40. Escape the Holiday Stress Cycle by Understanding Survival Mode
Do you feel like the holidays magnify all your existing stress and challenges? You're not alone. Our brains are wired for survival, not for joy and peace. So unwittingly, we can find ourselves in a chronic state of survival mode over the holidays.
In this episode, we explain what survival mode really is and how it shows up in our lives. When our nervous system perceives any kind of threat, whether it's an actual physical danger or just a stressful email from the boss, it throws us into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode.
This week, discover how to truly enjoy the holiday season. Learn how to break free from survival mode by calming your nervous system with practical, effective strategies. Shift into a state of ease, stay present, and embrace the joy of the season. This isn’t a luxury—it’s essential for your well-being.
Struggling with tough relationships this holiday season? Join our Holiday Boundaries Masterclass on Friday, December 6th, at 10 a.m. MT to learn the three most common boundary-setting mistakes and how to fix them. Register here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why your brain is wired for survival and how this impacts you during the holidays.
The four states of survival mode: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
How to identify your go-to survival states and personality traits associated with each.
Why rest and repair is critical for your mental and physical health.
Practical tools to regulate your nervous system and get out of survival mode.
How to fact-check your thoughts and think on purpose to stay calm.
Why boundaries are key to protecting what's most important to you.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Nina Lynch: Okay, it's officially December, which means cue the holiday Spotify playlists, eggnog, advent calendars, and the Santa countdown at our house. What about you, Kel?
Kelle Cobble: I'm drinking an eggnog latte right now. And there's different eggnogs. And really, you have to pick the right ones. So...
Nina: Agreed. I couldn't agree more. I love that you just said that. It's so true.
Kelle: And actually it was funny because I was in Costa Rica and it was Halloween when I left Costa Rica and then when I came back from Costa Rica it was all of a sudden Christmas in my house and I was like, oh my god, what is happening?
Nina: Oh my god, totally. Well, you know what I've noticed over the years? How the holidays magnify our existing stress, right? All of our challenges get bigger at work, at home and in our relationships, right?
Kelle: Yes, totally. On default, our brains are wired for survival. They're not wired for the joy of the holiday season or presents or peace. They're wired to keep us safe. So unwittingly, we spend a lot of our time surviving over the holidays. We can find ourselves in a chronic state of survival mode.
Nina: Yeah, totally. And to back up a tad, when we say our brain is wired for survival, we mean it's outdated. It hasn't evolved as quickly as the world around us. It still thinks we live in caves with our tribe, hunting and gathering all day long. It's constantly scanning our bodies and environments for perceived threats. And when it codes something as dangerous, it will go into survival mode.
Kelle: Whether it senses an actual threat, like someone's going to hurt you, or a perceived threat like an email from your boss, a very long list of holiday shopping to do's, or an updated deadline, you will go into survival mode.
Nina: So any time your nervous system perceives a threat, it will throw your body into a survival state. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
Kelle: And this is how we spend so much of our lives, sure. And also the holiday season, unwittingly, we are in holiday survival mode.
Nina: We're in survival mode. We're not present. Survival mode prevents us from resting, recovering, and relaxing. We're not reasonable, logical, playful, calm, present, or curious.
Kelle: We're not compassionate, thoughtful, or joyful, as the holiday season covertly implies we should be.
Nina: So let's make this holiday season different from years past, shall we?
Kelle: Yes, please. Today we're bringing you an episode out of the archives. It's our most popular, most downloaded podcast episode so far, hands down. And it's all about how to get out of survival.
Nina: Yeah, let's get ahead of the game and start practicing ease, calm, and presence this year. We'll show you exactly how to shift out of survival mode in this episode by regulating your nervous system physically.
Kelle: And next week, we'll show you how to get out of the negative thinking and overthinking that creates all this holiday drama. You can clean up your thinking and feel so much better this holiday season with a little holiday thought work.
Nina: Yes. Want to actually enjoy the holiday season this year? Let's do that. Here's another killer episode of Ambitious-ish.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Kelle: Okay, you know survival mode, right? The smart driven women we work with know all about it. It's where we meet most of our high achieving clients.
Nina: So we touched on this in episode five when we talked about how both awareness and mindfulness are the solution to being in an activated state. We talked about how being the watcher of your thoughts and feelings creates awareness for them, and ultimately opens you up to so much more choice in your life. Choice to show up the way you want to, not activated or dysregulated, with more intention. We practice awareness to be more intentional.
Kelle: And when we say activated state, you can call this many things. It's when you're reactive, or dysregulated, or triggered. It's when you're in literal survival mode. So we're to explain today what exactly survival mode is so that you can be more aware when you find yourself there. And remember, awareness is the first step to changing anything.
Nina: Exactly. We've introduced you to the concept of thought work, and today we'll take a deeper dive into body work, where your nervous system lives, because the two of these combined help you create more awareness for what you're thinking and feeling, and also open you up to the choices you have available in any moment of your life.
Kelle: Yeah, we always say where your thoughts go, your life will follow. So in coaching, we help you edit your unintentional or default thoughts, thoughts you've been thinking and believing sometimes for a really long time, so you show up more empowered in your life.
Nina: And for our smart, driven, ambitious-ish clients, when we first meet them, their thought patterns involve so many have tos. If you feel this way, you're not alone. We learned a long time ago that we have to do everything a certain way for everyone, always with a smile and feeling grateful and looking young and pretty doing it all.
Kelle: Oh my God. All right. Okay. Yeah. Obligation after obligation, it all starts to feel overwhelming and we inevitably shift into survival mode. We can't keep up with the unreasonable expectations we have for ourselves. We're doing a lot of things, but we're not really doing any of them very well.
Nina: Yeah, coaching's all about opening you up to awareness, the choices you have, and living with more intention.
Kelle: We show you how to reframe what you're telling yourself is an obligation or duty into a choice that's either in alignment with or not in alignment with your values. What's most important to you? More on this. Your core values are in episode seven. So go back and listen to that if you haven't caught that.
Nina: Yeah, this is all about checking in on what you're saying yes to, what you're saying no to, and why. And then taking different actions in your life from that awareness. You self-regulate, get out of survival mode, and show up in an empowered way.
Kelle: Most of our clients come to us looking to create more calm and balance in their lives and this is literally the opposite of what it's like to be in survival mode.
Nina: When you schedule a consultation with us we ask a few questions ahead of time so we can prepare for the call and one of those questions is what results are you looking to create from coaching?
Kelle: Almost all the answers to this question have something to do with more balance or or more calm, more peace in our clients' lives, hands down.
Nina: Yeah, hands down. So in this episode, we'll talk about how to shift from constantly going and doing and feeling overwhelmed by it all from survival mode to living in a state of regulation and calm, and most importantly, how important and actually foundational calm is for your health, your mental and physical well-being.
Kelle: Yeah, calm isn't a luxury. It's not something that people do who don't have to work or aren't ambitious or don't have goals, people who are lazy. It's also not something you wait to feel and do until your kids are older or until you have more time.
Nina: Yeah, the ability to create a state of calm is your superpower. It's that grace under fire skillset. It's literally using your executive functioning, that CEO part of your brain, in times of crisis and shit show, instead of your monkey survival brain that is panicked and scared, on high alert, apprehensive, and reactive.
Kelle: So let's jump in. We're going to go super basic today, like we love to do when we introduce complicated topics. This is Nervous System 101, and of course, we'll do a deeper dive down the road. Your nervous system exists to regulate your body, like a thermostat in your home. Its only job is to keep you safe. It's designed to keep you safe. Safety is literally your nervous system's only job. So it's always scanning your body and your environment for danger to see what's safe and what's not safe?
Nina lynch: If your brain perceives danger, it will go into survival mode. Whether it senses an actual threat, like someone is going to hurt you, or a perceived threat, an email from that challenging colleague. You will go into one of two survival states.
Kelle: Yep, there are two. Activation or shutdown. So activation is fight or flight. Shutdown is freeze or fawn. So anytime your nervous system perceives a threat, it'll throw your body into a dysregulated state. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. When there's no threat, it's in a state of calm. This is called rest and repair or rest and digest.
Nina: So your body is always in either one of these states, dysregulated or rest and repair. It can't be in both at the same time. So let's walk through all four survival states, the dysregulated states, so you can see how these might be showing up in your life.
Kelle: All right, so when you find yourself in the fight mode of being activated, you might feel nervous or anxious. You might have the inability to relax. You might have obsessive thoughts like your brain is overthinking, ruminating. You might have this kind of frustration and anger you'd associate with a fight or feeling combative. You might feel ragey and hostile, which oh gosh, those are so fun, right? You might be really reactive. So your body feels tense in your shoulders or arms. I actually feel tension in my neck when I am in survival mode. For me, I have this aggressive posture, like there's no way I'm going to feel calm in the next 10 minutes. And really, part of feeling in fight mode, being in fight mode, is this focus on unfairness and injustices, kind of like victim mode?
Nina: Yeah, and you can identify some of these states as personality traits. Your go-to state of survival is where your brain thinks it needs to go to keep you safe. It becomes kind of automatic over time. So I used to have a colleague who was very focused on justice and fairness. And to me, it seemed like they were always tit for tatting to make sure they had equal face time with certain stakeholders and decision makers like their colleagues had. And I realized years later that that colleague was actually in an activated fight mode, like a survival state. It's so interesting to look back on, like knowing what I know now, I probably could have managed them so differently, so much more productively. It's just one of those takeaways I keep in my back pocket to this day.
Kelle: So interesting. Okay. On to flight. When you're in flight mode, you're also in an activated state. So instead of sticking up for yourself and fighting, you go, you bail, you're out of here. So you're doing, you're jumpy. And when you're not doing, you're thinking about doing. So this is our clients. This is us and our clients. You're running through your never-ending to-do list. It's hard to sit still and connect to your body because you're always busy. It's the idea that you always have more to do and there's never enough time to do it.
Nina: Yeah, this sounds like pretty much every woman I know, including myself. Our clients are not the type of women who come home after a long day and lie down on the couch. Some clients who come to us even have a hard time like walking slow and relaxing for this reason, right Kel?
Kelle: Yeah, like in a yoga practice, a lot of our clients have a hard time quieting their nervous systems for yoga at first. There is just a subconscious need to move, to get things done. It's like an antsiness. They're allergic to sitting still. I mean, I, in much of my life, have been allergic to sitting still.
Nina: I can really relate to being jumpy. I used to startle easily when I was in a relationship with someone who was just chronically dishonest. There was a lot of trust broken in that relationship, and I didn't realize it at the time, but my nervous system was on fire and coded this human as a threat. Looking back now, I realize I spent a lot of time in flight mode. I'd startle and scare really easily. I was jumpy at seemingly small alarms. And it really took me until recently when I learned to map my nervous system and become more aware of these states to realize this.
Kelle: Nina, I totally get this about you.
Nina: Oh, really?
Kelle: Yeah, when we would be on Zoom for clients in the morning and you would already be on and I'd hop on Zoom and I'd be like, good morning. And you'd always jump. And I'm like, why are you jumping? You know I'm coming. It's not like you're not expecting me.
Nina: I know. It's interesting. The jumpiness is something I'm super aware of now. It's pretty interesting.
Kelle: All right. Well, shout out to that awareness muscle you have.
Nina: Totally. Yeah. And so to recap, fight and flight modes are two ways you'll find yourself activated in a survival state when your brain perceives a threat in an environment.
Kelle: And you might also be someone who goes into freeze or fawn. We all have our go-to states of survival once we start paying attention. We tend to shift into one or two of these states more often, but freeze or fawn looks like this. This is where you go into shutdown.
Nina: Your brain thinks, I can't fight or outrun it, so the thing that'll make me safest is to just shut down.
Kelle: Yeah. In freeze mode, you can feel disoriented, disconnected. You hide or withdraw. You disassociate from your senses. You experience feelings of abandonment or feeling unwanted, like you're not good enough. And you tend to numb to feel better, like overeating and oversleeping, drinking too much, watching TV. You're low energy and sort of lifeless.
Nina: Yeah, I can totally get this way when I'm face to face with someone who's really angry. I used to get this way. Now I know I didn't cause their anger because in coaching we learn and understand that feelings are created by our thoughts. So that person's anger is coming from their thoughts, not me. But I used to perceive anger as dangerous and I would just absolutely shut down and withdraw.
Kelle: Yeah, and now you can regulate and handle that, right? You can cope with it.
Nina: Yeah, totally.
Kelle: All right. The last state is the fawn state. So I don't want to call this controversial, but there are differing opinions on this. Fawn is considered more of a coping mechanism than an actual survival state of your nervous system, and we'll unpack more on this later. In the interest of keeping this simple today, we're going to keep going, but it's really hard for me because I just want to nerd out on all this polyvagal theory, and we will get there. Nina's like holding me back right now because I'm just trying.
Nina: To keep it simple. But Kelly is just a savant when it comes to this part of the coaching and so trying to constrain in the interest of the listener.
Kelle: Okay, fawn state. Again, given the perceived threat, your nervous system thinks it's best to shut down. And fawn is particularly interesting. We can relate to this one big time. Fawn is when you give up your own needs and comply to feel safe.
Nina: This is when you people please. You're the peacemaker at your own expense. You don't really have solid boundaries. You over-apologize. You're hyper-aware of other people, like you walk in a room and scan everyone else's states, their moods. You're taking everyone's temperature in the room.
Kelle: I think this happens a lot with children and family members of addicts.
Nina: I'm learning a lot about this right now. When you grow up with a parent who's an alcoholic, for example, the child never really knows who's going to show up. Friendly parent, angry parent, withdrawn parent. And they wind up growing up in sort of unstable and uncertain or taxing circumstances. And that child might learn to stay safe by just keeping the waters calm, to disrupt as little as possible so as not to set off the unpredictable addict parent. or people-pleasing becomes their go-to survival state into adulthood.
Kelle: Just talking about that addict parent too, it's not even necessarily an addict parent, it's also like a moody parent, like you don't know what mood they're going to come home in, right? And so it's just kind of like, I'm just going to tiptoe around them. So these are the four survival states of survival mode, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And how lucky are we to have this amazing nervous system to keep us safe? But the problem is as humans, we have the ability to think about the past and think about the future. So unlike wildlife in the woods and mountains where we live here in Utah, we can have regrets about the past and worry about what's going to happen in the future. So this can put us into a chronic state of survival if we aren't aware and careful.
Nina: Think about that gorgeous moose basking in the sun. It's not thinking about what happened last year or what might happen tomorrow. It's scanning for the predators around it, arresting and digesting.
Kelle: Humans can get stuck in survival mode for extended periods of time when we aren't managing our minds, when we aren't aware of the thoughts we're thinking, when we're ruminating on the past or future tripping or worrying about what might happen down the road.
Nina lynch: Yeah, and we can start to identify... personality traits that are actually us in survival mode, right? Like my jumpiness or that colleague's tendency to fight for time with the stakeholders or someone else's tendency to people-please. Overworking can also be a sign of flight.
Kelle: So we don't rest. We don't allow ourselves time to recover, rest, or restore.
Nina: I used to totally think that rest was lazy, Kel.
Kelle: I mean, totally, right?
Nina: Yeah, but now we understand, after doing this work, how important rest and digest is and how we need to prioritize it. Spending time in a calm state increases immunity, digestion, and connection because you'll have increased oxytocin.
Kelle: Yeah, I was just in Hawaii on vacation with my family. I took my computer, but I really did not use it hardly at all. I rested and I connected with family members. I really made it intentional. It was such a gift.
Nina: Oh my God, yeah, shoring up is so key. Along with, you know, increased immunity and digestion and connection, you also have an increased capacity to think consciously and reasonably and on purpose. You'll have thoughts like, I'm enough, I'm safe, I'm not in danger.
Kelle: Yeah, you'll have fewer things that bother you in your environment. So shout out to all the pillow fluffers out there. You're inspired, you're curious, you're expansive. You have more access to your intuition. You're more creative and you can think way more clearly.
Nina: Yeah. Jeez, Kel. When I think of rest and digest, there was a time when I was really slammed from working bell to bell and I didn't use to have bowel movements on weekdays, on workdays, only on the weekend. Seriously. I literally was in survival mode all week with no rest and repair until the week ended. It was brutal.
Kelle: Okay. Constipated for a week. Come on. I think most of the women that I know have had that at least at some point and it is just like so not fun.
Nina: I think it is a statistic that women are more constipated than men. Generally.
Kelle: I believe it.
Nina: It's drastic.
Kelle: Yeah So many of our clients come to us with the IBS symptoms or gut trouble or migraines or panic attacks or even chronic pain Not always but pretty often these symptoms come from being stuck in a chronic state of stress and survival so the tension builds up in your body and Creates the chronic pain.
Nina: This is one of the reasons why rest and repair is so key. Creating it for yourself is so important to your mental and physical and emotional health.
Kelle: Yeah, this is why it's really important to check in with your body and we're gonna talk a lot more about that checking in listening to your body and And there's an email coming out on that soon too, so just FYI.
Nina: Yeah, just noticing where you hold all the clench and tension and letting it go. Yeah. I notice that a lot in myself.
Kelle: Okay, let's check in for a sec. Does this all sound crazy or foreign?
Nina: You're not alone if it does. Nothing's gone wrong. You can start to create calm, though, anytime. It'll be hard at first, though. Your brain won't think it's safe. It won't want to rest because it's not in the habit of doing that.
Kelle: The brain thinks a survival state is the thing that's going to keep you safe, but 99% of the time in today's world, it's not necessary. Our brains just go there on default and that's why we really need to learn how to manage our minds.
Nina: Yeah. So, some examples of triggers our clients come to coaching with include, like this is just from the past couple of weeks, you know, you don't get the VP promotion. A co-worker tells you to F off. There's a health diagnosis. a really tough 360 review. Those 360 reviews keep popping up. The client cuts you out of the deal. The patient is belligerent and offensive. She unfriends you to your face. Your boss emails over the weekend and it makes you think you're getting fired. You accidentally copy the Time Magazine editor on the email to the client. This actually happened to me.
Kelle: Wow. Okay. That sounds fun. Not.
Nina: Manage your mind around that one, right?
Kelle: All right, your brain thinks the best thing for you to do is to go into fight, flight, or freeze, or fawn, but it's not true. You're not actually in life or death danger. There's no lion chasing you. You can actually survive in a more productive way when you're calm.
Nina: Now the whole point here isn't to never get stressed out, to never shift into survival mode. No, no, no.
Kelle: No, the goal is to be able to self-regulate. So that is where your power lies. That's what we all need to practice, to notice when we're in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, and to have the ability to shift out of it and into a calm state when that's appropriate.
Nina: Yeah, one of our colleagues explains this concept like a shopping cart that's out of alignment. You know what we're talking about, that cart with the wobbly wheel. You're shopping along, but the wobbly wheel keeps pulling you left when you want to go straight, right.
Kelle: That damn wobbly wheel.
Nina: You're constantly self-correcting the cart, right, as you shop your list. You're pulling the cart right when it lists left, and this is just like self-regulation.
Kelle: The brain will always pull you left. To go into survival mode at the slightest hit of danger, it's your job to be onto yourself and self-correct to pull right, get back into alignment so you can finish shopping or whatever you're doing.
Nina: So how about we share a few tools and strategies to help you get out of an activated state.
Kelle: Let's do it. All right. So let's say you get an email from a client on a Saturday night while you're out for drinks with friends and your first thought is, I'm going to lose my job?
Nina: And then you have an anxiety attack.
Kelle: So what's happening here is your nervous system is kicking into an activated state, even though there's no imminent threat. It's an email, a screen full of words, but your brain is telling you that you're going to lose your job.
Nina: So of course you're going to shift into survival. It makes complete sense that your nervous system kicks in to anxiety and panic and survival under this circumstance.
Kelle: Especially when we have big jobs, big ambitions, and big responsibilities, we're typically overwhelmed in the first place. So the smallest hint of a threat can easily throw us off balance and into a spin cycle, into survival.
Nina: Yeah, I can totally relate to being set off by the smallest alarms. So here are a few strategies to self-regulate at that moment. The first might be simply putting the phone down, stepping away, and getting some fresh air.
Kelle: And can I just point out, like, let's not check our emails when we're out to drinks with friends.
Nina: Great call. As we evaluate next time.
Kelle: Or right before we're going to go to bed. Don't do that. Don't do that to yourself. Good call.
Nina: Okay.
Kelle: Okay, so another practice is a grounding practice. So you can get out of your head and into your body. So one that we like to use is an orienting practice and we have so many practices. This is just one. So what you want to do is turn your head all the way to the right. If you're driving, please don't do this. Keep your eyes on the road and take notice of all the things that you see as you move your head to the left. So for me, I see books , microphone, grass, trees, crystal, picture, printer, piano. Just naming things helps to bring you back into the present moment, back to where you can literally feel safe, connected, and grounded. And just to get a little nerdy here. You're also flossing the vagus nerve when you move your head. You can move it from right to left or left to right. We'll talk more about the vagus nerve too, but I just had to throw that in there.
Nina: That practice is actually super useful for me. You all need to give it a try. It's just super doable and useful. And another strategy along those same lines might be practicing some thought work. So identifying the default unintentional thoughts in your brain that are shifting you into survival, fact-checking them, and then thinking on purpose. So in this circumstance, we could bring in the watcher and see that your response to the words on the screen may or may not be valid.
Kelle: Our brains automatically go to what if everything falls apart, this all or nothing thinking or this like going straight to what is the worst that can possibly happen. But there are so many other options. We'll talk more about unintentional and intentional thoughts next week.
Nina: Yeah, so to bring it all home and summarize, survival mode prevents us from resting, recovering, and relaxing. We're not reasonable, logical, playful, calm, present, or curious.
Kelle: Without noticing, we lose connection to ourselves, to our bodies, to our values, and our people. And this isn't where we show up as our best selves, our favorite version of ourselves.
Nina: Yeah, we have yet to meet a woman who feels like she gets enough rest, downtime, and pleasure in her life. And we're on a mission to change that, to collectively give ourselves permission to rest and repair and ultimately restore.
Kelle: And actually enjoy the life you work so hard to create.
Nina: Heck yeah, I'm in for that.
Kelle: Me too, all right. We love you guys.
Nina: See you soon.
Kelle: Bye for now.
Kelle: Hey, it's us again. The holidays are like a magnifying glass on all the everyday issues we have with family, colleagues, work, and friendships. Everything is exaggerated this time of year.
Nina: Yeah, if you're anticipating or maybe already experiencing some difficult relationships, we get it, we see you. It's not always easy.
Kelle: And while we can't solve every relationship problem you're having, we can offer one solution, more ease and calm.
Nina: Yeah, we can help you get to ease and calm so the difficult people in your life don't become so triggering or upsetting during the holidays. And we do this by setting effective boundaries.
Kelle: Yeah, join us for our next masterclass all about the three most common mistakes people make when setting boundaries and how to work through them?
Nina: Yeah, our Holiday Boundaries Masterclass takes place Friday, December 6th, at 10 a.m. Mountain Time. And if you can join us live, do it. But there will also be a replay , so don't stress.
Kelle: Boundaries are all about protecting what's most important to us, and we're gonna show you how to do just that in a way that you've probably never heard before.
Nina: Yeah, so if you're looking to actually enjoy the holidays this year, register at the link in the show notes. This is a masterclass you won't wanna miss. We'll see you there.
Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected visit https://www.kelleandnina.com/ for more information and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode.
Kelle Cobble: I'm drinking an eggnog latte right now. And there's different eggnogs. And really, you have to pick the right ones. So...
Nina: Agreed. I couldn't agree more. I love that you just said that. It's so true.
Kelle: And actually it was funny because I was in Costa Rica and it was Halloween when I left Costa Rica and then when I came back from Costa Rica it was all of a sudden Christmas in my house and I was like, oh my god, what is happening?
Nina: Oh my god, totally. Well, you know what I've noticed over the years? How the holidays magnify our existing stress, right? All of our challenges get bigger at work, at home and in our relationships, right?
Kelle: Yes, totally. On default, our brains are wired for survival. They're not wired for the joy of the holiday season or presents or peace. They're wired to keep us safe. So unwittingly, we spend a lot of our time surviving over the holidays. We can find ourselves in a chronic state of survival mode.
Nina: Yeah, totally. And to back up a tad, when we say our brain is wired for survival, we mean it's outdated. It hasn't evolved as quickly as the world around us. It still thinks we live in caves with our tribe, hunting and gathering all day long. It's constantly scanning our bodies and environments for perceived threats. And when it codes something as dangerous, it will go into survival mode.
Kelle: Whether it senses an actual threat, like someone's going to hurt you, or a perceived threat like an email from your boss, a very long list of holiday shopping to do's, or an updated deadline, you will go into survival mode.
Nina: So any time your nervous system perceives a threat, it will throw your body into a survival state. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
Kelle: And this is how we spend so much of our lives, sure. And also the holiday season, unwittingly, we are in holiday survival mode.
Nina: We're in survival mode. We're not present. Survival mode prevents us from resting, recovering, and relaxing. We're not reasonable, logical, playful, calm, present, or curious.
Kelle: We're not compassionate, thoughtful, or joyful, as the holiday season covertly implies we should be.
Nina: So let's make this holiday season different from years past, shall we?
Kelle: Yes, please. Today we're bringing you an episode out of the archives. It's our most popular, most downloaded podcast episode so far, hands down. And it's all about how to get out of survival.
Nina: Yeah, let's get ahead of the game and start practicing ease, calm, and presence this year. We'll show you exactly how to shift out of survival mode in this episode by regulating your nervous system physically.
Kelle: And next week, we'll show you how to get out of the negative thinking and overthinking that creates all this holiday drama. You can clean up your thinking and feel so much better this holiday season with a little holiday thought work.
Nina: Yes. Want to actually enjoy the holiday season this year? Let's do that. Here's another killer episode of Ambitious-ish.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Kelle: Okay, you know survival mode, right? The smart driven women we work with know all about it. It's where we meet most of our high achieving clients.
Nina: So we touched on this in episode five when we talked about how both awareness and mindfulness are the solution to being in an activated state. We talked about how being the watcher of your thoughts and feelings creates awareness for them, and ultimately opens you up to so much more choice in your life. Choice to show up the way you want to, not activated or dysregulated, with more intention. We practice awareness to be more intentional.
Kelle: And when we say activated state, you can call this many things. It's when you're reactive, or dysregulated, or triggered. It's when you're in literal survival mode. So we're to explain today what exactly survival mode is so that you can be more aware when you find yourself there. And remember, awareness is the first step to changing anything.
Nina: Exactly. We've introduced you to the concept of thought work, and today we'll take a deeper dive into body work, where your nervous system lives, because the two of these combined help you create more awareness for what you're thinking and feeling, and also open you up to the choices you have available in any moment of your life.
Kelle: Yeah, we always say where your thoughts go, your life will follow. So in coaching, we help you edit your unintentional or default thoughts, thoughts you've been thinking and believing sometimes for a really long time, so you show up more empowered in your life.
Nina: And for our smart, driven, ambitious-ish clients, when we first meet them, their thought patterns involve so many have tos. If you feel this way, you're not alone. We learned a long time ago that we have to do everything a certain way for everyone, always with a smile and feeling grateful and looking young and pretty doing it all.
Kelle: Oh my God. All right. Okay. Yeah. Obligation after obligation, it all starts to feel overwhelming and we inevitably shift into survival mode. We can't keep up with the unreasonable expectations we have for ourselves. We're doing a lot of things, but we're not really doing any of them very well.
Nina: Yeah, coaching's all about opening you up to awareness, the choices you have, and living with more intention.
Kelle: We show you how to reframe what you're telling yourself is an obligation or duty into a choice that's either in alignment with or not in alignment with your values. What's most important to you? More on this. Your core values are in episode seven. So go back and listen to that if you haven't caught that.
Nina: Yeah, this is all about checking in on what you're saying yes to, what you're saying no to, and why. And then taking different actions in your life from that awareness. You self-regulate, get out of survival mode, and show up in an empowered way.
Kelle: Most of our clients come to us looking to create more calm and balance in their lives and this is literally the opposite of what it's like to be in survival mode.
Nina: When you schedule a consultation with us we ask a few questions ahead of time so we can prepare for the call and one of those questions is what results are you looking to create from coaching?
Kelle: Almost all the answers to this question have something to do with more balance or or more calm, more peace in our clients' lives, hands down.
Nina: Yeah, hands down. So in this episode, we'll talk about how to shift from constantly going and doing and feeling overwhelmed by it all from survival mode to living in a state of regulation and calm, and most importantly, how important and actually foundational calm is for your health, your mental and physical well-being.
Kelle: Yeah, calm isn't a luxury. It's not something that people do who don't have to work or aren't ambitious or don't have goals, people who are lazy. It's also not something you wait to feel and do until your kids are older or until you have more time.
Nina: Yeah, the ability to create a state of calm is your superpower. It's that grace under fire skillset. It's literally using your executive functioning, that CEO part of your brain, in times of crisis and shit show, instead of your monkey survival brain that is panicked and scared, on high alert, apprehensive, and reactive.
Kelle: So let's jump in. We're going to go super basic today, like we love to do when we introduce complicated topics. This is Nervous System 101, and of course, we'll do a deeper dive down the road. Your nervous system exists to regulate your body, like a thermostat in your home. Its only job is to keep you safe. It's designed to keep you safe. Safety is literally your nervous system's only job. So it's always scanning your body and your environment for danger to see what's safe and what's not safe?
Nina lynch: If your brain perceives danger, it will go into survival mode. Whether it senses an actual threat, like someone is going to hurt you, or a perceived threat, an email from that challenging colleague. You will go into one of two survival states.
Kelle: Yep, there are two. Activation or shutdown. So activation is fight or flight. Shutdown is freeze or fawn. So anytime your nervous system perceives a threat, it'll throw your body into a dysregulated state. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. When there's no threat, it's in a state of calm. This is called rest and repair or rest and digest.
Nina: So your body is always in either one of these states, dysregulated or rest and repair. It can't be in both at the same time. So let's walk through all four survival states, the dysregulated states, so you can see how these might be showing up in your life.
Kelle: All right, so when you find yourself in the fight mode of being activated, you might feel nervous or anxious. You might have the inability to relax. You might have obsessive thoughts like your brain is overthinking, ruminating. You might have this kind of frustration and anger you'd associate with a fight or feeling combative. You might feel ragey and hostile, which oh gosh, those are so fun, right? You might be really reactive. So your body feels tense in your shoulders or arms. I actually feel tension in my neck when I am in survival mode. For me, I have this aggressive posture, like there's no way I'm going to feel calm in the next 10 minutes. And really, part of feeling in fight mode, being in fight mode, is this focus on unfairness and injustices, kind of like victim mode?
Nina: Yeah, and you can identify some of these states as personality traits. Your go-to state of survival is where your brain thinks it needs to go to keep you safe. It becomes kind of automatic over time. So I used to have a colleague who was very focused on justice and fairness. And to me, it seemed like they were always tit for tatting to make sure they had equal face time with certain stakeholders and decision makers like their colleagues had. And I realized years later that that colleague was actually in an activated fight mode, like a survival state. It's so interesting to look back on, like knowing what I know now, I probably could have managed them so differently, so much more productively. It's just one of those takeaways I keep in my back pocket to this day.
Kelle: So interesting. Okay. On to flight. When you're in flight mode, you're also in an activated state. So instead of sticking up for yourself and fighting, you go, you bail, you're out of here. So you're doing, you're jumpy. And when you're not doing, you're thinking about doing. So this is our clients. This is us and our clients. You're running through your never-ending to-do list. It's hard to sit still and connect to your body because you're always busy. It's the idea that you always have more to do and there's never enough time to do it.
Nina: Yeah, this sounds like pretty much every woman I know, including myself. Our clients are not the type of women who come home after a long day and lie down on the couch. Some clients who come to us even have a hard time like walking slow and relaxing for this reason, right Kel?
Kelle: Yeah, like in a yoga practice, a lot of our clients have a hard time quieting their nervous systems for yoga at first. There is just a subconscious need to move, to get things done. It's like an antsiness. They're allergic to sitting still. I mean, I, in much of my life, have been allergic to sitting still.
Nina: I can really relate to being jumpy. I used to startle easily when I was in a relationship with someone who was just chronically dishonest. There was a lot of trust broken in that relationship, and I didn't realize it at the time, but my nervous system was on fire and coded this human as a threat. Looking back now, I realize I spent a lot of time in flight mode. I'd startle and scare really easily. I was jumpy at seemingly small alarms. And it really took me until recently when I learned to map my nervous system and become more aware of these states to realize this.
Kelle: Nina, I totally get this about you.
Nina: Oh, really?
Kelle: Yeah, when we would be on Zoom for clients in the morning and you would already be on and I'd hop on Zoom and I'd be like, good morning. And you'd always jump. And I'm like, why are you jumping? You know I'm coming. It's not like you're not expecting me.
Nina: I know. It's interesting. The jumpiness is something I'm super aware of now. It's pretty interesting.
Kelle: All right. Well, shout out to that awareness muscle you have.
Nina: Totally. Yeah. And so to recap, fight and flight modes are two ways you'll find yourself activated in a survival state when your brain perceives a threat in an environment.
Kelle: And you might also be someone who goes into freeze or fawn. We all have our go-to states of survival once we start paying attention. We tend to shift into one or two of these states more often, but freeze or fawn looks like this. This is where you go into shutdown.
Nina: Your brain thinks, I can't fight or outrun it, so the thing that'll make me safest is to just shut down.
Kelle: Yeah. In freeze mode, you can feel disoriented, disconnected. You hide or withdraw. You disassociate from your senses. You experience feelings of abandonment or feeling unwanted, like you're not good enough. And you tend to numb to feel better, like overeating and oversleeping, drinking too much, watching TV. You're low energy and sort of lifeless.
Nina: Yeah, I can totally get this way when I'm face to face with someone who's really angry. I used to get this way. Now I know I didn't cause their anger because in coaching we learn and understand that feelings are created by our thoughts. So that person's anger is coming from their thoughts, not me. But I used to perceive anger as dangerous and I would just absolutely shut down and withdraw.
Kelle: Yeah, and now you can regulate and handle that, right? You can cope with it.
Nina: Yeah, totally.
Kelle: All right. The last state is the fawn state. So I don't want to call this controversial, but there are differing opinions on this. Fawn is considered more of a coping mechanism than an actual survival state of your nervous system, and we'll unpack more on this later. In the interest of keeping this simple today, we're going to keep going, but it's really hard for me because I just want to nerd out on all this polyvagal theory, and we will get there. Nina's like holding me back right now because I'm just trying.
Nina: To keep it simple. But Kelly is just a savant when it comes to this part of the coaching and so trying to constrain in the interest of the listener.
Kelle: Okay, fawn state. Again, given the perceived threat, your nervous system thinks it's best to shut down. And fawn is particularly interesting. We can relate to this one big time. Fawn is when you give up your own needs and comply to feel safe.
Nina: This is when you people please. You're the peacemaker at your own expense. You don't really have solid boundaries. You over-apologize. You're hyper-aware of other people, like you walk in a room and scan everyone else's states, their moods. You're taking everyone's temperature in the room.
Kelle: I think this happens a lot with children and family members of addicts.
Nina: I'm learning a lot about this right now. When you grow up with a parent who's an alcoholic, for example, the child never really knows who's going to show up. Friendly parent, angry parent, withdrawn parent. And they wind up growing up in sort of unstable and uncertain or taxing circumstances. And that child might learn to stay safe by just keeping the waters calm, to disrupt as little as possible so as not to set off the unpredictable addict parent. or people-pleasing becomes their go-to survival state into adulthood.
Kelle: Just talking about that addict parent too, it's not even necessarily an addict parent, it's also like a moody parent, like you don't know what mood they're going to come home in, right? And so it's just kind of like, I'm just going to tiptoe around them. So these are the four survival states of survival mode, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And how lucky are we to have this amazing nervous system to keep us safe? But the problem is as humans, we have the ability to think about the past and think about the future. So unlike wildlife in the woods and mountains where we live here in Utah, we can have regrets about the past and worry about what's going to happen in the future. So this can put us into a chronic state of survival if we aren't aware and careful.
Nina: Think about that gorgeous moose basking in the sun. It's not thinking about what happened last year or what might happen tomorrow. It's scanning for the predators around it, arresting and digesting.
Kelle: Humans can get stuck in survival mode for extended periods of time when we aren't managing our minds, when we aren't aware of the thoughts we're thinking, when we're ruminating on the past or future tripping or worrying about what might happen down the road.
Nina lynch: Yeah, and we can start to identify... personality traits that are actually us in survival mode, right? Like my jumpiness or that colleague's tendency to fight for time with the stakeholders or someone else's tendency to people-please. Overworking can also be a sign of flight.
Kelle: So we don't rest. We don't allow ourselves time to recover, rest, or restore.
Nina: I used to totally think that rest was lazy, Kel.
Kelle: I mean, totally, right?
Nina: Yeah, but now we understand, after doing this work, how important rest and digest is and how we need to prioritize it. Spending time in a calm state increases immunity, digestion, and connection because you'll have increased oxytocin.
Kelle: Yeah, I was just in Hawaii on vacation with my family. I took my computer, but I really did not use it hardly at all. I rested and I connected with family members. I really made it intentional. It was such a gift.
Nina: Oh my God, yeah, shoring up is so key. Along with, you know, increased immunity and digestion and connection, you also have an increased capacity to think consciously and reasonably and on purpose. You'll have thoughts like, I'm enough, I'm safe, I'm not in danger.
Kelle: Yeah, you'll have fewer things that bother you in your environment. So shout out to all the pillow fluffers out there. You're inspired, you're curious, you're expansive. You have more access to your intuition. You're more creative and you can think way more clearly.
Nina: Yeah. Jeez, Kel. When I think of rest and digest, there was a time when I was really slammed from working bell to bell and I didn't use to have bowel movements on weekdays, on workdays, only on the weekend. Seriously. I literally was in survival mode all week with no rest and repair until the week ended. It was brutal.
Kelle: Okay. Constipated for a week. Come on. I think most of the women that I know have had that at least at some point and it is just like so not fun.
Nina: I think it is a statistic that women are more constipated than men. Generally.
Kelle: I believe it.
Nina: It's drastic.
Kelle: Yeah So many of our clients come to us with the IBS symptoms or gut trouble or migraines or panic attacks or even chronic pain Not always but pretty often these symptoms come from being stuck in a chronic state of stress and survival so the tension builds up in your body and Creates the chronic pain.
Nina: This is one of the reasons why rest and repair is so key. Creating it for yourself is so important to your mental and physical and emotional health.
Kelle: Yeah, this is why it's really important to check in with your body and we're gonna talk a lot more about that checking in listening to your body and And there's an email coming out on that soon too, so just FYI.
Nina: Yeah, just noticing where you hold all the clench and tension and letting it go. Yeah. I notice that a lot in myself.
Kelle: Okay, let's check in for a sec. Does this all sound crazy or foreign?
Nina: You're not alone if it does. Nothing's gone wrong. You can start to create calm, though, anytime. It'll be hard at first, though. Your brain won't think it's safe. It won't want to rest because it's not in the habit of doing that.
Kelle: The brain thinks a survival state is the thing that's going to keep you safe, but 99% of the time in today's world, it's not necessary. Our brains just go there on default and that's why we really need to learn how to manage our minds.
Nina: Yeah. So, some examples of triggers our clients come to coaching with include, like this is just from the past couple of weeks, you know, you don't get the VP promotion. A co-worker tells you to F off. There's a health diagnosis. a really tough 360 review. Those 360 reviews keep popping up. The client cuts you out of the deal. The patient is belligerent and offensive. She unfriends you to your face. Your boss emails over the weekend and it makes you think you're getting fired. You accidentally copy the Time Magazine editor on the email to the client. This actually happened to me.
Kelle: Wow. Okay. That sounds fun. Not.
Nina: Manage your mind around that one, right?
Kelle: All right, your brain thinks the best thing for you to do is to go into fight, flight, or freeze, or fawn, but it's not true. You're not actually in life or death danger. There's no lion chasing you. You can actually survive in a more productive way when you're calm.
Nina: Now the whole point here isn't to never get stressed out, to never shift into survival mode. No, no, no.
Kelle: No, the goal is to be able to self-regulate. So that is where your power lies. That's what we all need to practice, to notice when we're in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, and to have the ability to shift out of it and into a calm state when that's appropriate.
Nina: Yeah, one of our colleagues explains this concept like a shopping cart that's out of alignment. You know what we're talking about, that cart with the wobbly wheel. You're shopping along, but the wobbly wheel keeps pulling you left when you want to go straight, right.
Kelle: That damn wobbly wheel.
Nina: You're constantly self-correcting the cart, right, as you shop your list. You're pulling the cart right when it lists left, and this is just like self-regulation.
Kelle: The brain will always pull you left. To go into survival mode at the slightest hit of danger, it's your job to be onto yourself and self-correct to pull right, get back into alignment so you can finish shopping or whatever you're doing.
Nina: So how about we share a few tools and strategies to help you get out of an activated state.
Kelle: Let's do it. All right. So let's say you get an email from a client on a Saturday night while you're out for drinks with friends and your first thought is, I'm going to lose my job?
Nina: And then you have an anxiety attack.
Kelle: So what's happening here is your nervous system is kicking into an activated state, even though there's no imminent threat. It's an email, a screen full of words, but your brain is telling you that you're going to lose your job.
Nina: So of course you're going to shift into survival. It makes complete sense that your nervous system kicks in to anxiety and panic and survival under this circumstance.
Kelle: Especially when we have big jobs, big ambitions, and big responsibilities, we're typically overwhelmed in the first place. So the smallest hint of a threat can easily throw us off balance and into a spin cycle, into survival.
Nina: Yeah, I can totally relate to being set off by the smallest alarms. So here are a few strategies to self-regulate at that moment. The first might be simply putting the phone down, stepping away, and getting some fresh air.
Kelle: And can I just point out, like, let's not check our emails when we're out to drinks with friends.
Nina: Great call. As we evaluate next time.
Kelle: Or right before we're going to go to bed. Don't do that. Don't do that to yourself. Good call.
Nina: Okay.
Kelle: Okay, so another practice is a grounding practice. So you can get out of your head and into your body. So one that we like to use is an orienting practice and we have so many practices. This is just one. So what you want to do is turn your head all the way to the right. If you're driving, please don't do this. Keep your eyes on the road and take notice of all the things that you see as you move your head to the left. So for me, I see books , microphone, grass, trees, crystal, picture, printer, piano. Just naming things helps to bring you back into the present moment, back to where you can literally feel safe, connected, and grounded. And just to get a little nerdy here. You're also flossing the vagus nerve when you move your head. You can move it from right to left or left to right. We'll talk more about the vagus nerve too, but I just had to throw that in there.
Nina: That practice is actually super useful for me. You all need to give it a try. It's just super doable and useful. And another strategy along those same lines might be practicing some thought work. So identifying the default unintentional thoughts in your brain that are shifting you into survival, fact-checking them, and then thinking on purpose. So in this circumstance, we could bring in the watcher and see that your response to the words on the screen may or may not be valid.
Kelle: Our brains automatically go to what if everything falls apart, this all or nothing thinking or this like going straight to what is the worst that can possibly happen. But there are so many other options. We'll talk more about unintentional and intentional thoughts next week.
Nina: Yeah, so to bring it all home and summarize, survival mode prevents us from resting, recovering, and relaxing. We're not reasonable, logical, playful, calm, present, or curious.
Kelle: Without noticing, we lose connection to ourselves, to our bodies, to our values, and our people. And this isn't where we show up as our best selves, our favorite version of ourselves.
Nina: Yeah, we have yet to meet a woman who feels like she gets enough rest, downtime, and pleasure in her life. And we're on a mission to change that, to collectively give ourselves permission to rest and repair and ultimately restore.
Kelle: And actually enjoy the life you work so hard to create.
Nina: Heck yeah, I'm in for that.
Kelle: Me too, all right. We love you guys.
Nina: See you soon.
Kelle: Bye for now.
Kelle: Hey, it's us again. The holidays are like a magnifying glass on all the everyday issues we have with family, colleagues, work, and friendships. Everything is exaggerated this time of year.
Nina: Yeah, if you're anticipating or maybe already experiencing some difficult relationships, we get it, we see you. It's not always easy.
Kelle: And while we can't solve every relationship problem you're having, we can offer one solution, more ease and calm.
Nina: Yeah, we can help you get to ease and calm so the difficult people in your life don't become so triggering or upsetting during the holidays. And we do this by setting effective boundaries.
Kelle: Yeah, join us for our next masterclass all about the three most common mistakes people make when setting boundaries and how to work through them?
Nina: Yeah, our Holiday Boundaries Masterclass takes place Friday, December 6th, at 10 a.m. Mountain Time. And if you can join us live, do it. But there will also be a replay , so don't stress.
Kelle: Boundaries are all about protecting what's most important to us, and we're gonna show you how to do just that in a way that you've probably never heard before.
Nina: Yeah, so if you're looking to actually enjoy the holidays this year, register at the link in the show notes. This is a masterclass you won't wanna miss. We'll see you there.
Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected visit https://www.kelleandnina.com/ for more information and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode.
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