Staying at the Table
Do you have a word for 2025?
I do, it’s COMMIT.
The last couple of years I’ve participated in a deep meditation experience online with Dr. Kevin Preston. This year Commit came through, and on New Year’s Day after the meditation I wrote down 29 things I was committing to in 2025. It’s a long list, so I won’t exhaust you with all of them, but one really significant one to me is “I commit to staying at the table with my loved ones”. This one stings, as I have a nervous system and a part that can get overwhelmed in certain situations that finds me leaving some really important tables. While staying at the table is a metaphor for staying in conversation and communicating through conflict, I actually have a part that shows herself hiding under a table, trying to get away from all the chaotic noise in my childhood home.
Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what is happening inside our systems, to know why we’re doing certain behaviours that aren’t in our best interests. It’s almost like something takes over and you have no control over what you’re doing. It can feel very defeating to keep repeating a pattern, but when you understand the science behind this “take over” you can start to have a lot more compassion for yourself.
The first thing to understand is neuroception, simply put, a part of our brains are always scanning for danger, it’s wired in and subconscious. It looks for flavours of things that have been dangerous in the past and if there’s a similarity (even a tiny one) to a past event that wasn’t safe, it sets off the flight, fight, shutdown or freeze (which is a combination of flight and shutdown) response. This can happen even when you consciously know you’re safe. In my case, when I’m metaphorically or actually sitting at the table with some of my family members and big emotions arise from their nervous system, my brain scans this information, picks up the flavour that in the past big emotions weren’t safe (little girl under the table getting away from the chaos) and sets off my autonomic nervous system to flight and then to freeze. Everyone’s system is unique, so for you it might set off a fight response or going right into shutdown.
The second thing to know is that our parts can also have their own nervous system states. So when something overwhelming happens and a part of the psyche is fragmented off, it recreates that same nervous state when activated. Using me as the example again, my protective part that wants to flee from big emotions goes into the flight response, and I literally leave the situation and then once I flee, the little vulnerable part under the table who feels terrified and immobilized goes into freeze.
When I learned this about myself, it really made a lot of sense to my past behaviours. It doesn’t excuse times when I’ve abruptly left the table and hurt people, but it does help to understand the why behind it. All change starts with awareness and while I did improve greatly with awareness of this behaviour, I still found myself tripping up in times of big life stressors. It wasn’t until I added in consistent daily nervous system exercises and regular parts work that I could feel a shift in my system. It’s the work I do with my clients and I’m really passionate about it because of the changes I’ve seen in myself. And it might sound crazy, but I’m grateful for family members who activate me so I can continue my own healing work.
Circling back to commitment, if you really want to change how you show up in relationships this isn’t something you do a couple of times and you're done. The good news though, you’re probably already doing things that are helping; things like walking in nature, meditation, exercising, connecting with friends or your partner, petting your dog. Keep doing the things that already give you a sense of peace and joy (I’ve started singing lessons) and add in the science backed big shifters of learning how to regulate your nervous system and getting to intimately know your parts.
Lastly, even though I’m an optimist by nature, I know shame parts can come up and try to make us feel bad for past behaviours. But I hope you can now see there really was a good reason for those behaviours, and you can find some compassion for yourself. When we know better, that sets us down the road of doing better one committed tolerable step at a time.
As always much gratitude for you reading this.