Regulating Your Nervous System with Leah Davidson [Ep. 140]

0:00 This is the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast. I'm Lisa Salisbury and this is episode 140. Regulating Your Nervous System with Leah Davidson. I. Your nervous system is the basis for how you feel and function every day. Leah Davidson is an expert on building resilience in the nervous system, and we talk all about what the nervous system is and why it's important for it to be regulated in order to make the choices we want to make with our health and nutrition. You will walk away from this episode knowing way more about stress and regulation and some great questions to ask yourself when you feel your energy rising. Welcome to eat well.

0:40 Well, the podcast for busy women who want to lose weight without constantly counting, tracking, or stressing over every bite. I'm Lisa Salsbury, a certified health weight loss and life coach, and most importantly, a recovered chronic dieter here. You'll learn to listen to your body and uncover the reasons you're reaching for food. When you're not truly hungry, freeing you to focus on a healthier, more fulfilling approach to eating. Welcome back to the Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well podcast. I am super excited to be speaking with Leah Davidson today. She is a speech language pathologist and a certified life coach and we are going to be talking about her very awesome specialty, which is the nervous system.

1:24 So welcome, Leah. If you could give us a little introduction to yourself in your work, um, maybe how you came to that, that would be great. And then we'll get into our conversation. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. So my name is Leah Davidson. I am from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And I am, like you said, a life coach as well as a speech language pathologist. And to give that some context, I've been a speech path for over 26 years, working in the area primarily of traumatic brain injury. And that is kind of where I started learning about the brain and neuroplasticity and brain health and eventually the nervous system.

2:07 Um, because I just saw that a lot of the work that I was doing with clients, most of them had suffered traumatic brain injuries through accidents, and I was helping them in the area of something called cognitive communication. And I started to have this realization that a lot of the challenges I was trying to help Um, Uh, So, I had to start backtracking and start doing some nervous system work, um, in order for us to move ahead with some of our other cognitive strategies. So eventually I just started working with people who didn't have brain injuries. And start to see, hey, we all have the same nervous system, the same brain, the same challenges.

2:52 And then it just has become more and more niche. My passion is really the nervous system. I have an advanced training, I have a membership, and I just put out a guided journal, um, that helps people to learn all about their nervous system because I truly believe it is foundational to everything, everything that we do, not just that we do in coaching, but everything that we do, period. Well, I got it in preparation for having Leah on the podcast. So I'm really excited to dive into this topic, learn a little bit more and then continue on with that journal. And obviously I usually say this.

3:33 Kind of thing at the end, but we'll put the link to that in the show notes. It is on Amazon and comes in three beautiful colors. So there you go. So let's, let's talk about, that's not, I mean, this is not just to be clear. This isn't a sales pitch for the journal. I, that was kind of a side note. I was like, Oh, let's have Leah on. And by the way, she also just finished publishing this. I think the reason I created the journal is because I do have this belief that it is foundational for us and most of us, um, most of us have heard of the nervous system. I'll probably just dive into what your question was going to be of what is the nervous What is your, yeah, let's just start. What, what is the nervous system? What are we even talking about?

4:14 well, that's it because most of us know like we've heard nervous system. We probably talked about it in biology class Mm hmm. But we don't really understand what it does and the role that it has in our everyday life so just to put it simply it's made up of like the you know, the brain and the spinal cord and all the connections between and So it's the main communication between the brain and the body and a large part of the nervous system is something called the The cranial nerve that's called the vagus nerve. So a lot of people have heard of that vagus nerve. It's all over It's very popular in social media and really essentially what that is is the collection of nerve fibers It starts kind of in the brain stem area the back and then it has branches that course to the face and innervates, you know, the, the larynx and comes down to the heart and then down to all the organs.

5:04 And the interesting thing about this cranial nerve is it's primarily responsible for getting us to calm down, to get to what we call rest and digest. And it travels bi directionally, meaning signals are sent from the brain to the body, and signals are also sent from the body up to the brain, except there is a little bit of a, I call it in the journal, the 80 20 rule, 20 percent of the fibers go from the brain to the body and 80 percent come from the body to the Oh, that's way more than I thought. Yeah, it kind of speaks to the importance of how we can't be doing things in isolation.

5:44 We need to be having both the brain and the body. So the role of the nervous system, communicate, it's responsible for our survival. And it is running everything that we do from behind the scenes So it is what is running your heartbeat and your breath and your digestive system and it does it automatically Thank goodness because you wouldn't want to have to be you know, worrying about controlling all those things And it is Sorry. Look, let me interrupt you there from, like, from thinking about biology class. Isn't there, like, two parts, like, one that's doing all of that without us knowing and the other part that's more cognitive? yes Well, so exactly so we have like what we're talking about is the autonomic nervous Yes.

6:29 I couldn't think of the word. Yeah, this is running the show. The autonomic nervous system's running the show. And the main job is to scan for safety and danger because it's trying to keep us alive. And if it scans and how it sort of scans is it's looking around for clues of safety and danger. It's looking externally. So it's going to look at like all our senses. What's going on? What do you hear? What do you see? see what, what can you touch? It's taking in that information. It's also taking in what's going on internally for you. Is your heart rate changing? Is your stomach changing? Are you sweating a little bit? And then it's looking between you and I. So you and I, we don't know each other really well.

7:09 Our nervous systems right now are checking each other out. We're sort of like, are you safe? Like, and, and we feed off of tone and facial expressions. Like right now you're nodding. So my nervous system is like, Oh yeah, Lisa is safe. Like, okay, and it gives that confirmation. So it gathers all these cues by something called neuroception, and it's almost like we have these spidey senses. It's all unconscious. And based on all these clues, my nervous system is going to decide whether I'm safe or dangerous. It kind of takes in these clues and it does a comparison to all my past life experience. And it's like a predictor. Okay, well, in the past, these kind of clues have been safe.

7:53 So, she's safe, we're all good, and we just move ahead, and we have a conversation, and you know, we're very, um, you know, it's easy going, and it's confident, and we're patient with each other, and we're curious, and we have compassion. So that's if things are safe. But if we're scanning, constantly scanning, and there's some cues that are, uh, it's a little bit, something's off there, or something's unfamiliar, or something is I'm picking up from maybe my past that I don't even know is there, but is triggering. My nervous system is like, this is danger.

8:33 And because it's responsibility is survival, my nervous system is going to get into a state of protection. It's like, okay, Leah's in danger, we've got to protect her. And the first line of protection is we're going to increase the energy in her body. We're going to get her more activated. So that's why we start to feel a rise. We start to feel a little bit more on edge. And this is where you've probably heard of fight or flight. This is where it comes in. We, our system goes into the system of protection and it is going to be flavored usually with energy. Sometimes it's with aggression, but it could be with anxiety.

9:14 So it could be, you know, sort of anger, defensiveness. But it could also be like worry and anxiety and concern. The state that we're in flavors everything. It flavors our thoughts, it flavors our feelings, it flavors our emotions, and I'll give you an example in just a second. But the other thing that can happen is say I sense It's extreme danger or I've been activated for so long my nervous system is like, okay, we're going to crash here. We need to start conserving some energy and it will bring me down to another state of protection, which is where things are more shut down.

9:55 It's more collapsed and this is a state of hypo arousal. It's still a protective state. It's trying to protect us, but it is more of. Yeah. Well, it's, it's like a shutdown. Now a combination of both of them is a free state. It's sort of like I'm wired, but I'm shut down and that is freeze. So those are protective modes for the nervous system. And it's, it's brilliantly doing that because it's taking care of us for our survival. The key thing about these states and understanding why is it so important that you understand these states and understand what happens to you when you go into one of these states. is because they're behind the scenes.

10:36 Everything that you think, feel, and do is going to be flavored by the state that you're in. So, an example I like to use is if I am in a activated state, I call it team hyper. We go into a hyper aroused state. If I'm in this team hyper state and you say to me, Leah, where did you get your hair done? I might say to you, why, what's wrong with my hair? You don't like it? Like, why would you want to know where I get my hair done? Like, there's this flavor of defensiveness because I'm activated. Now, if I'm the opposite and I'm in more of a hypo state, I call it team hypo, then I may be like, Oh my gosh, I know my hair is so terrible.

11:22 It's awful. I need to find a new hairdresser and really just everything will be down flavored that way. If I'm in a safe state, I'm in my home state, I feel good. I call it team resilient because I have the ability to go with the ups and downs. I may be like, Oh, I just got it down in the corner of Queen Street. Her name is Fiona. Would you like her number? So you see it taints all my interactions. It taints my perspectives. It taints like what I'm going to say to you, how I'm going to say it, my tone of voice. It even taints. It's my posture, my body language. And so we want to be aware of it because sometimes we think, why did I act that way?

12:07 hmm. Mm it's because our nervous system is there. And because our nervous system is in a certain state, it is fueling the way we think, feel and act. Okay, whoo. That's like a lot of information. That's so good. So good. Put you into a state of dysregulation just listening to Yeah, totally. I'm like, there's so much to learn. Um, so there's more to ask on that. But before we get into more learning there, I want to, tie this into the theme of our podcast. My listeners are generally on a health and or weight loss trajectory. They're looking to improve their, their nutrition to, I mean, I had a guest on a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about improving our nutrition based on wanting to have our health span match our lifespan as far as warding off dementia, you know, so there's lots of reasons to be changing your diet, not just weight loss, but we do have a weight loss component here.

13:04 So, um, What does the nervous system and all of that have to do with weight loss? And how can we access this information about the nervous system to help us in those efforts? So when you're assigned to a state based on your biological response to things that are happening, often we get dysregulated. So we will just naturally become in a hyper state or a hypo state. Have spent a lot of time in a hyper state like you think like if you're feeling chronically busy On edge all the time stressed out at the time chances are you spent a lot of time in a hyper state?

13:49 Well our nervous system it actually wants to get to a regulated place It wants to return to homeostasis. So it tries to do things to regulate itself. So if I'm stressed out or feeling overwhelmed and anxious from a young age. What did we use? We used food. Like when you're a baby. Oh, you're crying. You're upset. What happened? Bottle in your mouth, you know, something happens and we start using food. So often what happens for people is they don't want to feel their emotions or they they've never experienced their emotions or there's discomfort or they're so dysregulated that eating We'll give this false sense of regulation because it kind of feels good, right?

14:41 Like, you know, you're stressed out and everything, and I have that piece of cake. I feel good for a few seconds until I don't anymore. And then I drop into a different state of dysregulation. And is where I. This is where I always say, food works, that's why we do it, because food works. And so, when my clients attack themselves for like, being upset that they overate again or whatever, I'm like, because food works, it's okay, like let's move on and, and um, although I don't have the same nervous system training that you do, I am trying to help them get back to realizing that they did that because of their biological, um, Um, upbringing.

15:26 And, yeah. I mean, I that. Essentially, it's because of the nervous system. Like what you're teaching them is like, no, you're doing it because it is regulating. This is, this is what we, so a lot of times people, the beauty of learning about your nervous system is you start to realize it's not a moral failing. It's not a weakness. You're not a bad person. Again, you literally have been dysregulated and you brilliantly. Learned that food is a great way to regulate, or whatever it is that you do. People do different things. We brilliantly learn how to adapt to this discomfort of dysregulation, trying to bring ourselves down into regulation.

16:10 These are all adaptations. They're not weaknesses. They're not moral failings. It's not like you're broken. It literally is. Oh, my nervous system is doing this because it's trying to get me back to home. And then the understanding when you start to see this is what the nervous system is doing, this is when we can start making the transition to, okay, thank you system for taking care of me, but I'd like to come up with another way to regulate that is much more permanent, that is much healthier. We start moving towards finding those tools. Perfect.

16:50 Okay, so what are some of the ways that we can do some self regulation? And in the, in the face of just kind of chronic stress, maybe you had, you know, conversation with your child or you spent time with your aging parent and you're kind of feeling on edge or, and you're wanting to you know, look to food, how can we regulate before that happens? Yeah. So I like to describe it to people like it's kind of like Once you learn about your nervous system, you're joining the nervous system sports league and you're signing up for a few things you're signing up one is okay, you're going to join this team.

17:35 There's some fundamental life things that you want to be working on like your sleep and having proper nutrition and getting movement and connection and things like that. And then there's things like you're going to come to practice every day. And so there's things that we want to be doing. I'm going to do a daily basis, it doesn't have to be long, but things like, you know, your stress keeps building up every single day, you need an outlet for it every single day. And it doesn't have to be like, I'm going to do an hour run. It may be that you're going to do a 10 minute walk, or you are going to do something, um, um, drawing or you're going to do some journaling or you're going to hug somebody or you're going to have a good cry.

18:18 Every day we need to be doing things that releases our stress and every day we need to be training our nervous system to tell it that it is safe. So a lot of these things activities that we do. They sort of work on, on two levels. They work on releasing stress and they work on sort of increasing our capacity to feel things, increasing our capacity to be healthy individuals. So that's great, like doing things on a daily basis. It doesn't have to be long things, just little drops along the way. But then you get to the game. And the game is you're sitting in the waiting room with your mother at the doctor's appointment feeling that energy rise.

19:02 It would be great if you could just say, Oh, I'm feeling the energy rise. I'm going to go for a quick walk around the block. And if you can go do that, but normally that won't happen. Or you're having a conversation with your, your child face to face. And, you know, you can feel your energy rising. And again, you can't be like, I'm gonna go meditate and then I'll get back to this conversation. You need some tools to do real time in the moment. And what it is, is it's self regulation in the moment. And there's a couple of things that we need to do in order to regulate ourselves. And I call it the safety sequence. I actually go through it in the journal. But the first thing is, we know. that we're neurocepting all the time, safety and danger.

19:46 So if you start to feel activated, you can get a sense that your nervous system is feeling some danger. So we've got to check in and say like, we're not in danger. Like you may be sitting here starting to feel activated, but go through, like look around you. I'm like sitting on a chair. I can, you know, my hands are touching, you know, my legs. I can look around and see things in the room. I am safe. And unless we're like in a war zone or we're like in this violent situation, 99 percent of the time we are safe and not. In the present moment, not like, well, I wasn't safe when I was doing this and potentially this could happen.

20:30 No, we're looking at, are you safe in this moment? And 99 percent of the time, the answer is yes. So you're always asking yourself, you know, and I put my hand to my heart. Am I safe? Yes, Leah, you're safe. So that kind of sends a message to the brain. That you're safe, but the next piece is my body doesn't believe that because my body is like I know you're saying you're safe But I feel like crap right now. So what you're talking about physically safe, not emotionally safe. Is that correct? Okay. Physically safe. We're not physically in danger. yeah You're not physically in danger Your brain needs to know that because it is never going to relax if you are in physical danger And we don't want it to If you're in physical danger, you need to be activated so you can take action.

21:14 The majority of the time, we're not being chased by a tiger, like we're not in physical, we may feel discomfort because somebody is being rude to us or I've got so many things on my list to do, but we establish the physical safety. The next piece is we go into our body and when you go into your body, that's when you start like, yeah, I don't feel safe though. Like, I don't feel, I feel heaviness in my chest, maybe my brain is spinning, maybe my gut is upset, maybe I'm sweating, I feel this energy rising. And we're just gonna drop into our body and allow ourselves to notice what is going on in our body. So I call it, asking yourself the question, do I feel safe? And often the answer is no.

21:56 And those questions, am I safe, do I feel safe, they're kind of interchangeable. Sometimes we feel things first and then we want to confirm. Sometimes we can confirm things and then go into our body, so it's interchangeable. And then the third step is we want to acutely relax our body in some way. And I recommend just two simple ways. There's a whole bunch of ways, but the first way I recommend is what I call the rag doll. Where you literally just let your body drop, release the tension, it's almost like you tense it up a little bit and then just drop. And you can do like a full on ragdoll if you're like in the privacy of a room.

22:37 If you're in the waiting room, it's likely you're not going to stand up and do a full on ragdoll, but what you can do is sort of slump down a little bit, relax your butt, relax your shoulders, relax every, let your hands. Hang down, no one will even know that you're doing it. Or you can do something like a slow and low exhale. So you're just gonna breathe and really start with that exhalation. 'cause exhalation is what activates the vagus nerve, which activates our rest and digest system. Helps us completely relax. So when we do those three things, what happens is our, we're sending a message to our body. We're safe, we're relaxing our body.

23:20 And a relaxed body that is in a safe environment cannot house stress. And when I say that to people, I'm like, a relaxed body cannot house stress. I want you to think about when you're angry at somebody and you go to yell at them. Maybe it's like one of your kids. Try being in a complete ragdoll relaxed body. And yell. You can't do it. me laugh because I'm like, I don't know. I don't think that can happen. You can't do it because a relaxed body can't house stress. So what we're trying to do is as we go throughout our day, we are going to encounter hundreds of times a day where our body feels activated because we're feeling threats because the nervous system also doesn't know the difference between a real threat and a perceived threat.

24:12 Everything is on the same basis. So, hundreds of times a day, we're like, I perceive threat, I perceive threat. We want to encounter it, remind it it's safe, and relax our body. And as we keep doing that, we start to get more comfortable in a relaxed body, and we can start Learning how to manage our emotions, how to process our emotions, how to use our mindset tools to reframe everything that we're doing. And then we're not going to be reacting, we're going to be living from a place of intentionality because we have our thinking skills, we're able to process our emotions, and we're in a relaxed body.

24:52 Whenever I talk to someone about chronic stress or regulating your nervous system, I wonder how to tell the difference between what you just described, which is many, many times a day, you're going to become activated and like a chronic state of dysregulation. Because I just think there's gotta be a difference there between. Going through the cycle multiple times a day and how do you know, basically what I kind of want to know is how do I know if I'm healthy in my nervous system? Because so often, and everything from, you know, weight loss to perimenopause symptoms, it's always like reduce your stress.

25:32 And I'm like, but it can't be zero. And so how do I know, if I'm regulating it? Or just because it feels like there's always work to do. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing. Yeah. So a couple of things is acute stress isn't necessarily bad. We need acute stress is what, what's keeps us going. The challenge is if we're, we're stuck in that chronic state where we have that constant stress and we know it because our body gives us some symptoms. Our body, if you're struggling with chronic pain or chronic symptoms and illness and anxiety and headaches and gut challenges, chances are you are chronically stressed. And when you're chronically stressed, then it's not like, yeah, you want to be regulating all these times throughout the day, but you've got to go back to your practice and go back to your foundations as well.

26:23 And it ends up being like, it is a lifestyle that we want to start looking at. Um, We know when we're not stressed by how our body feels. If you are feeling like you're on edge, like most people, if they are in a state of dysregulation, they're either feeling like they're on edge, like they're feeling stressed out, busy, overwhelmed, anxious, or they're feeling completely numb and shut down. When you have those, that is a state of dysregulation. And it comes out, like the body. Will produce symptoms. You're not going to start sleeping. There's going to be weight gain There's going to be like strange relationships Now we have a balance because yeah There's going to be hormonal things and there's going to be things that we want to be taking care of You know through maybe there's some medication that some people will need to have for Um, but that daily stress, I always say to people, don't question whether you need that stress relief.

27:30 every single day. You do. Like, you just a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how do we start to kind of get to know our own unique systems and our own cues? What, what do you notice is like unique about different people and the way they react or feel or anything that kind of is unique with people? Yeah. I always say to people, like, you're special, but you're not that special. That there are some common, like, even though there's some uniqueness, there are some commonalities that we have. So, if you, like, in my journal, I have you map out.

28:12 So, by asking certain questions, like what are some of the thoughts that you, when you describe yourself, because most people get an idea of what it's like when I'm stressed out. Okay, what do your thoughts sound like when you're stressed out? And you're often going to hear, well, they're worry thoughts and they're anxious thoughts and they're overthinking and they're ruminating. Okay. So that gives you an indication of what that looks like. What are some of the feelings that you have or what are some of the behaviors? Well, I notice I'm, I'm much more sarcastic. I have an edge to my voice. I'm snippy. I'm so you, you start to play around with observing and building that awareness.

28:52 I always say we're not doing it with any judgment. Like it's with so much love and compassion because we're all the same on the level that we. all are going to get dysregulated. The nervous system needs to go up and down. You need to get dysregulated, but you want to be able to come back home. So, a healthy nervous system is one that moves up and down flexibly. So, you just start building awareness, like, okay, oh, isn't that interesting that when I'm with this person, I start to feel a little bit activated. Well, what's going on there? Oh, I'm, tend to be more defensive. When I am feeling more activated or I tend to really just I, I worry incessantly or I'm not able to sleep or I feel like I'm clenching my jaw.

29:40 Like there's all these things that we want to start building that awareness of. What does it look like when I am in a state of hyper arousal, a state of hypo arousal and what does it look like when I'm feeling good? Like, when I'm feeling, and, and, I think we inherently know, like when I'm feeling good, like I feel confident, and I'm like so much more patient with people and I'm kind and you know, I'm, I'm open to people's opinions. When I'm tired and fed up, I react very differently. And so you can start mapping it out is the best way to do it. Okay, good.

30:21 All right, anything else with regards just bringing it back to like Making choices in the kitchen kind of thing, like, um, how we can kind of use the knowledge that we're gaining here today about our nervous system to help us in making our food choices or, you know, in weight loss, that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, as you're mapping out your system, I would be mapping out, are there certain foods that I go to when I'm feeling anxious, angry, uh, overwhelmed? Are there certain foods that I go to when I'm sad and lonely and bored?

31:04 And you can just start building, do you have a pattern? Are there certain times of day? that you find yourself, you know, going towards certain foods or wanting certain things. Okay, what's going on at those times of day? And, is it related to a dysregulation? It's, it's not going to be perfect. Like, we're not trying to aim for perfection. We're trying to aim for for awareness, because once we have that awareness, we can relax, and then we can start using some of the mindset tools, which I'm sure that you, you know, share with, Yeah, yeah, like the model. Yeah, you can start reframing things. You can't really use the model to its full capacity if you're dysregulated, because when you're dysregulated, you're, I call it your CEO, but essentially it's your thinking skills, your executive function skills goes offline.

31:56 And that's not a choice. Great. That's biological. That's how it's meant to be. When we are in survival mode, we're not in thinking mode. And so that's an important thing for people to notice that when you are dysregulated, it's going to be very hard to change your thoughts because your, your nervous system is like, Listen, we're in survival mode here. I don't really care what you're thinking and how curious and compassionate you are. Like, we need to survive, which is why you try to calm that system first. When you calm that system, your thinking skills come back. Now I can start making some better choices. Do I really want to eat this? Do I really want to have this? You know, what's it going to feel like? What's the discomfort going through and using all those, those thought tools?

32:39 Yeah. Yeah. perfect. Yeah. I, um, not that this disqualifies you from working with me or anything, but I do notice that with clients that people that choose to work with me tend to be like ready. And I ask them like, why are you contacting me now? And they're like, I'm ready to make these changes. And I feel like that's kind of a sign of like, I'm, I'm pretty regulated. I, um, I know, and they're, and they're ready to start working on their thoughts. I have had clients where no amount of that work, no amount of, you know, being aware is making a difference. And I suspect that this is, um, part of the factors. Yeah, I mean, the nervous system, like for all of us, it doesn't matter how regulated you are, there is going to be more, like, we need to be regulating ourselves hundreds of times a day.

33:30 But as we work on our nervous system, it's kind of like what happens is we build up our capacity for regulation. I call it that was actually going to be my next question is, okay, keep going. we build up. I call it that zone of resilience. We build up our capacity. The more time we spend, it's like building up our tolerance for any kind of exercise per se. You know, initially if I start running or, you know, doing some exercise regime, it's It's going to be hard. I maybe will only be able to do it five minutes, but as I continue doing it, it's 10 minutes and then 20 minutes and 30, and all of a sudden it's two hours that I'm able to do it. The nervous system is like that.

34:11 It's like the mental health gym. The more I do things on a consistent basis, the more I build up the capacity for tolerance. And eventually what happens is I will still get dysregulated, but it's going to take me longer. to get there. And then once I am dysregulated, I know how to get myself back home. So it's almost like I'll be, I'll be more tolerant longer. I'll still, I'm going to get dysregulated because I'm human. We're not, we can't bypass the human experience. We can't regulate away all that humanness, but it is going to take me a little bit longer. And I think back to like having kids, you know, as you build a capacity for your nervous system, instead of getting irritated within five minutes.

34:57 You know, it starts six minutes, and then seven minutes, and then ten minutes, and eventually, you know, maybe it's like half an hour, where I'm just like, okay, well, now I'm going to walk away from this, because, you know, we just see a change. It changes all our relationships, because We have so much more compassion because we see like, okay, this is my nervous system and that's their nervous system. You know, when my child is having a freak out on me, it's not necessarily personally about me. It's, I wonder what's going on with their nervous system. And so we, we increase our capacity and our tolerance. Yeah. And the more regulated you are, the more you're going to be able to step into that.

35:39 Wonder what's happening for them. And, and even adult to adult, you know, when someone acts out, a stranger acts out in the grocery store. I mean, even though it hasn't been strictly nervous system work, I think that my work as a life coach and getting trained has just put me in more of a position to say, I wonder what's going on for them today, instead of being critical. And I think all of that just contributes to your own regulation and not getting fired up because someone else is misbehaving That's right. and I put misbehaving in air quotes, you know, Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. We all misbehave. Yeah. Yeah.

36:19 I feel like the more regulated you are in general, the more you're going to be able to make what you consider good choices with your nutrition though, right? So the more you're regulating on a regular basis throughout the day and finding things that are creating peace and happiness for you that aren't food. It's just kind of like, uh, the opposite of a vicious cycle. It's the, it's the amazing cycle. Why don't we have a saying for that? Like, Yeah, it's true. what is the opposite of a vicious cycle? But it, it does, you know, the more regulated, the more you're making choices that you like in, you know, with your nutrition and your activity and your patients level, and then that's going to lead into even more regulation.

37:03 Would Yeah. Right. When you're in a state of regulation, again, you have access to your thinking skills. When you have access to your thinking skills, you can, um, start living more intentionally. And I, I, Often say to people you, you want to figure out what your values are, what's important to you, so that you have like a map of how you want to live. So how do you want to live nutrition wise? Like you said, you know, longevity to take care of making sure that, you know, I'm eating in a brain healthy way. I know that you talked with, that's one of my passions too, being a speech language pathologist is like, what are the things? that are important for the brain.

37:44 What are the nutrients for the brain? Well, you can start introducing these nutrients, whether it's like physical nutrients or like learning and cognitive nutrients. You can start introducing that when you're regulated. If you're not regulated, your CEO is checked out. You don't have, you have like minimum access. It's not like you have none, but you have minimum. So it's harder to make good choices. It's harder to live intentionally. Everything is based on like a reaction because you don't have that same capacity to think. Perfect. Oh, this has been so good. So informative. Well, I, I really am so excited to dive into this resilience journal.

38:26 And like I said, I will put a link to that in all three beautiful colors in the show notes and any, anything that we missed Leah. No, I mean, I think I always love leaving the key message that as you've learned about your nervous system, I, I really think you gain such a deep compassion for yourself and for others around you. And, you know, sometimes when I say that, oh, you have compassion for others, like, oh, they just walk all over you and everything. I'm like, no, because you have compassion for yourself as well, which means that you'll put healthy boundaries in. So it just, it changes all your relationships when you can come from that place of regulation. I Perfect.

39:06 I love it. Thank you so much. anywhere else that you want to direct people to find you online. a podcast. It's called Building Resilience. So we talk all about all sorts of things, stuff like this. Um, and then I'm on Instagram and Facebook at Leah Davidson Life Coaching. Perfect. And again, we'll find all of that information in the show notes. Thanks again, Leah. I am so glad you tuned in today. Before I sign off, I wanna remind you of the what to do when you overeat three part video course that I have. If you are trying to lose weight and find yourself overeating too many times to see lasting success, be sure to check out that free course. It also comes with a reset and recover guide that will help you put everything you learn in the videos in writing, and really clarify each step so you can feel confident.

39:50 Moving forward, that's free just for my podcast listeners, so be sure to grab that in the show notes. You can also book a free consult session to see if my full 12 week one-on-one coaching program is right for you. You can grab that link also in the show notes. Remember, it's not just about the food, it's about empowering yourself with choices that truly serve you. Have a great week and as always, thanks for listening and sharing the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast.