No Magic Bullets

I have a client who’s a high-powered exec in NYC. This past week he was “on vacation” with his family—his first “days off” in eighteen months.

I’m using quotes because, despite the fact that he was in a gorgeous beach house with his kids and wife outside swimming in the ocean, he was inside on his computer. Working.

He had originally reached out to me because he was having panic attacks, and when he saw my Linkedin Learning Course Managing Your Emotions at Work, he thought I might be able to help him.

“Do you think the panic attacks may have anything to do with not having a day off in a year and a half?” I asked him in our first conversation. 

“Eh, maybe. But I love my job and the work I do!” And then with a sly smile he added, “Can you just give me the magic bullet so that the panic attacks go away and I can keep doing what I’m doing?”

Uh, no. I can’t.

I agreed to work with him, though, when he admitted he was only partly serious when he asked me to just fix him. He was willing to do the work, he just wasn’t sure what the work was.

This is true for many of the people who reach out to me, especially the folks who have watched my new Linkedin Learning course Practices for Regulating Your Nervous System and Reducing Stress.

Because, as I’ve been told by many wonderful thank you emails like this one: 

“For the first time in my life, a 36-minute course helped me understand the cause of my stress and helped me with a practical framework to manage my stress.”

Which is to say, learning about Polyvagal Theory and how to regulate your nervous system is undoubtedly a game changer when it comes to being able to feel less stress and more well-being.

This is why I am, and always will be, a huge cheerleader for Polyvagal Theory.

But practices for regulating your nervous system are only the first step of the work that I do with folks in Yours, Truly and 1:1. Because, though the practices can feel like a magic bullet in the sense that the they can help you get back to feeling ok inside, they don’t address the underlying cause that drives you into stress in the first place.

Here’s what I’ve learned through working with hundreds of people—the part of us who gets driven to and stuck in stress (or a “mobilized” state in the language of Polyvagal Theory) is responding to some kind of message we got when we were younger about how we need to be in order to be safe, accepted and respected.

So the high-powered exec? He got the message that he needed to achieve to be loved.

The wife who is so “nice” to her wife she can only feel resentment toward her? No surprise she got the message that it’s her job to make sure other people are always happy.

The mom who hopes her pre-teen daughters don’t know how obsessed she is with food and her weight? Yep, she got the message she needs to be thin to be ok. 

And even though there’s a part of you who knows the message is bullshit—it feel so compelling, so life and death, that you seek out achievement, niceness and slimness, etc.

Even when it causes you stress.

Even when it is costly to your health and relationships.

Even when you’d never in a million years want your kids or your friends to be driven by that same message.

This is what really lights me up—working with people at the place where their old beliefs intersect with their nervous system and compel behavior that they know doesn’t serve them but they can’t interrupt.

All that to say, I encourage you to watch my Linkedin Courses. (You can get a free month-long trial on Linkedin Learning if you’re a new user.)

The courses go over fundamentals that I think every human should understand about how to leverage your body and nervous system to help you manage emotions and stress in a way that truly works.

And, if you want to do the deeper work of looking at your beliefs and your “stuff” that can truly unstuck you from old patterns in your relationships, check out Yours Truly.