224. Rubbing Your Ears?! The Divorce Anxiety Hack Nobody Told You About

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Navigating through the emotional turmoil of a divorce often feels like a battle between your mind and body. 

Yet, there's a surprisingly simple tool at the tip of your fingers that can help you regain control.

In this episode, you'll gain insight into the profound connection between your nervous system and emotional health, learn an effective ear massage technique to ground yourself quickly amid chaos, and discover how consistent practice can transform your stress and anxiety into calm and clarity.

Tune in to harness the calming power of your body's natural healing through ear massage, setting you on a path toward emotional balance and empowerment.

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A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, manifesting, the impact of different attachment styles and codependency, setting healthy boundaries, energy healing with homeopathy, managing the nervous system during divorce depression, understanding the stages of divorce grief, and using the Law of Attraction and EMDR therapy in the process of building your confidence, forgiveness and letting go.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What if I told you that relief from stress,
overwhelm and the emotional painof divorce could be as simple
as massaging your ears?
Sounds too easy, right, butscience packs it up.
Your nervous system holds thekey to your healing, and today,
on the pod, we're diving intothis one simple practice and its
capacity to calm your divorceanxiety, release the tension of

(00:22):
heartbreak and help you feelmore grounded than ever.
Hi love, welcome to DearDivorce Diary, the podcast
helping divorcees go beyond talktherapy to process your grief,
find the healing you crave andbuild back your confidence.
I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, atherapist, coach, integrative

(00:46):
healer and divorcee.
Join me for a fresh approach tohealing grief and building your
confidence after divorce.
In today's episode, we're goingto take a look at why some days
you feel strong and others theweight of your divorce knocks

(01:08):
you down, and why it's not justyour emotions, it's your nervous
system, and in just a minuteI'll explain why regulating it
using ear massage can changeeverything.
We'll also talk about how allof your stress, anxiety and
heartbreak don't just live inyour mind I know you've heard me
say this a lot they live inyour body.
And here's the game changeryour ears hold access points to

(01:31):
instant calm.
So stay with me as I show youhow to do it.
You know, one of the things Iwish I could just like download
into everybody's brains is thedifference between a thought, an
emotion and a nervous systemimpulse.
Right, those three things,they're all connected, they have

(01:53):
relationships with each other,right?
Our thoughts trigger emotionsand our emotions trigger our
nervous systems.
Does it work in reverse?
Yes, it absolutely can.
Right?
So?
Because if our nervous systemsare super keyed up, then it's
going to keep our amygdala going, which means our brain is more
likely to grab for a extremeemotional pattern.

(02:14):
And then, when we're feelingfeelings, we don't always know
why, and then we're like but whyam I feeling this way?
And we reach for a thought.
So we could see there this sortof backwards and forwards, like
just looping relationshipbetween our thoughts, our
emotions and our nervous system.
And if I could just help youunderstand that better, I feel

(02:35):
like you'd have so much moremastery over how you feel on any
given day.
But alas, it's a process tolearn.
For today let's talk about onthe days that it feels like
divorce, stress is knocking youdown.
That ear massage willimmediately start to ground your
nervous system, which then willallow you to sort through your

(02:58):
thoughts and your emotions.
When we can sort through ourthoughts, we can start to see
how many of them most of themare irrational and
self-sabotaging, and then we canstart to feel our emotions
rather than dissociating fromthem.
But you can't really processemotion in a meaningful way if

(03:21):
your nervous system is in thered zone, because you're just
not in a place of rest anddigest right where you can
actually process emotions andlet them go.
So using ear massage is a wayto get more out of your therapy
sessions, more out of yourjournaling sessions, more out of
your meditation sessions, moreout of your you name it right.

(03:43):
It's just how you can reallykeep your healing process moving
at a nice clip.
Because the more regulated yournervous system, the smoother
everything is going to go, themore you'll be able to think
from your top brain right, usingyour prefrontal cortex, your
decision-making, your executivefunction, because when you're
triggered all the time, love,you're using your lizard brain,
your low brainstem brain.

(04:04):
That is not good at makingexecutive decisions.
It's really good at getting youinto trouble.
So ear massage will help youregulate your nervous system and
on the really, really hard days, it will very quickly.
Honestly, it depends on how fargone you are right, like how
jacked up you are, and often wehave to use more than one tool

(04:26):
at once, like, for instance, youcould add humming to your ear
massage, or you could do allthat while you're walking or
while you've got your feetrolling on a spiky ball.
There are lots of ways we canlayer in tools, but ear massage,
when I've been doing it forusually less than a minute, I
will trigger a yawn response,and a yawn is a sign that the

(04:46):
nervous system is downshifting.
And as I'm talking about all ofthis, I feel a yawn trying to
get out of me, which iscomplicated while you're talking
on a podcast.
All right, let's take a look athow all of this lives, not just
in your mind but in your body,and I know you know you've heard
me sort of bang this drum aboutall of the work we're

(05:09):
emphasizing over here withsemantics, right, the processing
of emotion and trauma out ofyour body and the ears are.
You know, god really designedthe body to heal itself.
That is just the truth of it.
But there we often just have somany blocks in the body for so
many reasons, there are so manyblocks that we're just not sort
of accessing or tapping into orleveraging fully right, the

(05:33):
body's innate healing ability.
But our ears, like our entirebodily system, is mapped on our
ear.
So like, think about that for amoment Every organ system, from
an acupuncture right there is acorresponding point on your ear
to every single function inyour body.
Now, we're not going to map allthat in this episode, but I

(05:54):
want you to know that as you'remassaging your ears, not only
are you providing a relaxationresponse for your nervous system
, but you are stimulating all ofthese essential functions and
organ systems in your body.
You are providing them with TLC, with care and compassion.

(06:15):
You are really supportingyourself in a very deep,
meaningful way when you aremassaging your ears.
Now, the more I use this tool,the more times in a day, the
more days in a week, the morenights that I'm experiencing
insomnia, the faster my nervoussystem is going to start to
shift and the better nervoussystem hygiene I'll have.

(06:38):
So what do I mean by that?
If you only brushed your teethonce a week, how much effort
would you have to put into teethbrushing that one time?
You did it?
A lot.
It would be gross.
You'd have to spend a goodamount of time to get your teeth
back to this really clean stateand then, honestly, you'd
probably need a trip to thedentist, right, because of the
plaque buildup.
So it's this idea that the morewe do something, the better

(07:01):
maintenance we provide.
The more well-maintainedsomething's going to be, the
easier it's going to be to getit back to sort of the baseline
that we want it to function fromright.
So at first, when you do this,you may have to do it a number
of times a day, but then overtime there's a cumulative effect
.
Our nervous systems are meant tobe like rubber bands.

(07:22):
They're supposed to be nice andstretchy.
We're supposed to be able tostretch it out and it goes.
And when we let go, it goesback.
And most of us who are movingthrough a divorce process, our
nervous systems aren't veryflexy.
They're sort of stuck in afight, flight, freeze, fawn
state and it's very hard forthem to cycle back down to a
rest and digest.

(07:43):
A nervous system relaxed, greenlight, safe to connect place.
But start using ear massage.
The next time you're feelinginsomnia.
Oh, reach for that one.
And so what do I mean by earmassage.
All right, let's dig into that.
So I want you to just becreative and go with it, right,
and if it feels uncomfortable,then go lighter.
Just use touch.
It doesn't have to be massagein the sense of squeezing and

(08:06):
causing pain.
It's not like where you go tohave a really strong sports
massage and they're digging intothe tight spots, not like that,
right.
I want this to be gentle andsupportive and I want you to
find what feels good.
But you can run your fingers inall the grooves, in all the
little nooks and crannies ofyour ears, so you can do it
inside.
That way you can do gently justsort of outside of and just

(08:30):
barely inside of the ear canal,not like in in right, but just
in the opening.
You could do little spirals.
You can also do the skin oneither side of your ears, so
like in the back of your ears,where they attach to the back of
your head, and up to the frontof the ears where they start to
transition into the side of yourface, and you can just gently
rub all of this.

(08:51):
Your ear lobes most of us havepiercings, but that's okay.
Work with it, because even theear lobes are part of what's
mapped on the body in terms oforgan systems and essential
functioning.
So don't leave any part of theear out, and if you're noticing
some sensitivity here or somediscomfort, there's probably a
corresponding explanation to dowith your nervous system, and so

(09:14):
stick with it and keep comingback to it, do whatever just
sort of comes naturally, if youjust want to stick with your
earlobes for a while and then,do you know, grab big chunks of
your ear and do nice bigsweeping movements.
Basically, what I want you toknow is you can't get it wrong.
Right, just play with it andjust give it a couple of minutes

(09:35):
and stick with it.
If you get bored, that's okay,just stick with it and notice,
before too long you're going tostart to feel a sort of I'm
doing it right and I'm havingtrouble reaching for my words
because I'm relaxing, just arelaxation response coming over
your body, and if you're someonewho's really having a hard time

(09:59):
, you may need to do it for fiveminutes or do it for two
minutes and then come back to it10 minutes later.
But I'm just saying this is apowerful technique that will
work for you if you stick withit and it will give you such a
capacity to process yourfeelings, to shift out of
triggers, to relax, withoutneeding a glass of wine, I

(10:23):
promise you.
Your body was designed to healitself and everything you need
is already inside of you.
If you don't already follow meon Instagram, please, please,
hit me up at Dawn Wiggins andsend me a DM about how ear
massage works for you.
I am dying to hear how thisimproves your days and your
weeks in the future.
And if I have not told you thisenough already, thank you so

(10:45):
much for being here.
It is so meaningful to me thatyou take your time out of the
day to sit with us and to listen.
Time is one of the greatestgifts we have, and that you
share yours with us means a lot.
Without you, there is no DearDivorce Diary.
Sending you all my love, peace.
Dear Divorce Diary is a podcastby MyCoachDawn.

(11:15):
You can find more atmycoachdawncom.