My mantra: You have all the time in the world.
At times, anxiety can come from an intolerance for the unknown, a disconnection from our body, or an unrecognized feeling residing there. Bringing our body weight back into our surrounding support can ground us into the familiar and remove some of that overwhelming sense of the unknown. As our weight drops into support, so does our focus, and we can often attune to the unexpressed feelings within. This sinking into one's self begins to slow down the sense of urgency - the urgency that usually makes us reactive instead of responsive.
My practice:
1. Sit or lie down on a supportive surface (e.g., a bed, floor, chair), and firmly press your body against the support.
2. Slowly release and relax your muscles.
3. Bring your attention to where your body is making contact with the supporting surface. Allow your body to receive the support of the underlying surface and allow yourself to be received by the support.
4. Let all the layers of your body sink into the support.
5. Put a heavy blanket or pillow on your body to encourage the release into gravity and the underlying support.
Let me know how you feel after this exercise!
Every single person deserves this reminder and to drink it in like daily medicine: your worth and value - as the indelible person you are - has nothing to do with the capacity of any other person to meet you in that splendor.
As humans, we use the feedback of others to make sense of who we are:
"I know I'm funny because people laugh at my jokes!"
And we internalize this external feedback, and it becomes part of our identity.
This same mechanism goes terribly wrong when the inability of other people to be present and consistent feels like a reflection of who we are or a measure of our worth.
As infants, we can't rationalize the absence of caregivers not showing up or meeting our needs or emotional states - and we endure and compensate. These compensations can be called attachment styles.
As we get older, we add stories to fill in the gap of why people don't or didn't show up for us. Other people not showing up for us can look like them pulling away, shutting down, stonewalling, ghosting, or not being able to validate and honor our feelings and needs.
These inner stories can sound like this:
"If I were loved, people would stay!"
"If I were enough, people would show up for me!"
"If I were ____ (smarter, better looking, more important, etc.), they would be less distant and meet my needs."
The sad tragedy is that these stories become beliefs - and these beliefs then get internalized as who we are.
How do we even begin to unwind a lifetime of narratives and beliefs that lock us into pain and suffering?
Let's start by recognizing that the pulling away, shutting down, not meeting you, etc., is the behavioral reflection, the symptoms, of the other person's capacity. It is a manifestation of their not feeling safe in themselves to be fully present with another person, the limit of connection they can handle, and the overwhelm of their nervous system with the lack of resources to navigate it. In other words, they can't be there for you because they can't be there.
It's sad to be on the receiving side of this truth, and awareness is one of the first steps to healing and changing this pattern of pain.
Most of us didn’t lose ourselves all at once.
It happened gradually.
A comment that made you second-guess how you showed up.
A reaction that taught you to make yourself smaller.
A relationship where being too much had consequences.
So you adapted.
You learned which parts of you were welcome and which ones weren’t.
And over time, that became just how you moved through the world.
You didn’t lose yourself.
You just learned to hide the parts that felt too risky to show.
They’re still there.
That’s where the work begins.
#selfworth #survival #traumahealing #healingjourney #drscottlyons
A lot of us were never taught that we were allowed to stop.
We were taught to push through.
To be useful.
To take care of everyone else first.
So that became the pattern.
For years.
Sometimes for most of a lifetime.
And now slowing down doesn't feel restful.
It feels wrong.
Like you're falling behind or letting someone down.
But that's not a character flaw.
That's just what happens when your body learned that stillness wasn't safe.
The work isn't forcing yourself to rest.
It's learning that you're allowed to.
#selfcompassion #healingjourney #somatichealing #drscottlyons
Overexplaining isn’t a personality trait. It’s a survival response.
It’s what happens when your nervous system learns — often very early — that your truth alone isn’t enough. That you have to justify it. Defend it. Soften it. Wrap it in disclaimers just to be heard.
You learned to add more words because your words were once used against you. You learned to pre-empt the pushback because you knew it was coming. You learned to over-prove because being doubted felt like being erased.
So now, even in safe spaces, your body still braces. Still scans. Still prepares the case before anyone has questioned a thing.
But hear this:
You don’t have to earn the right to your own experience. You don’t have to build a legal defense for your feelings. You don’t have to convince anyone that what happened to you happened to you.
Your “no” is a complete sentence. Your memory is not on trial. Your truth doesn’t need a witness to be real.
The people who love you well won’t need a thesis. They’ll just need you.
So take a breath. Soften your jaw. Drop your shoulders. Let the explanation rest.
You are allowed to simply be — without translation. 🤍 #personalgrowth #drscottlyons #traumahealing #healingwork #survival
Many people feel ashamed for needing reassurance.
They think they should be over it by now.
But often that need began in places where love felt uncertain.
Where approval could change quickly.
Where being enough never felt steady.
So of course validation feels powerful.
At one point, it may have felt like safety.
Healing is not shaming the part of you that still reaches for it.
It is understanding where it came from and learning your worth was never meant to live in someone else’s hands.
Many people do not know
themselves outside of what
survival required.
They know themselves as:
The strong one.
The independent one.
The caretaker.
The one who needs little.
The one who can handle it all.
But who you became to survive
is not the whole of who you are.
Healing is not becoming someone new.
It is finally meeting yourself beyond survival.
There is a quiet belief many people carry:
“If I can handle it, it must be fine.”
But capacity and wellbeing are not the same thing.
You may be able to keep going.
Keep producing.
Keep caring for everyone else.
Keep saying yes.
And still be carrying far more than your body was meant to hold alone.
Functioning is not always flourishing.
Sometimes it is survival with good manners.
#stressmanagement #healingjourney #somatics #drscottlyons
Avoidance doesn’t always look like checking out.
Sometimes it looks like being really good at explaining things.
Or staying busy.
Or solving everyone else’s problems.
It can look like progress.
But if nothing is actually being felt, nothing is actually moving.
This isn’t about forcing yourself to feel everything all at once.
It’s about noticing the moment you leave yourself…
and choosing to stay, even just a little longer.
That’s where things begin to shift.
I’m proud to have been interviewed along with my friend @drscottlyons for an article on somatic therapy for the New York Times this week (written by Christina Caron.)
Here are a few highlights:
“In general, somatic therapists aim to help patients develop an awareness of their body and then zero in on the way it responds to trauma, stress and social connection. Eventually, patients are encouraged to let go of learned behaviors like a hunched posture or shallow breathing, with the goal of improving their mental state and helping them live more fully in the present.
“There’s no question that there’s a lot of promise for something like this,” said Vaile Wright, the senior director for health care innovation at the American Psychological Association. “Talk therapy doesn’t work for everybody.”
Here’s how it might play out: Imagine that someone shows up at their therapy session itching to talk about a big fight they had with their partner. Typically, a somatic therapist will “pause and slow things down,” said Scott Lyons, a psychologist in New York City and the founder of the Embody Lab, which offers training in somatic therapy.
“We’ll say something as simple as, ‘Where do you feel that in your body?’ Or ‘How does that show up in you right now?’’
These bodily sensations aren’t random, he said, they are the way that our subconscious is communicating the deeper feelings, needs or beliefs that are “unexpressed or unprocessed.”
One of the biggest misconceptions about somatic therapy is that it’s “just a set of exercises,” said Arielle Schwartz, a clinical psychologist in Boulder, Colo., who has incorporated somatic methods into her practice for decades.
While somatic movements can be beneficial, they are best paired with a therapist, she added.
A therapist can help a patient work through some of the difficult emotions that might surface and also support the patient in learning how to move their body differently.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to addressing trauma, and somatic therapy isn’t for everyone, Dr. Schwartz said.
But, she added, some patients finally feel release and relief when “the body gets to finally tell the story.”
a psychologist that used to be a drag queen? we’re getting reaaaddddd
@drscottlyons 😂🤍 @mirandamaday@ravensymone #psychologist #holisticpsychology #stres
