. Britt's capacity to really explain this in in a most understandable way is what I wanted to bring to the table again as we close out 2025, just so you, heartlifter, can be schooled, educated, and learned on how vital it is to live our lives with a flexible nervous system. We might call that psychological flexibility. And her teaching just really helps us to grab hold of this. Here we go with Brit.

SPEAKER_03: 39:54

The body is a part of a larger puzzle, right? But this puzzle piece of the body, just synonym. In and of itself and on its own is also not effective. And so I like to also think of it like a pie. Everyone has their own pie when it comes to healing. And all of our pies are made of different slices, which are really the modalities, the frameworks that help our unique brain body heal. And so conventional therapy was helpful for a time, but I felt that there was something missing. And so that's where the somatic work came in. I continued to meet with my therapist, but I did tell her about what was going on, and she actually referred me to a um a therapist who was trained in polyvagal theory. So my work, yeah, my work actually started in the polyvagal space. So um did some trainings at the polyvagal institute, and polyvagal theory is essentially just the upgraded science of the nervous system. Okay. Um it's a it's a theory in science that was developed by Dr. Stephen Porgis in the 90s, and then he teamed up with a therapist, Deb Dana. And Deb took all of his science and his big words, and she translated it into a therapeutic framework.

SPEAKER_01: 41:14

She's so beautiful, and she gave us glimmers, which is I love her so much.

SPEAKER_03: 41:18

I love the glimmers, yeah. I I love Deb. So um, but they created the Polyvagel Institute together, which is where they train practitioners and therapists in this framework. So, anyways, I started working with a therapist who had been trained in the polyvagal work. Um What is the polyvagal?

SPEAKER_01: 41:39

Just because someone's right now going, I am probably stopping and looking it up because I have a very uh astute audience that loves to learn.

SPEAKER_04: 41:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 41:48

So the polyvagal theory, which is the upgraded science of the nervous system, poor just discovered, we could say, maybe three founding principles. So the first is that um, first of all, we don't just have, you know, the old understanding was that we had two states of the nervous system, sympathetic and parasympathetic. And we used to think of it like a seesaw or a teeter-totter. So parasympathetic is rest and digest. And then we thought sympathetic is fight, flight, freeze. What we now have discovered is that there is this nerve in our body. Uh, it's a cranial nerve known as the vagus nerve. It's the longest nerve. And vagus means wanderer. So it's called the wandering nerve because it touches every organ and connects to our brain.

SPEAKER_00: 42:32

Fascinating, right? V-A-G-U-S.

SPEAKER_03: 42:35

Yes. Yep. And so um the vagus nerve, though, is a often considered the information superhighway of the brain and body. So it sends messages bidirectionally from the body to the brain, and from the brain down to the body. And by the way, what we know now from the science is that 80% of those messages go from body to brain, and only 20% go from brain to body.

SPEAKER_01: 43:00

That's worth taking a pause and chewing on that. Because our gut has what, 500 billion neurons? Yes. And our brain has a hundred billion azoblast count.

SPEAKER_03: 43:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 43:11

That was mind-blowing to me.

SPEAKER_03: 43:13

Yep. Yeah, so the the nervous system, um, you know, but the nervous system communicates through this vagus nerve. A lot of the messages are sent there. And what Por just discovered is that the vagus nerve has multiple branches. And two of the branches, there's you think of them as pathways, right? Little detours or side roads. One of them is the vagal pathway. I'm sorry, um, the ventral pathway. And then the other one is called the dorsal pathway. And he discovered that the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system has two pathways, ventral and dorsal. And so now instead of just having two states of parasympathetic and sympathetic, we have three states. So let's think of it now in terms of a ladder. I just really like this imagery because I feel like you understand. Porges created the polyvagal ladder instead of a seesaw. Now it's a ladder, and it has three sections. There's the section at the very top, which is your ventral state, your rest and digest state. There's then a state in the middle section of the ladder, which is your sympathetic state of fight or flight. And then there's a section at the bottom of the ladder, which is your dorsal vagal state, parasympathetic dorsal state of shutdown.

SPEAKER_01: 44:33

Oh my gosh. This is so, so liberating. And you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking, I knew that he developed all this in 1990. Do you know I had twins in 1990? Yeah, that's and trauma is so new, really, only two decades or whatever. But when you said that, I went, Oh my word. Wow. I was carrying not only two child children in my womb, but boy was I carrying so much trauma. Fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_03: 45:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 45:03

You know how how very grateful I am that we're able to help make a trauma-informed world now, which is what your main impetus is trying to do to us. Okay, so we have this dorsal, okay.

SPEAKER_03: 45:17

Yeah, so the so all that to say, he discovered that there is not just two states, there's three states.

SPEAKER_00: 45:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 45:25

Digest, fight or flight, which is our sympathetic response, and then there is shutdown, which is kind of like but it's a little bit different. Think of it as like your hibernation state, your disconnection state, whereas fight or flight is your mobilized state. So what he also realized in his work is that thinking about that ladder, we go up and down that ladder probably 100 times a day. A lot of people that regulation means staying at the top.

SPEAKER_04: 45:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 45:56

And regulation is actually our natural excuse me, biorhythm is to go just like the window of tolerance, we go up and down in our nervous system between activation and deactivation, activation, deactivation as we face challenges and stress all throughout the day. And so for so many people, this is mind-blowing because they're like, wait, there are moments when I'm in fight or flight, there are moments when I'm in shutdown. Yeah, multiple times a day, dozens of times a day. And that's actually normal. So a regulated nervous system is one that we call flexible, it moves fluidly up and down that ladder without getting stuck. A dysregulated nervous system is one that is rigid, one that is stuck down in those states of survival, of fight or flight, or shutdown. So that's probably the biggest takeaway from the polyvagin.

SPEAKER_01: 46:46

So good.

SPEAKER_03: 46:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 46:47

Because you say very clearly, it's not about taking the threats away. We could they won't go away.

SPEAKER_03: 46:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 46:53

It's learning to live with them better. Is that how you clarify that?

SPEAKER_03: 46:58

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's how can we, and you know, a lot of people assume that the somatic in in somatic we in somatics, we talk a lot about this felt sense of safety, right? Feeling safe for the first time.

SPEAKER_00: 47:12

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03: 47:13

Which is that that ventral state of rest and digest is considered your state of safety and connection. And so, yes, it's about starting to build a bridge to safety and connection. I can feel safe inside my body for the first time. I can feel safe in the world, I can feel safe with others. But it's also creating a greater ability to be with moments where we don't feel safe, create a greater capacity.

SPEAKER_01: 47:38

And that heartlifter is why we are here to develop a greater capacity to move through our lives and in our spheres of influence, practicing a healthy sense of self, healthy behavior patterns, and healthy communication skills. We've gone long, I knew we would, but it's worth our time to take reflection as we move into this new year. I want to close with a pause and reflect from Karen's beautiful work, Let Go Now. Praying for willingness in every attempt to change our behavior is the first and most important step. Blaming others for our unhappiness is so tempting. We keep our focus where it belongs. There is little doubt about where that is. When the chaos calls, leave. Seeking the silence of our inner space is the solution when others are trying to entrap us in their madness. We will always have at our fingertips God, the quiet within, and our journal if we need time away to sort out the confusion around us. Use one or all of these daily. We are surrounded by other people who practice the art of detachment quite well. They are present to show us it can be done. Watch them carefully. What do we see? Make a plan to mimic their behavior. Ask them for help. So, Heartlifter, that is why we have Heartlift Central and our Heartlifting Community. Because we are all committed to practicing the presence of God in our lives and also bringing forth into our spheres of influence emotional, mental, relational, and spiritual health. That's why we meet here. That's why we meet over at Heartlift Central on Substack. That's why we have our very small but mighty community on Facebook at today's Heartlift with Janelle, and why I am on Instagram at Janelle Reardon. Let's connect. I have such a deep sense that God is moving in my own life for such a time as this. And I invite you to be along the journey with me. If this podcast is a source of joy for you and blessing, I invite you to participate through your financial support. Either at Heartlift International, you can make a tax-deductible donation. You can become part of our circle of trust, which can be$5 a month or however you choose to give. If you'd like to make a one-time donation, just look in the show notes and you'll see support the show. Click on that and you can make a donation there. And if you would be so kind, become a paid subscriber on Substack. The paid subscriber can be monthly, or it can be annually, or you can be a founding member. Your support matters so much. So, Heartlifter, Happy New Year! As you cross the threshold wherever you are going to be at midnight on December 31st, know that my prayers have preceded you there, and I pray that you will take a few moments to consider what is mine to hold and what is mine to let go.