Calmness

An dynamic element of Self-Energy

1. a physiological and mental serenity regardless of the circumstances

2. the ability to react to triggers in your environment in less automatic and extreme ways

3. to be less vulnerable to adopting the common fight-flight-freeze response when threatened

A pervasive sense of physiological and means calm accompanies self-Energy-Leadership. Many people, especially those who have experienced traumas, feel constant tension in their body, as if they contain a tightly wound spring, which makes them hyper-vigilant and agitated. If you’re like them, this state of physical arousal makes you overreact to other people and prevents you from ever truly relaxing. Your mind reflects this aroused state, with thoughts and urges jumping around, to use the Buddhist metaphor, like a hyperactive or drunken monkey.

As you embody Self-Energy, you will be relieved to find far less activity in your body and mind. As a result, you will react to triggers in your environment in less automatic and extreme ways. The monkeys in your mind become mellow, basking in the reduction in worries and responsibilities that comes with trusting Self-Energy to handle the world. In the face of anger, you aren’t overwhelmed by the common fight, flight, or freeze impulses and instead maintain an inner equanimity. Many people appear to be calm on the outside but internally are a frenzy of activity. Many of us have been trained to hide our distress behind a calm, thoughtful exterior, but that is being frozen, not calm.

This is not to say that Self-Energy-Led people walk around in a Buddha-like state of serve detachment. They read on the roller coaster of life like everyone else. It’s just that, for them, the ride that used to produce a white-knuckled clinging more often becomes interesting and sometimes painful or joyful. Where they used to be totally absorbed by each emotion or totally cut off from each one, they now experience the waves of feeling but also hold a calm center that is never totally washed away — the center of the cyclone, what I call the “I” in the storm.

From Dick Schwartz, Internal Family Systems Model, pp. 34-35

With great appreciation for Level One Training and IFSinstitute.com

Calmness

An dynamic element of Self-Energy

CLICK BELOW TO EXPLORE The 8c’s of Self-Energy

CALMNESS

CURIOSITY

CLARITY

COMPASSION

CONFIDENCE

COURAGE

CREATIVITY

CONNECTEDNESS

Individual, Couple & Family TeleHealth Psychotherapy