Everything I know about nervous system regulation I learned from my cat
Take tiny doable steps
Those of you who have been here a while might know that I live with the most adorable, most skittish cat in the world. Her name is Petal (though honestly she mostly goes by Pet, Pippin or Bubby) and she came to me nearly nine years ago, a semi-feral little street cat. Since then, she’s definitely gotten comfortable with indoor cat life but she never grew into the lap cat that I secretly hoped she might.
Petal’s nervous system is wired for threat.
If she were a human you might call her highly strung. She can be happily asleep and purring one moment and bolted across the room the next. It’s not that she’s in danger, she live a well-fed house cat lifestyle, her system is simply on high alert. Just in case.
The list of things that will make her bolt for safety is long and includes:
Hanging clothes on the clothes rack next to her bed
Our teenage boys doing pretty much anything
Shaking out a blanket to spread it over the bed
Unexpected movement of all forms
Your legs existing under a blanket
Anyone walking within about 3m of her while she’s sleeping or eating
The dreaded vacuum cleaner
Being patted with two hands, only one-handed pats are allowed
It goes without saying that attempting to pick her up is also a no
Pet likes exactly two people - me and Joeli - and that’s only if we’re moving in a slow and predictable manner. And I’m not joking when I say that having such a skittish cat has taught me worlds about working with nervous systems, both my own and my clients.
Because Pet’s system gives zero fucks that I know she’s safe. The only thing that matters is her internal perception of threat (an unexpected movement!) and her body’s security system response (flee!).
In somatics language this is known as neuroception. Your internal security system is doing it too. All the time. Scanning the information gathered by your senses to see if there’s any possible dangers afoot, based on what you’ve learned to be dangerous over your lifetime.
That might not be sudden movements (though it could be). It might instead be something more nuanced like feeling like you don’t belong, or slowing down from living life at breakneck speed, or someone touching you unexpectedly.
You might not understand why you’re spooked but your system is spooked nonetheless. On high alert.
And what Petal taught me is that arguing with our system’s threat responses is as pointless as me telling her she’s safe. This is a deep subconscious response. A wise response that, at some point, kept you safe. You can’t talk yourself out of it.
What you can do is the same thing I learned to do with Pet - to move at the speed of the nervous system.
So that means no big moves, no sweeping fixes. Petal has to come to me. To make sure it’s safe before I can give her scritches. She has to jump up on the opposite side of the couch and step gingerly over to me. She has to sniff my hand as I extend it towards her. Only then can she settle into being patted.
The nervous system moves slow, for the most part, and when we come up against our imprinted threat responses, the most healing thing we can do is to take tiny doable steps. To honour our own right distance and right speed. To listen to the alarm bells and tend to them, rather than overriding and pushing through.
Over time that allows our capacity to expand, so that what once felt like a threat can become more spacious, more safe. So that there’s less bolting (or fighting or collapsing into freeze) and more ability to receive the loving pats that are awaiting us.
Offerings:
I couldn’t figure out why I had none of my regular clients booked in for next week, and then I realised I’d left a block in my calendar where it shouldn’t have been. Oops!
My admin fail is your gain. If you’ve been curious about doing One-to-One somatic trauma resolution work with me, I have space for initial sessions next week! Find out more and book in here
Snail Mail is going out soon! I’ve been playing with pathways to connection beyond social media, and it’s been so much fun to go old school, sending these letters from my hands to yours. And, since we’re in the early days, it’s currently free of charge. Get on the list
Another way I’m connecting is by bringing back my podcast - Wayward Bodies! It’s been on hiatus for a couple of years and I’m so excited to be back talking about body witchery, radical wellbeing, and somatic liberation.
Subscribe at your favourite podcast place to get the prodigal episode when it returns! (Here’s the link to Apple or Spotify for easy access)
Three things:
Last year I took Composting Capitalism with Megan Leatherman and it utterly changed my world. Reading through Caliban and the Witch, tracing the brutal creation of these systems, and imagining pathways out with her generous and gentle guidance was such a gift. She’s running it again in April and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
My love and I have recently come to the quiet pleasures of K-dramas. We’re entirely sucked into the 90’s nostalgia and queer subtext of Twenty-Five Twenty-One. I’d love any recommendations for what to follow it with.
I knit a Jasper Jumper at the beginning of winter and it’s been in heavy rotation throughout the cold months. It’s so perfectly chunky and cosy that I’ve recently cast on my second (err…just in time for spring!?)
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