June 26, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of The Karen Kenney Show, I share a concept that I call, "safe enough" - which is a game-changing approach to working with our nervous system - in a world that can sometimes feel wicked scary.
I break down how the main question our nervous system is always asking is, "Am I safe?"
And then explore the different ways we often react to perceived physical and/or psychological threats – with trauma responses like fight, flight, freeze and fawn.
The reality is, perfect safety isn't happening, especially for women and marginalized groups who are constantly having to navigate potential risks.
Instead of having to wait to feel 100% secure before we go after our dreams, I share how I've learned to create a sense of safety that allows me to take risks, use my voice, and show up authentically.
For me, it was about gathering tools, understanding my own triggers, and building relationships with people who truly saw me and supported me.
I also share some practical strategies for feeling “safe enough”, like breathwork techniques that can literally lower your heart rate, body awareness practices, and the importance of knowing yourself.
The goal here isn't to eliminate fear completely, but to develop a bunch of the “R” words - like regulation, responsiveness, and resources, so that you can move forward even when you're a little scared.
The good news is you don't have to have a perfectly regulated nervous system to do amazing things!!
Sometimes you just need to feel safe enough to take that leap of faith, trust yourself, and know you've got effective tools to help you navigate - whatever comes your way.
It also super-duper helps when you and your nervous both know that you're definitely not alone on this journey!
KK’S KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• Our nervous system's primary question is always, "Am I safe?" which drives our responses to perceived threats.
• Perfect safety is unrealistic, especially for women and marginalized groups who constantly navigate potential risks.
• Feeling "safe enough" means developing tools to regulate your nervous system rather than waiting for ideal conditions.
• Knowing your personal triggers and having strategies to return to calm is more important than avoiding all the stressful situations.
• Breathwork, body awareness techniques, and building supportive relationships are crucial for creating psychological safety.
• We don't have to be completely regulated to pursue our goals - sometimes we need to do things a little scared.
• Self-awareness and curiosity about our patterns and habits are essential for personal growth and interrupting reactive behaviors.
• Creating safety isn't about controlling everything, but about developing resilience and trusting yourself and your support system.
• The goal is to have a nervous system flexible enough to experience fluctuations but capable of returning to a calm state.
• We can't eliminate fear entirely, but we can learn to move through the world with more resources, resilience, and regulation.
BIO:
Spiritual mentor and writer Karen Kenney uses humor and dynamic storytelling to bring a down-to-earth, no-BS perspective to self-development.
Bringing together tools that coach the conscious and unconscious mind, Karen helps clients deepen their connections with Self, and discover their unique understandings of spirituality.
Her practice combines neuroscience, subconscious reprogramming, Integrative Hypnosis, somatics, spiritual mentoring, and other holistic modalities to help regulate the nervous system, examine internal narratives, remove blocks, and reimagine what’s
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Karen Kenney (00:01):
Hey, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I'm super
duper excited to be here today.If you're watching this, you
might see that my hair isblowing around everywhere
because I got a fan going in thecorner because it's hotter than
Hades up here in my office.We're in the middle of a heat
wave here in New Hampshire, andI just wanted to get this sucker
done. So fingers crossed that myinternet stays on, because it's
(00:23):
been going in and out, and it isjust like, hot as shit, which I
love. Don't get me wrong, youmight be able to see my face is
a little red. I just got out ofthe shower because I went for a
little three mile walk outside.I wanted, I love the heat, love
the heat, but I also want to besmart. So anyways, here we are,
and we're back. We're going totalk about, we're going to talk
(00:45):
about this concept of safeenough. Now, this is something
that I kind of created formyself, for my own brain, for my
own ability to, like, calm thehook down, which we're going to
talk about a little bit
okay, like, what I mean by allof this. So the number one,
(01:06):
you've heard me say this beforeon other episodes, the number
one question that our nervoussystems are always asking. Okay,
so when I talk about nervoussystem, I'm particularly talking
about, like, the autonomicnervous system, which is like
the sympathetic nervous system,which we'll talk about a little
bit in the parasympatheticnervous system. I'm going to
(01:27):
keep this really, like prettymuch basic, so that you can just
get a a taste, like a sip, sip,as Linda Ty says, of what I'm
talking about, I don't need tomake it super intricate for you
to understand the essence ofwhat what's on my hat in my mind
today, and hopefully it'll behelpful and valuable to you too.
Number one question our nervoussystem is asking is, Am I safe?
(01:49):
Am I safe? Am I safe? Okay? Sowhen we are picking up cues from
the world around us, and thisstarted when we were wicked
young, that's the thing withlittle kids and babies like
little toddlers, little kidswere, we were always kind of
looking up at the adults aroundus, at the people around us, at
the environment, and trying tounderstand, like, is it safe?
(02:12):
Here are these people safe,right? And this has a lot to do
with how we end up creatingrelationships and attaching and
all these other things, likeattaching to our moms, attaching
to our fathers, like in healthyand good ways. But we can also
end up having like thesedysregulated attachment styles
too, that they call although,for me, I just think that we
were in the situations that wewere in, and we probably, as
(02:34):
children, did the best we couldwith what we had. So I don't
really like to label ourselvestoo much, but the nervous system
is either going to go intosympathetic response, which is
like that fight and flight, thatlike, oh shit, something's
wrong, right? We take a look atour environment or the people in
it, or whatever, and we go intolike, Oh my god. How do I want
(02:56):
to respond to the informationthat is coming in that I'm
perceiving and receiving, right?Do I want to go into fight or
flight or freeze or what wesometimes call fawn? Now, if
you're if the threat level feelslike this is to me, is just
common sense, right? If thethreat level feels like, okay, I
(03:17):
can probably overcome thisperson, this situation, this
place, we might take a fightlike, we might choose fight.
We're like, Okay, we're gonnafight back if we can't, if we're
like, oh my god, saber toothtiger. This thing is gonna kill
me. It's bigger than me. It canharm me or hurt me, this person,
etc, this situation. Then wemight flight. We might run, take
(03:39):
off, right? Choose not to, like,put down the Dukes and just rut
Hall ass, basically, right? Ifyou can't do either of those,
sometimes we go into what'scalled the Free State, where you
literally just kind of shut downand kind of play a possum, you
know what I mean, where you'rejust like, can't move. And
there's more fancy words forthese states, okay, but I just
(04:01):
want to keep it pretty simple.And fawning is when you kind of
just like, I say, you try tobefriend the thing that is that
is perceived as a threat. Like,please don't hurt me. I'll be
whatever you want me to be,like, whatever. Okay, so we have
these different responses, andsometimes we call these also
trauma responses. Okay, that'ssympathetic. That's the fight
(04:24):
and flight. Then we also haveparasympathetic, and
parasympathetic is what we callthe rest and digest state like
this is when we go into therelaxation response. This is the
response we can experience whenwe actually are feeling safety,
when we're not feelingthreatened, when we're not
scared out of our minds, whenwe're not anxious or worried or
(04:45):
stressed or overwhelmed. Andthis is what a lot of the tools
right that are out there thatpeople use, like everybody, from
yoga teaches to therapists tosomatic body workers to
whatever, right. Use. They usedifferent tools that help us to
return to kind of a more sympathparasympathetic state, okay, and
(05:10):
that's what we want. Whathappens sometimes, though these
days, is, I hear a lot of peoplesaying, well, I want to regulate
my nervous system. We need toregulate our nervous system
because we have becomedysregulated because of chronic
stress and social media and ourphones and technology and AI in
(05:35):
the state of the world, in thegovernment, in the wars and all
all the hatred and violence andwhatever, people's nervous
systems are, like, jacked upbeyond belief a lot of the time.
And so there's a lot of talkabout like, oh, I need to be
regulated. I need to beregulated. I need to return to
safety. I need to return tosafety. Now I am also a teacher
(05:57):
of some of these things, likesome of the tools and stuff that
we can use to help ourselvesbecome more regulated. But I'm
also a kid that grew up with,like, a lot of fear. I was also
a young adult and an adult thathas a lot of fear. I've talked
about this on different episodeswhere I think one of the reasons
why, you know, I do the workthat I do, is I was trying to
(06:20):
gather as many different toolsas I could to try and help
myself mentally, emotionally,physically, spiritually, to
bring myself back into a stateor a sense of safety and calm.
But here's the reality now, I'mnot saying I'm right. I'm not
saying hashtag. I always sayhashtag, not a therapist. I'm
(06:42):
not saying other therapists andother people will agree with
this, but this is just what hasworked for me, and that's what I
share on this podcast. I'malways trying to let you guys
know that while nobody canactually pick up the tools and
use them for you, nobody cansolve your problems for you.
Nobody can like, quote, unquote,do the work for you. But you
(07:06):
absolutely do not have to do italone. So I love to share things
that have worked for me, toolsthat have worked for me, books,
resources, whatever, that haveworked for me, so that as you're
trying to also navigate thiswhole being human experience,
you don't feel like, oh my god,I'm all on my on my own, and I
have to figure it all out.You're not alone. You are loved,
(07:29):
right? You're not going crazy,right? This stuff is hard. This
being human on the planet rightnow is hard. And then try to
imagine doing it as not a whiteperson, as somebody who maybe is
in a group or a community,right? Whether you're black or
LGBTQIA or brown skinned or,quote, unquote, right, what the
(07:50):
world would say is marginalizedor different or whatever. Again,
I don't like to put a ton oflabels on people, but we
certainly know that not all ofus are starting at the same
starting line. Do you know whatI mean? So on top of just like
being human is hard, then wehave, you know, economic
disparity. We have socio youknow, we just have all the
(08:11):
things that just make it this,systems of racism, etc, etc,
that make everything so muchharder for certain groups of
people. So one of the thingsthat I can say is that has been
even more difficult, right?Meaning, more difficult as just
as a human is being female inthis world, being a quote,
unquote girl or a woman in thisworld. Because here's the thing,
(08:33):
while my nervous system keepsasking me, am I safe? Am I safe?
Am I safe? I cannot bullshitmyself, right? Like I know too
much, I've seen too much, andwhere I have landed is this,
this world, this 3d world,meaning the world that we've
created, although we would callit small, our reality. It's not
(08:55):
capital, our reality, right?Here in the dream, A Course in
Miracles might call it here inthe illusion, right? Yoga might
call it the Maya, the illusion,this idea of, you know, we're
all individual, separate beingswalking around on the planet,
right? Being, being a woman inthis world, you do not, almost
ever feel safe. Now, if you're adude listening to this, and
(09:20):
you're like, What do you mean?What are you talking about? Go
and talk to some of the women,the girls that you know right,
the young women, the grown assadults that you know. And they
will tell you non stop storiesof like not feeling safe enough
to walk to their car at night,how they use their keys as
(09:41):
weapons in their hands, howwe're always aware of how we're
dressed. What we're doing is mydrink gonna get roofied like Da,
da, da, da da, to try and movethrough the world, right? And
again, this extends beyond. I'mjust using woman, because that's
something I can talk about in myown experience. I can't talk
about other groups of people'sexperiences directly, although I
(10:04):
can certainly listen and try tounderstand and empathize and
imagine how fucking hot it is.Do you know what I mean to be,
to be,
you know, to be in this world aswell. And so we have this
conundrum, don't we? Because thenervous system is asking for
safety. And I've like again as akid of a murdered mother, like
(10:26):
when you know that somethingthat brutal, that tragic, that
violent, that somebody can beatanother person to death, is a
reality when you experience ityourself, when you see the
violence in the world, the waypeople talk to each other and
treat each other the way wetreat animals, when you just
look at it overall, right?There's no part of my nervous
(10:47):
system that is sitting therehunky dory feeling safe. And I
realized, like, oh, and I wasjust talking about this on a
podcast that I was recently on.I was on a podcast called it has
to be me, and the woman whotests masses is fantastic, and
it's her, it's her podcast, andI talk about it a little bit on
(11:09):
that as well. What has occurredto me is that this idea of
ideal, quote, unquote, safetythat I'm hoping to feel here in
the human experience for me,I've just accepted it's probably
never going to come because I'vejust again. I've seen too much,
I've heard too much, I'veexperienced too much. I have
evidence of too much, right,cruelty and brutality and
(11:32):
violence and hatred and like allthese different things. So my
goal, my goal for me, has beento gather as many tools as I can
to feel safe enough to feel safeenough to be able to do what I
came here to do, to be able tofollow my individual curriculum,
(11:56):
to be able to answer the call ofmy divine assignment, to show up
in the world as a creative tospeak and use my voice to be a
teacher, right? To have apodcast, to go out and lead
groups like, to to help otherpeople as a spiritual mentor, as
a coach, etcetera. Because if Ijust listened to the fear that
(12:18):
my ego and my anxiety like,produces all the time, right?
Practically shouts all the time.I would become completely
paralyzed. I would probablybecome housebound. I would
probably be like, terrified outof my mind most of the time. And
I'm like, I can't live this way.I have to figure out a way to
experience as much as muchphysical and psychological
(12:42):
safety as possible. I want to beable to move through the world
without feeling a constantperceived threat that is so
overwhelming that it keeps mefrom taking action. And when you
recognize, oh, the world isn'tsafe, and your your your
(13:03):
history, your patterns, your theway your subconscious works,
right? A lot of us, kids whowere had trauma, a lot of
trauma, we become hypervigilant, right? Like I'm hyper
aware of noises, lights, flashesof lights. I'm hyper aware of
people's body language, theirenergy, what they're doing with
(13:23):
their face. Right when you growup in an environment like I did,
you are constantly seeking notonly verbal but body language
cues and sometimes even justsounds that alert me to whether
or not what's about to go downis going to be something
pleasant or unpleasant, you knowwhat I'm saying. So I'm always
(13:46):
picking up either cues of safetyor picking up danger signs. I
know I'm not alone in this. Solike double A men hands, if you
can relate to what I'm saying.But one of the things that I see
is I feel like sometimes we'rebeing sold this bill of goods,
where it's like, just do these10 Steps, use these five tools,
(14:07):
and you will become regulated.You will have a regulated
nervous system. And I'm like,maybe you pal, maybe you pal.
But that's not my experience. Myexperience has not been that I
just exist in this, this littlelike floaty place of like, Oh,
now we're just
Unknown (14:25):
going to put on our floaties and float down the
river and drink, you know,Virgin Penny coladas or
Karen Kenney (14:32):
whatever. Like, no, that is not my experience.
My experience is that I tend tobe, like I said, hyper aware,
hyper vigilant, and beingconstantly regulated for me,
finding constant safety, likewhere everything is just like,
oh, like, yeah, I can just, youknow how, like an animal, like a
cat, will all of a sudden giveyou its belly and open up. And,
(14:55):
you know, I was recently doingsomething with some. People,
where we were trying, it doesn'tmatter, but just ponies were
involved, a pony and a littleminiature donkey. And I was
listening to all the horsepeople, and they were saying
that, you know, horses out inthe wild. And this was a some
(15:15):
something somebody said to me,I'm not quoting it as a truth,
but this is what somebody saidto me, that horses out in the
wild will, wild will often walkfor like, 18 hours at a time.
They will not bed down, theywill not lay down and rest
unless they feel safe. And Istarted to think about this, and
I'm like, Yeah, that sounds likepeople too. I know people who
go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go,move, move, move, move.
(15:37):
Everything's fast. Everything'squick. Don't stop, because if I
stop, I'm going to have to feelsome things. And what I'm going
to feel is I'm not going togoing to feel that I am not
safe. You know what I mean? Sorather than me just trying to
feel regulated all the time, Idiscovered that number one, I
don't have to feel 100% safe allthe time. I just need to feel
(16:00):
safe enough, and I'm not waitingfor this perfect like little
island of regulation in mynervous system. I would rather
teach my nervous system overtime, and this is what it's
been. It's been a journey forme. I've been collecting and
gathering tools for a reallylong time, tools that I now
(16:21):
obviously share with my one toone clients, people in the nest
and I oftentimes, you know, tryto drop little breadcrumbs here
and there too. Also on thepodcast, some things are just
better taught in person. Do youknow what I mean? Some some
things that I do like Thai Yoga,bodywork, Thai Yoga, massage,
yoga, certain things like that.I just prefer to do them in
person. So, but here are theseother hours, right? You know, I
(16:45):
love alliteration, so I wasthinking to myself, Okay, rather
than being reactive all thetime. So if I'm in a state of
not feeling enough safety, Iwill certainly be reactive, and
I will be looking and feellooking for and feeling
triggered, probably a lot of thetime when I move out of
(17:06):
regulation and I'm indysregulation, right? And I
don't feel cues of safety, Idon't feel like, okay, I can put
down my Dukes here. I can't besafe and vulnerable and open for
business, right? If I'm in thatstate, I'm certainly almost
going to be more hypersensitiveto being quote, unquote
(17:27):
triggered or having my buttonspushed or being on edge or being
anxious or worrisome or stressedor overwhelmed, right? So I
don't want to be in a placewhere I feel constantly reactive
to the world around me, and Ialso don't want to be in a place
where I am very rigid, right? Sofor me, what I found is that
(17:50):
when in my younger years, Iwould tend to always, quote,
unquote, react in particularways, I wasn't able to respond
yet from a place of love, I wasalways almost reacting out of a
place of fear. And I wouldbecome rigid in my responses,
(18:10):
meaning, like anything new, likeno, I was deeply patterned in
the way that I re was reactingto the world. And I don't want
to move through the world in avery reactive and rigid way,
like so much of like, you know,when I when I think about my
yoga practice and being a yogateacher, you know, for I don't
(18:33):
know, like, 25 years orwhatever,
I wanted more flexibility, But Ididn't just want more
flexibility in my body, in mymuscles, in my fascia, right?
Like I wanted more mentalflexibility. I wanted more
emotional flexibility. I didn'twant to be a person who always
(18:54):
just reacted to things in thesame way, right? I wanted to be
able to choose who and how I wasgoing to be. I wanted to be able
to have authorship and agencyand autonomy right over the kind
of person I was going to be,what was going to come out of my
mouth, the choices I was goingto make. Because a lot of times
(19:14):
when we're in fight or flight,in that sympathetic, sympathetic
state, when we're beingreactive, we're not coming from
our highest capital S self.We're coming from one of those
parts of ourselves as trying toprotect ourselves. And I always
say, like, it's like, the frontof my brain goes offline and all
good decision making goes like,out the door, you know what I
(19:35):
mean. And like, I'm like, Idon't want to live that way I
did those years, like I did thattime. You know what I mean. So
now, rather than just waitingfor like, quote, unquote,
perfect safety, I have trying tocreate an experience within my
own psyche, my psychological andphysical experience where I am
(19:57):
safe enough that I can feel.More regulated, that I can feel
more responsive like I canrespond to the world. I can
choose how I want to respond towhat I'm seeing, hearing,
feeling, thinking, imagining isa lot of times what we're
reacting to is our fear of whatwe think is going to happen,
(20:19):
what I think they're going tosay what I think this person or
this situation is going to do,right? So I want to be able to
be more responsive. I want to beable to be more resourced. You
know, when we're little kids, wedon't have a lot of tools, so we
just do our damn best tosurvive. And a lot of the things
(20:40):
that we do, those survivalstrategies that we picked up as
kids, walking on eggshells,fawning, making ourselves small,
trying to be the good kid,trying to be the one that
doesn't need anything, whatever.There's 1000 ways right that we
can like react to ourcircumstances as children when
we feel out of control, but Iwanted to be able to feel more
(21:02):
responsive, more resourced, likeI had some tools. I had a bunch
of different tools in what Icall my spiritual toolkit that I
could choose to pick up and useon any given day, depending on
what I needed that day. I wantto also just not feel, quote,
unquote, regulated. I want to beable to be resilient. I want to
(21:23):
have a resilient nervous systemthat can have big fluctuations,
but also knows how to return tofeelings of safety and calm. So
I'm not always just looking tofeel regulated. I'm like no,
because the world doesn't worklike that. You know, I know me
(21:44):
personally. I can't speak foryou, but me personally, I'm
probably not going to walkaround in this totally regulated
ventral state all the time. Youknow what I mean? It's like, I
am going to have spikes ofenergy where my hat starts to
thump and, you know, I becomeaware that it's a little harder
for me to swallow, and I'm like,a little more hypersensitive to
my environment. And then it'slike, okay, what do I need right
(22:05):
now? And that's when I golooking for the tools. Because
if I can experience physical andpsychological safety, then I
will feel more connected tomyself, my true capital, s self,
and just myself like like mybody, me also. I'm not my body.
But you know what I'm saying, Iwill feel more connected to
(22:27):
others that I am in relationshipto, and I will feel more
connected to the world aroundme. And if I am never feeling
safe, if I'm always runningscared, if I'm always in a state
of overwhelming anxiety, and Ican never get regulated. That's
that's not soothing. So notsoothing. Don't want to live
like that. But I'm not actuallyexpecting the world to be a
(22:51):
particular way so that then Ican feel safe. And that's why,
like, for a long time, I used tosay things like, Oh, I'm trying
to create a safe space for you,this is a safe space. And I
realized, like, one day I'mlike, I can't say that. Like,
it's not for me to determinewhat feels safe for somebody
else. All I can do is to do mybest to create an environment
(23:16):
and an experience of safety. ButI don't know everybody's
subconscious triggers. I don'tknow everybody's backstory and
their history and what they'vebeen through, so all I can do is
do my best, and are there goingto be times when I might blow it
or screw up or whatever? Yeah,because a I'm human and again, I
don't know everybody's, youknow, biography. I don't know
(23:39):
everybody's history and whatthey've been through, and what
the things are that trigger themor upset them, a particular tone
of voice, a smell, it could evenbe a color, like whatever it is,
right? A tone of voice atcertain energy level. You know,
people can get quote, unquote,triggered by like, 1000 little
things. So all I can do is tryto do my best. Okay, so again,
(24:03):
what I want to experience in myown body is safe enough. I want
to be able to drop intoparasympathetic when I find
myself going into sympathetic,that fight and flight and freeze
and fawn because it's guaranteedthat it's going to happen. This
is not a safe world. I don'teven like saying that out loud,
(24:25):
but it's the truth. It's not asafe world. It's not a safe
world for the animals. It's nota safe world for a lot of
different people. And if you arelucky enough to move through the
world where you never feelscared or threatened, or like
you have no power or you have novoice or you have no authority,
(24:46):
then I hate to say it, butyou're probably some old white
guy not to pick on the old whiteguys, just saying, You know what
I mean. But the rest of us, wesometimes tend to feel like we
gotta have eyes in the. Back ofour head. You know what I'm
saying. So here's the thing thatI have found to be a little bit
helpful. Okay, here are somethings. They're not all tools.
(25:10):
But number one, I gotta know myown triggers. I have to be aware
of the kinds of places, thekinds of people, the kinds of
environments where maybe I'mgoing to get a little antsy, I'm
going to get a littlesuspicious, I'm going to get a
little on edge, I'm going to geta little like I need to know
thyself. And this is so much ofthe work that I do with people.
(25:33):
We got to know why we do what wedo, think, what we think,
believe, what we believe, saywhat we say, do what we do. As I
said, we have to know ourselves.We have to be curious enough as
about our own patterns, our ownhabits, our own stories, our own
beliefs, our own identity, howwe're showing up in the world,
why we're showing up that way,and if we don't like the
(25:54):
experience, what maybe can we doto tweak it, to adjust it, to
transform it, to change it, todevelop it, to have personal
growth, self development, right?This is the work that I do with
people. So we gotta know ourtriggers, and it's not like, oh,
avoid them. My hope is that Ican experience them and know how
(26:17):
to come back to safety morequickly, that I can get a little
dysregulated by something, andthen go, oh. I know how to be
responsive. I know how to dothat breath, where I breathe in
through my nose fully and deeplyand then exhale out through my
mouth twice as long with alittle bit of sound. I wear a
(26:38):
watch. I don't have it on rightnow. I took it off to take a
shower, but if I have on myApple watch, I can just hit that
little hat icon and it will showme what my heart rate is. The
other day, my heart rate was uparound like 74 Okay, I just sat
and did the breath that I justdescribed to you, inhale through
your nose, fully and deeply,exhale out twice as long,
(27:00):
through the mouth with a littlebit of sound. This helps to down
regulate the nervous system,move us from sympathetic to
parasympathetic into therelaxation response. And I
literally watched my heart ratedrop down within a minute, like
six beats per minute. It wentdown from like 76 or whatever it
was, to 70 and then I got itdown to like 64 just from
(27:25):
breathing. That's one simpletool that pretty much everybody
can do. Okay, so I want to knowmy triggers, the other ways, the
other incredible. And I wouldn'teven call it a tool so much as I
don't even know what to call it,but let's call it a tool. Is
building relationships withpeople that you feel like you
(27:46):
can be yourself with people thatsee you, I would say your
balcony people, right? Thepeople who love you. And this
might be one other person, ifyou're lucky, it's two or three
or four, where you have yourpeople for some of you, that
might be your family. For someof you, your family is the place
where you do not feel safe atall. Right? For some of you,
(28:07):
it'll be your sweetie or yourpartner or your best friend. For
some of you, maybe it's asibling, I don't know, but for
whoever it is, it's likebuilding relationships with
beautiful people who see you,who try to understand you, who
get you, who celebrate you, whosupport you, who say, come here,
right? Let me give you a hug.I'm listening. You don't have to
(28:29):
do this on your own. Sometimeswe have to hire those people,
coaches and mentors andwhatever. And there's no shame
in that. And there's nothingwrong with that, because
sometimes the environments thatwe find ourselves in, they are
not supportive. They are notsupportive. And you need to have
somebody who can be in yourcorner, like Rocky to like, I
(28:51):
always say in the Rocky movie,Mick, mix in his corner like,
you know what I mean? He's like,cheering him on. He's pointing
out some ways to help him growand develop and become better,
right? The other thing is soone, knowing your triggers,
knowing what might upset you,and then gathering some tools to
be able to when you do gettriggered or dysregulated, to
(29:11):
bring you back to psychologicaland physical safety, to
relationships and people. Andthen another thing is that body
awareness, right? Body awarenesstechniques are incredibly
helpful, whether that'ssomatics, whether that's yoga,
whether that's breath work,pranayama, breathing, whether
that's EFT, tapping, EmotionalFreedom Technique, right?
(29:33):
Whether that's bilateralstimulation, whether that's
like, you know, peripheralvision and going out, whether
it's hypnosis. I mean, there's ashit ton of tools out there to
help us learn, but I want to saythis to me, and again, I might
be wrong. I don't want to justblame like my I don't want to
(29:58):
ever have to blame my behavior.Behavior on my trauma and say,
Well, I'm just reactive, becauseit might be true, but I want to
be able to be aware enough thatI am noticing that I'm being
reactive, and then I can chooseto respond instead. I don't want
to be stuck in rigidity, in mypatterns, and my habits and my
(30:21):
ways of being that are causingmy own suffering or inflicting
myself on other people. I can'ttell you how many times I heard
growing up, that's just the wayhe is, that's just the way she
is, that's just the way thatthey are, like everybody else
had to fucking suffer becausethis person had no emotional
(30:42):
intelligence. This person neverbothered to take a look in the
soul mirror. This person neverbothered to pick up a book and
read it. The person never wentto therapy. They never got a
coach. They never fucking tooktwo seconds to look at
themselves and realize thattheir way of being was bullying
and traumatizing and awful forother people to have to be
around double A men hands, ifyou know what I'm talking about,
(31:05):
right? So part of how I also tryto experience safety is creating
more safety in the world foranimals and for other humans to
to find their way home. To Doyou know what I mean, we can try
to be a safe place for otherpeople to show up in curiosity
(31:26):
instead of judgment, to listen,maybe more than we talk, which I
know it's funny right now. Mesaying that because I'm talking,
talking, talking, but it's apodcast, right? But to be able
to quote, unquote, hold spacefor people when they're going
through a thing and to just bethere, you might not always need
to know the quote, unquote rightthing to say that, can I hold
(31:47):
the space? Can I be there? Can Ibe a container for somebody
else? So I hope that this islanding for you in some way,
that this resonates for you insome way, that this concept of
being safe enough that we're notwaiting to feel perfect safety
before we go after our dream,before we say yes to being on
(32:10):
the podcast, before we say yesto starting to write the book or
join the club or start theproject or start a business, or
say yes and go on the date. Youknow, I had a friend the other
day write to me out of the blue,and they just said, I'm going on
a first date. They're like,Karen, Karen, I'm going on a
first date, Karen. I don't likefirst dates, right? I just
(32:34):
started laughing, and I wroteback, and I was just, you know,
trying to be a safe space forthem and say some things and
make them laugh and loosen upand try to enjoy the experience,
because you never know that datecould lead to falling in love.
And how exciting is that, right?But the ego mind gets involved,
and it goes into like a timetravels into the future and it
(32:54):
starts to worry and get nervous,or it time travels into the past
and it goes into shame and blameand guilt and weirdness, and I
blew it that last time, and it'snot going to work out. And I'm
like, dude, like, let's be inthe present moment. Like, let's
just experience this. You know,this is kind of exciting. Tell
me more. You know, it was prettycool. So we're not always going
(33:16):
to experience perfect safety,but if we can use some tools, if
we can find our people, if wecan become aware of our own
triggers, our own anxieties, ourown fears, and use right use
these things. And if you'relike, I don't know how to do
this. KK, please, for the loveof of all things holy, join the
(33:36):
nest. It's 50 bucks a month. Ican probably help right. Sign up
if you hate it. You leave afterone month, right. Find out more
about working with me one to onein the quest. You know, I love
helping people navigate thiswhole being human experience
using, you know, spiritualprinciples, spiritual practices
(33:57):
and subconscious reprogrammingand hypnosis and neuroscience
and practical tools to interruptour patterns when we're getting
reactive, you know, oh, my God.So the goal for me now, and
maybe it is for you too, is tofeel safe enough so that we can
do what we came here to do, sowe can be who we are meant to
(34:18):
be, who the divine and you know,just you, maybe you don't
believe in anything greater,right? Maybe you're just like, I
just want to be my best self.Perfect, great. Run with it. But
it's hard to be our best selfwhen we are getting hijacked all
the time by fear, right? We wantto learn how to operate from a
place of love. And here's justthe facts. Sometimes, right, we
(34:43):
are not going to feel safe, andsometimes we have to do it a
little bit scared. I do, if youknew how many things I did
scared, right? I think a lot ofpeople perceive me as like, you
know, I am tough, okay, right?Like, and I don't mean like, Oh,
I'm tough. Like, I'm gonna beatyou up. I am wicked resilient. I
am pretty tough. I am strong andright. And I have a lot of
(35:07):
patterns and habits in mynervous system of being scared,
and those things rear up. Theythey present themselves, but now
I have enough tools to be ableto help myself to come back to a
state where maybe I'm notfeeling 100% safety, but I feel
safe enough to take the leap offaith to know that my spiritual
(35:28):
team comes with me. My ancestorscome with me, my mom comes with
me. God, Holy Spirit, my innerteacher, because so much of
safety for me is learning how totrust myself. I can't always
trust other people. I can'talways trust the rest of the
world, but I can trust myself. Ican trust the inner voice, the
(35:50):
inner teacher. I can trust Godand source in the Divine, or
whatever you happen to call it,the universe. I can trust a
handful of people around me whoI know have my back, who love
me, who cheerlead me, whochampion me, and who want the
best for me. And if you cangather these people, these
things, these tools, keeplistening to the podcast, maybe
(36:11):
join the NASA. However, it is,read some good books, look up
some of the tools that Imentioned, right? And you too,
because this is the goal for me,is to feel safe enough.
And I've I've made my peace withthat. I've made my peace that,
like this is the body and thenervous system that I have, and
(36:34):
as long as I'm alive, right, Iwill be trying to help myself
and reparent myself and be kindto myself and compassionate. And
there's going to be times whenwe just have to feel safe enough
and maybe do it a little bitscared. But you don't have to do
it alone. I'm here hopefully youhave some people around you who
(36:55):
also love you and support you.Okay, I gotta go. I gotta go
teach a yoga class. But I hopethis has been helpful in some
way and valuable. And if youlisten to this and you thought,
Oh, my God, this is great, orwhatever, this was valuable.
This was helpful. Please shareit with somebody. Send it to a
cousin, a girlfriend, a bestfriend and a sister, whoever
your auntie. Send it to somebodyyou love. Okay, wherever you go,
(37:19):
may you leave the animals in theother humans and yourself in the
environment and the planetbetter than how you first found
it wherever you go, may you andyour energy and your presence
and your love and your safeenoughness be a blessing. Bye,
you.
Hey, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I'm super
duper excited to be here today.If you're watching this, you
might see that my hair isblowing around everywhere
because I got a fan going in thecorner because it's hotter than
Hades up here in my office.We're in the middle of a heat
wave here in New Hampshire, andI just wanted to get this sucker
done. So fingers crossed that myinternet stays on, because it's
(00:23):
been going in and out, and it isjust like, hot as shit, which I
love. Don't get me wrong, youmight be able to see my face is
a little red. I just got out ofthe shower because I went for a
little three mile walk outside.I wanted, I love the heat, love
the heat, but I also want to besmart. So anyways, here we are,
and we're back. We're going totalk about, we're going to talk
(00:45):
about this concept of safeenough. Now, this is something
that I kind of created formyself, for my own brain, for my
own ability to, like, calm thehook down, which we're going to
talk about a little bit
okay, like, what I mean by allof this. So the number one,
(01:06):
you've heard me say this beforeon other episodes, the number
one question that our nervoussystems are always asking. Okay,
so when I talk about nervoussystem, I'm particularly talking
about, like, the autonomicnervous system, which is like
the sympathetic nervous system,which we'll talk about a little
bit in the parasympatheticnervous system. I'm going to
(01:27):
keep this really, like prettymuch basic, so that you can just
get a a taste, like a sip, sip,as Linda Ty says, of what I'm
talking about, I don't need tomake it super intricate for you
to understand the essence ofwhat what's on my hat in my mind
today, and hopefully it'll behelpful and valuable to you too.
Number one question our nervoussystem is asking is, Am I safe?
(01:49):
Am I safe? Am I safe? Okay? Sowhen we are picking up cues from
the world around us, and thisstarted when we were wicked
young, that's the thing withlittle kids and babies like
little toddlers, little kidswere, we were always kind of
looking up at the adults aroundus, at the people around us, at
the environment, and trying tounderstand, like, is it safe?
(02:12):
Here are these people safe,right? And this has a lot to do
with how we end up creatingrelationships and attaching and
all these other things, likeattaching to our moms, attaching
to our fathers, like in healthyand good ways. But we can also
end up having like thesedysregulated attachment styles
too, that they call although,for me, I just think that we
were in the situations that wewere in, and we probably, as
(02:34):
children, did the best we couldwith what we had. So I don't
really like to label ourselvestoo much, but the nervous system
is either going to go intosympathetic response, which is
like that fight and flight, thatlike, oh shit, something's
wrong, right? We take a look atour environment or the people in
it, or whatever, and we go intolike, Oh my god. How do I want
(02:56):
to respond to the informationthat is coming in that I'm
perceiving and receiving, right?Do I want to go into fight or
flight or freeze or what wesometimes call fawn? Now, if
you're if the threat level feelslike this is to me, is just
common sense, right? If thethreat level feels like, okay, I
(03:17):
can probably overcome thisperson, this situation, this
place, we might take a fightlike, we might choose fight.
We're like, Okay, we're gonnafight back if we can't, if we're
like, oh my god, saber toothtiger. This thing is gonna kill
me. It's bigger than me. It canharm me or hurt me, this person,
etc, this situation. Then wemight flight. We might run, take
(03:39):
off, right? Choose not to, like,put down the Dukes and just rut
Hall ass, basically, right? Ifyou can't do either of those,
sometimes we go into what'scalled the Free State, where you
literally just kind of shut downand kind of play a possum, you
know what I mean, where you'rejust like, can't move. And
there's more fancy words forthese states, okay, but I just
(04:01):
want to keep it pretty simple.And fawning is when you kind of
just like, I say, you try tobefriend the thing that is that
is perceived as a threat. Like,please don't hurt me. I'll be
whatever you want me to be,like, whatever. Okay, so we have
these different responses, andsometimes we call these also
trauma responses. Okay, that'ssympathetic. That's the fight
(04:24):
and flight. Then we also haveparasympathetic, and
parasympathetic is what we callthe rest and digest state like
this is when we go into therelaxation response. This is the
response we can experience whenwe actually are feeling safety,
when we're not feelingthreatened, when we're not
scared out of our minds, whenwe're not anxious or worried or
(04:45):
stressed or overwhelmed. Andthis is what a lot of the tools
right that are out there thatpeople use, like everybody, from
yoga teaches to therapists tosomatic body workers to
whatever, right. Use. They usedifferent tools that help us to
return to kind of a more sympathparasympathetic state, okay, and
(05:10):
that's what we want. Whathappens sometimes, though these
days, is, I hear a lot of peoplesaying, well, I want to regulate
my nervous system. We need toregulate our nervous system
because we have becomedysregulated because of chronic
stress and social media and ourphones and technology and AI in
(05:35):
the state of the world, in thegovernment, in the wars and all
all the hatred and violence andwhatever, people's nervous
systems are, like, jacked upbeyond belief a lot of the time.
And so there's a lot of talkabout like, oh, I need to be
regulated. I need to beregulated. I need to return to
safety. I need to return tosafety. Now I am also a teacher
(05:57):
of some of these things, likesome of the tools and stuff that
we can use to help ourselvesbecome more regulated. But I'm
also a kid that grew up with,like, a lot of fear. I was also
a young adult and an adult thathas a lot of fear. I've talked
about this on different episodeswhere I think one of the reasons
why, you know, I do the workthat I do, is I was trying to
(06:20):
gather as many different toolsas I could to try and help
myself mentally, emotionally,physically, spiritually, to
bring myself back into a stateor a sense of safety and calm.
But here's the reality now, I'mnot saying I'm right. I'm not
saying hashtag. I always sayhashtag, not a therapist. I'm
(06:42):
not saying other therapists andother people will agree with
this, but this is just what hasworked for me, and that's what I
share on this podcast. I'malways trying to let you guys
know that while nobody canactually pick up the tools and
use them for you, nobody cansolve your problems for you.
Nobody can like, quote, unquote,do the work for you. But you
(07:06):
absolutely do not have to do italone. So I love to share things
that have worked for me, toolsthat have worked for me, books,
resources, whatever, that haveworked for me, so that as you're
trying to also navigate thiswhole being human experience,
you don't feel like, oh my god,I'm all on my on my own, and I
have to figure it all out.You're not alone. You are loved,
(07:29):
right? You're not going crazy,right? This stuff is hard. This
being human on the planet rightnow is hard. And then try to
imagine doing it as not a whiteperson, as somebody who maybe is
in a group or a community,right? Whether you're black or
LGBTQIA or brown skinned or,quote, unquote, right, what the
(07:50):
world would say is marginalizedor different or whatever. Again,
I don't like to put a ton oflabels on people, but we
certainly know that not all ofus are starting at the same
starting line. Do you know whatI mean? So on top of just like
being human is hard, then wehave, you know, economic
disparity. We have socio youknow, we just have all the
(08:11):
things that just make it this,systems of racism, etc, etc,
that make everything so muchharder for certain groups of
people. So one of the thingsthat I can say is that has been
even more difficult, right?Meaning, more difficult as just
as a human is being female inthis world, being a quote,
unquote girl or a woman in thisworld. Because here's the thing,
(08:33):
while my nervous system keepsasking me, am I safe? Am I safe?
Am I safe? I cannot bullshitmyself, right? Like I know too
much, I've seen too much, andwhere I have landed is this,
this world, this 3d world,meaning the world that we've
created, although we would callit small, our reality. It's not
(08:55):
capital, our reality, right?Here in the dream, A Course in
Miracles might call it here inthe illusion, right? Yoga might
call it the Maya, the illusion,this idea of, you know, we're
all individual, separate beingswalking around on the planet,
right? Being, being a woman inthis world, you do not, almost
ever feel safe. Now, if you're adude listening to this, and
(09:20):
you're like, What do you mean?What are you talking about? Go
and talk to some of the women,the girls that you know right,
the young women, the grown assadults that you know. And they
will tell you non stop storiesof like not feeling safe enough
to walk to their car at night,how they use their keys as
(09:41):
weapons in their hands, howwe're always aware of how we're
dressed. What we're doing is mydrink gonna get roofied like Da,
da, da, da da, to try and movethrough the world, right? And
again, this extends beyond. I'mjust using woman, because that's
something I can talk about in myown experience. I can't talk
about other groups of people'sexperiences directly, although I
(10:04):
can certainly listen and try tounderstand and empathize and
imagine how fucking hot it is.Do you know what I mean to be,
to be,
you know, to be in this world aswell. And so we have this
conundrum, don't we? Because thenervous system is asking for
safety. And I've like again as akid of a murdered mother, like
(10:26):
when you know that somethingthat brutal, that tragic, that
violent, that somebody can beatanother person to death, is a
reality when you experience ityourself, when you see the
violence in the world, the waypeople talk to each other and
treat each other the way wetreat animals, when you just
look at it overall, right?There's no part of my nervous
(10:47):
system that is sitting therehunky dory feeling safe. And I
realized, like, oh, and I wasjust talking about this on a
podcast that I was recently on.I was on a podcast called it has
to be me, and the woman whotests masses is fantastic, and
it's her, it's her podcast, andI talk about it a little bit on
(11:09):
that as well. What has occurredto me is that this idea of
ideal, quote, unquote, safetythat I'm hoping to feel here in
the human experience for me,I've just accepted it's probably
never going to come because I'vejust again. I've seen too much,
I've heard too much, I'veexperienced too much. I have
evidence of too much, right,cruelty and brutality and
(11:32):
violence and hatred and like allthese different things. So my
goal, my goal for me, has beento gather as many tools as I can
to feel safe enough to feel safeenough to be able to do what I
came here to do, to be able tofollow my individual curriculum,
(11:56):
to be able to answer the call ofmy divine assignment, to show up
in the world as a creative tospeak and use my voice to be a
teacher, right? To have apodcast, to go out and lead
groups like, to to help otherpeople as a spiritual mentor, as
a coach, etcetera. Because if Ijust listened to the fear that
(12:18):
my ego and my anxiety like,produces all the time, right?
Practically shouts all the time.I would become completely
paralyzed. I would probablybecome housebound. I would
probably be like, terrified outof my mind most of the time. And
I'm like, I can't live this way.I have to figure out a way to
experience as much as muchphysical and psychological
(12:42):
safety as possible. I want to beable to move through the world
without feeling a constantperceived threat that is so
overwhelming that it keeps mefrom taking action. And when you
recognize, oh, the world isn'tsafe, and your your your
(13:03):
history, your patterns, your theway your subconscious works,
right? A lot of us, kids whowere had trauma, a lot of
trauma, we become hypervigilant, right? Like I'm hyper
aware of noises, lights, flashesof lights. I'm hyper aware of
people's body language, theirenergy, what they're doing with
(13:23):
their face. Right when you growup in an environment like I did,
you are constantly seeking notonly verbal but body language
cues and sometimes even justsounds that alert me to whether
or not what's about to go downis going to be something
pleasant or unpleasant, you knowwhat I'm saying. So I'm always
(13:46):
picking up either cues of safetyor picking up danger signs. I
know I'm not alone in this. Solike double A men hands, if you
can relate to what I'm saying.But one of the things that I see
is I feel like sometimes we'rebeing sold this bill of goods,
where it's like, just do these10 Steps, use these five tools,
(14:07):
and you will become regulated.You will have a regulated
nervous system. And I'm like,maybe you pal, maybe you pal.
But that's not my experience. Myexperience has not been that I
just exist in this, this littlelike floaty place of like, Oh,
now we're just
Unknown (14:25):
going to put on our floaties and float down the
river and drink, you know,Virgin Penny coladas or
Karen Kenney (14:32):
whatever. Like, no, that is not my experience.
My experience is that I tend tobe, like I said, hyper aware,
hyper vigilant, and beingconstantly regulated for me,
finding constant safety, likewhere everything is just like,
oh, like, yeah, I can just, youknow how, like an animal, like a
cat, will all of a sudden giveyou its belly and open up. And,
(14:55):
you know, I was recently doingsomething with some. People,
where we were trying, it doesn'tmatter, but just ponies were
involved, a pony and a littleminiature donkey. And I was
listening to all the horsepeople, and they were saying
that, you know, horses out inthe wild. And this was a some
(15:15):
something somebody said to me,I'm not quoting it as a truth,
but this is what somebody saidto me, that horses out in the
wild will, wild will often walkfor like, 18 hours at a time.
They will not bed down, theywill not lay down and rest
unless they feel safe. And Istarted to think about this, and
I'm like, Yeah, that sounds likepeople too. I know people who
go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go,move, move, move, move.
(15:37):
Everything's fast. Everything'squick. Don't stop, because if I
stop, I'm going to have to feelsome things. And what I'm going
to feel is I'm not going togoing to feel that I am not
safe. You know what I mean? Sorather than me just trying to
feel regulated all the time, Idiscovered that number one, I
don't have to feel 100% safe allthe time. I just need to feel
(16:00):
safe enough, and I'm not waitingfor this perfect like little
island of regulation in mynervous system. I would rather
teach my nervous system overtime, and this is what it's
been. It's been a journey forme. I've been collecting and
gathering tools for a reallylong time, tools that I now
(16:21):
obviously share with my one toone clients, people in the nest
and I oftentimes, you know, tryto drop little breadcrumbs here
and there too. Also on thepodcast, some things are just
better taught in person. Do youknow what I mean? Some some
things that I do like Thai Yoga,bodywork, Thai Yoga, massage,
yoga, certain things like that.I just prefer to do them in
person. So, but here are theseother hours, right? You know, I
(16:45):
love alliteration, so I wasthinking to myself, Okay, rather
than being reactive all thetime. So if I'm in a state of
not feeling enough safety, Iwill certainly be reactive, and
I will be looking and feellooking for and feeling
triggered, probably a lot of thetime when I move out of
(17:06):
regulation and I'm indysregulation, right? And I
don't feel cues of safety, Idon't feel like, okay, I can put
down my Dukes here. I can't besafe and vulnerable and open for
business, right? If I'm in thatstate, I'm certainly almost
going to be more hypersensitiveto being quote, unquote
(17:27):
triggered or having my buttonspushed or being on edge or being
anxious or worrisome or stressedor overwhelmed, right? So I
don't want to be in a placewhere I feel constantly reactive
to the world around me, and Ialso don't want to be in a place
where I am very rigid, right? Sofor me, what I found is that
(17:50):
when in my younger years, Iwould tend to always, quote,
unquote, react in particularways, I wasn't able to respond
yet from a place of love, I wasalways almost reacting out of a
place of fear. And I wouldbecome rigid in my responses,
(18:10):
meaning, like anything new, likeno, I was deeply patterned in
the way that I re was reactingto the world. And I don't want
to move through the world in avery reactive and rigid way,
like so much of like, you know,when I when I think about my
yoga practice and being a yogateacher, you know, for I don't
(18:33):
know, like, 25 years orwhatever,
I wanted more flexibility, But Ididn't just want more
flexibility in my body, in mymuscles, in my fascia, right?
Like I wanted more mentalflexibility. I wanted more
emotional flexibility. I didn'twant to be a person who always
(18:54):
just reacted to things in thesame way, right? I wanted to be
able to choose who and how I wasgoing to be. I wanted to be able
to have authorship and agencyand autonomy right over the kind
of person I was going to be,what was going to come out of my
mouth, the choices I was goingto make. Because a lot of times
(19:14):
when we're in fight or flight,in that sympathetic, sympathetic
state, when we're beingreactive, we're not coming from
our highest capital S self.We're coming from one of those
parts of ourselves as trying toprotect ourselves. And I always
say, like, it's like, the frontof my brain goes offline and all
good decision making goes like,out the door, you know what I
(19:35):
mean. And like, I'm like, Idon't want to live that way I
did those years, like I did thattime. You know what I mean. So
now, rather than just waitingfor like, quote, unquote,
perfect safety, I have trying tocreate an experience within my
own psyche, my psychological andphysical experience where I am
(19:57):
safe enough that I can feel.More regulated, that I can feel
more responsive like I canrespond to the world. I can
choose how I want to respond towhat I'm seeing, hearing,
feeling, thinking, imagining isa lot of times what we're
reacting to is our fear of whatwe think is going to happen,
(20:19):
what I think they're going tosay what I think this person or
this situation is going to do,right? So I want to be able to
be more responsive. I want to beable to be more resourced. You
know, when we're little kids, wedon't have a lot of tools, so we
just do our damn best tosurvive. And a lot of the things
(20:40):
that we do, those survivalstrategies that we picked up as
kids, walking on eggshells,fawning, making ourselves small,
trying to be the good kid,trying to be the one that
doesn't need anything, whatever.There's 1000 ways right that we
can like react to ourcircumstances as children when
we feel out of control, but Iwanted to be able to feel more
(21:02):
responsive, more resourced, likeI had some tools. I had a bunch
of different tools in what Icall my spiritual toolkit that I
could choose to pick up and useon any given day, depending on
what I needed that day. I wantto also just not feel, quote,
unquote, regulated. I want to beable to be resilient. I want to
(21:23):
have a resilient nervous systemthat can have big fluctuations,
but also knows how to return tofeelings of safety and calm. So
I'm not always just looking tofeel regulated. I'm like no,
because the world doesn't worklike that. You know, I know me
(21:44):
personally. I can't speak foryou, but me personally, I'm
probably not going to walkaround in this totally regulated
ventral state all the time. Youknow what I mean? It's like, I
am going to have spikes ofenergy where my hat starts to
thump and, you know, I becomeaware that it's a little harder
for me to swallow, and I'm like,a little more hypersensitive to
my environment. And then it'slike, okay, what do I need right
(22:05):
now? And that's when I golooking for the tools. Because
if I can experience physical andpsychological safety, then I
will feel more connected tomyself, my true capital, s self,
and just myself like like mybody, me also. I'm not my body.
But you know what I'm saying, Iwill feel more connected to
(22:27):
others that I am in relationshipto, and I will feel more
connected to the world aroundme. And if I am never feeling
safe, if I'm always runningscared, if I'm always in a state
of overwhelming anxiety, and Ican never get regulated. That's
that's not soothing. So notsoothing. Don't want to live
like that. But I'm not actuallyexpecting the world to be a
(22:51):
particular way so that then Ican feel safe. And that's why,
like, for a long time, I used tosay things like, Oh, I'm trying
to create a safe space for you,this is a safe space. And I
realized, like, one day I'mlike, I can't say that. Like,
it's not for me to determinewhat feels safe for somebody
else. All I can do is to do mybest to create an environment
(23:16):
and an experience of safety. ButI don't know everybody's
subconscious triggers. I don'tknow everybody's backstory and
their history and what they'vebeen through, so all I can do is
do my best, and are there goingto be times when I might blow it
or screw up or whatever? Yeah,because a I'm human and again, I
don't know everybody's, youknow, biography. I don't know
(23:39):
everybody's history and whatthey've been through, and what
the things are that trigger themor upset them, a particular tone
of voice, a smell, it could evenbe a color, like whatever it is,
right? A tone of voice atcertain energy level. You know,
people can get quote, unquote,triggered by like, 1000 little
things. So all I can do is tryto do my best. Okay, so again,
(24:03):
what I want to experience in myown body is safe enough. I want
to be able to drop intoparasympathetic when I find
myself going into sympathetic,that fight and flight and freeze
and fawn because it's guaranteedthat it's going to happen. This
is not a safe world. I don'teven like saying that out loud,
(24:25):
but it's the truth. It's not asafe world. It's not a safe
world for the animals. It's nota safe world for a lot of
different people. And if you arelucky enough to move through the
world where you never feelscared or threatened, or like
you have no power or you have novoice or you have no authority,
(24:46):
then I hate to say it, butyou're probably some old white
guy not to pick on the old whiteguys, just saying, You know what
I mean. But the rest of us, wesometimes tend to feel like we
gotta have eyes in the. Back ofour head. You know what I'm
saying. So here's the thing thatI have found to be a little bit
helpful. Okay, here are somethings. They're not all tools.
(25:10):
But number one, I gotta know myown triggers. I have to be aware
of the kinds of places, thekinds of people, the kinds of
environments where maybe I'mgoing to get a little antsy, I'm
going to get a littlesuspicious, I'm going to get a
little on edge, I'm going to geta little like I need to know
thyself. And this is so much ofthe work that I do with people.
(25:33):
We got to know why we do what wedo, think, what we think,
believe, what we believe, saywhat we say, do what we do. As I
said, we have to know ourselves.We have to be curious enough as
about our own patterns, our ownhabits, our own stories, our own
beliefs, our own identity, howwe're showing up in the world,
why we're showing up that way,and if we don't like the
(25:54):
experience, what maybe can we doto tweak it, to adjust it, to
transform it, to change it, todevelop it, to have personal
growth, self development, right?This is the work that I do with
people. So we gotta know ourtriggers, and it's not like, oh,
avoid them. My hope is that Ican experience them and know how
(26:17):
to come back to safety morequickly, that I can get a little
dysregulated by something, andthen go, oh. I know how to be
responsive. I know how to dothat breath, where I breathe in
through my nose fully and deeplyand then exhale out through my
mouth twice as long with alittle bit of sound. I wear a
(26:38):
watch. I don't have it on rightnow. I took it off to take a
shower, but if I have on myApple watch, I can just hit that
little hat icon and it will showme what my heart rate is. The
other day, my heart rate was uparound like 74 Okay, I just sat
and did the breath that I justdescribed to you, inhale through
your nose, fully and deeply,exhale out twice as long,
(27:00):
through the mouth with a littlebit of sound. This helps to down
regulate the nervous system,move us from sympathetic to
parasympathetic into therelaxation response. And I
literally watched my heart ratedrop down within a minute, like
six beats per minute. It wentdown from like 76 or whatever it
was, to 70 and then I got itdown to like 64 just from
(27:25):
breathing. That's one simpletool that pretty much everybody
can do. Okay, so I want to knowmy triggers, the other ways, the
other incredible. And I wouldn'teven call it a tool so much as I
don't even know what to call it,but let's call it a tool. Is
building relationships withpeople that you feel like you
(27:46):
can be yourself with people thatsee you, I would say your
balcony people, right? Thepeople who love you. And this
might be one other person, ifyou're lucky, it's two or three
or four, where you have yourpeople for some of you, that
might be your family. For someof you, your family is the place
where you do not feel safe atall. Right? For some of you,
(28:07):
it'll be your sweetie or yourpartner or your best friend. For
some of you, maybe it's asibling, I don't know, but for
whoever it is, it's likebuilding relationships with
beautiful people who see you,who try to understand you, who
get you, who celebrate you, whosupport you, who say, come here,
right? Let me give you a hug.I'm listening. You don't have to
(28:29):
do this on your own. Sometimeswe have to hire those people,
coaches and mentors andwhatever. And there's no shame
in that. And there's nothingwrong with that, because
sometimes the environments thatwe find ourselves in, they are
not supportive. They are notsupportive. And you need to have
somebody who can be in yourcorner, like Rocky to like, I
(28:51):
always say in the Rocky movie,Mick, mix in his corner like,
you know what I mean? He's like,cheering him on. He's pointing
out some ways to help him growand develop and become better,
right? The other thing is soone, knowing your triggers,
knowing what might upset you,and then gathering some tools to
be able to when you do gettriggered or dysregulated, to
(29:11):
bring you back to psychologicaland physical safety, to
relationships and people. Andthen another thing is that body
awareness, right? Body awarenesstechniques are incredibly
helpful, whether that'ssomatics, whether that's yoga,
whether that's breath work,pranayama, breathing, whether
that's EFT, tapping, EmotionalFreedom Technique, right?
(29:33):
Whether that's bilateralstimulation, whether that's
like, you know, peripheralvision and going out, whether
it's hypnosis. I mean, there's ashit ton of tools out there to
help us learn, but I want to saythis to me, and again, I might
be wrong. I don't want to justblame like my I don't want to
(29:58):
ever have to blame my behavior.Behavior on my trauma and say,
Well, I'm just reactive, becauseit might be true, but I want to
be able to be aware enough thatI am noticing that I'm being
reactive, and then I can chooseto respond instead. I don't want
to be stuck in rigidity, in mypatterns, and my habits and my
(30:21):
ways of being that are causingmy own suffering or inflicting
myself on other people. I can'ttell you how many times I heard
growing up, that's just the wayhe is, that's just the way she
is, that's just the way thatthey are, like everybody else
had to fucking suffer becausethis person had no emotional
(30:42):
intelligence. This person neverbothered to take a look in the
soul mirror. This person neverbothered to pick up a book and
read it. The person never wentto therapy. They never got a
coach. They never fucking tooktwo seconds to look at
themselves and realize thattheir way of being was bullying
and traumatizing and awful forother people to have to be
around double A men hands, ifyou know what I'm talking about,
(31:05):
right? So part of how I also tryto experience safety is creating
more safety in the world foranimals and for other humans to
to find their way home. To Doyou know what I mean, we can try
to be a safe place for otherpeople to show up in curiosity
(31:26):
instead of judgment, to listen,maybe more than we talk, which I
know it's funny right now. Mesaying that because I'm talking,
talking, talking, but it's apodcast, right? But to be able
to quote, unquote, hold spacefor people when they're going
through a thing and to just bethere, you might not always need
to know the quote, unquote rightthing to say that, can I hold
(31:47):
the space? Can I be there? Can Ibe a container for somebody
else? So I hope that this islanding for you in some way,
that this resonates for you insome way, that this concept of
being safe enough that we're notwaiting to feel perfect safety
before we go after our dream,before we say yes to being on
(32:10):
the podcast, before we say yesto starting to write the book or
join the club or start theproject or start a business, or
say yes and go on the date. Youknow, I had a friend the other
day write to me out of the blue,and they just said, I'm going on
a first date. They're like,Karen, Karen, I'm going on a
first date, Karen. I don't likefirst dates, right? I just
(32:34):
started laughing, and I wroteback, and I was just, you know,
trying to be a safe space forthem and say some things and
make them laugh and loosen upand try to enjoy the experience,
because you never know that datecould lead to falling in love.
And how exciting is that, right?But the ego mind gets involved,
and it goes into like a timetravels into the future and it
(32:54):
starts to worry and get nervous,or it time travels into the past
and it goes into shame and blameand guilt and weirdness, and I
blew it that last time, and it'snot going to work out. And I'm
like, dude, like, let's be inthe present moment. Like, let's
just experience this. You know,this is kind of exciting. Tell
me more. You know, it was prettycool. So we're not always going
(33:16):
to experience perfect safety,but if we can use some tools, if
we can find our people, if wecan become aware of our own
triggers, our own anxieties, ourown fears, and use right use
these things. And if you'relike, I don't know how to do
this. KK, please, for the loveof of all things holy, join the
(33:36):
nest. It's 50 bucks a month. Ican probably help right. Sign up
if you hate it. You leave afterone month, right. Find out more
about working with me one to onein the quest. You know, I love
helping people navigate thiswhole being human experience
using, you know, spiritualprinciples, spiritual practices
(33:57):
and subconscious reprogrammingand hypnosis and neuroscience
and practical tools to interruptour patterns when we're getting
reactive, you know, oh, my God.So the goal for me now, and
maybe it is for you too, is tofeel safe enough so that we can
do what we came here to do, sowe can be who we are meant to
(34:18):
be, who the divine and you know,just you, maybe you don't
believe in anything greater,right? Maybe you're just like, I
just want to be my best self.Perfect, great. Run with it. But
it's hard to be our best selfwhen we are getting hijacked all
the time by fear, right? We wantto learn how to operate from a
place of love. And here's justthe facts. Sometimes, right, we
(34:43):
are not going to feel safe, andsometimes we have to do it a
little bit scared. I do, if youknew how many things I did
scared, right? I think a lot ofpeople perceive me as like, you
know, I am tough, okay, right?Like, and I don't mean like, Oh,
I'm tough. Like, I'm gonna beatyou up. I am wicked resilient. I
am pretty tough. I am strong andright. And I have a lot of
(35:07):
patterns and habits in mynervous system of being scared,
and those things rear up. Theythey present themselves, but now
I have enough tools to be ableto help myself to come back to a
state where maybe I'm notfeeling 100% safety, but I feel
safe enough to take the leap offaith to know that my spiritual
(35:28):
team comes with me. My ancestorscome with me, my mom comes with
me. God, Holy Spirit, my innerteacher, because so much of
safety for me is learning how totrust myself. I can't always
trust other people. I can'talways trust the rest of the
world, but I can trust myself. Ican trust the inner voice, the
(35:50):
inner teacher. I can trust Godand source in the Divine, or
whatever you happen to call it,the universe. I can trust a
handful of people around me whoI know have my back, who love
me, who cheerlead me, whochampion me, and who want the
best for me. And if you cangather these people, these
things, these tools, keeplistening to the podcast, maybe
(36:11):
join the NASA. However, it is,read some good books, look up
some of the tools that Imentioned, right? And you too,
because this is the goal for me,is to feel safe enough.
And I've I've made my peace withthat. I've made my peace that,
like this is the body and thenervous system that I have, and
(36:34):
as long as I'm alive, right, Iwill be trying to help myself
and reparent myself and be kindto myself and compassionate. And
there's going to be times whenwe just have to feel safe enough
and maybe do it a little bitscared. But you don't have to do
it alone. I'm here hopefully youhave some people around you who
(36:55):
also love you and support you.Okay, I gotta go. I gotta go
teach a yoga class. But I hopethis has been helpful in some
way and valuable. And if youlisten to this and you thought,
Oh, my God, this is great, orwhatever, this was valuable.
This was helpful. Please shareit with somebody. Send it to a
cousin, a girlfriend, a bestfriend and a sister, whoever
your auntie. Send it to somebodyyou love. Okay, wherever you go,
(37:19):
may you leave the animals in theother humans and yourself in the
environment and the planetbetter than how you first found
it wherever you go, may you andyour energy and your presence
and your love and your safeenoughness be a blessing. Bye,
you.
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