At the end of an intense yet rewarding day, mentoring individuals working in the front line of our social care world, I found myself replaying something that had come up for one of my mentees.
We had been considering our autonomic nervous system and the way in which we all have a very personal reaction to triggers. These may have been based on an experience so far back in our lives that we cannot pinpoint when our response was first programmed into us via experience. We were talking of our implicit memories.
In previous sessions we had explored our own childhood attachment experience that shapes our behaviour and our relationships. It had been easier to locate explicit childhood memories from our own memory, from family anecdotes and photos to piece together a journey through life that pinpointed how our attachment appeared to have been shaped. This was helpful when we began to identify our stress reactions to work related issues and to begin to reflect on how we care for ourselves once we notice our nervous system shifting up a gear.
As typical solution focused social care professionals, who work in a highly reflective profession, we try to learn more about our triggers and to understand the childhood experience that has shaped our response to them. Why does my body think that this situation is a threat when my rational brain is telling me that I have no memory of any reasonable reason to be so triggered? And this is where we can find ourselves going down the rabbit hole of self-analysis and of self-criticism. The rabbit hole of implicit memory.
On this occasion, this is where my brain did continue down that rabbit hole and end up in the entire rabbit warren with curiosity. We are not just going back into our own implicit memory bank to problem solve why certain elements of our demanding jobs seem more challenging than others.
The neuroscientist, Dan Seigel, tells us in his book ‘mindsight’: The New Science of Personal Transformation, the autonomic nervous system - which regulates bodily functions that we are not conscious of such as breathing, the heartbeat, and digestive process - is older than our physical form
‘the nervous system begins in the embryo as the ectoderm; the outer layer of cells becomes the skin. Certain clusters of these outer cells then fold inward to form a neural tube - the spinal cord... The whole nervous system sets up its basic scaffolding, its core architecture, during development in the womb. Genetics are important for determining how neurons will migrate and then connect to each other.’
So, simply put, down there in that wonderful rabbit warren I was contemplating that we inherit our ancestors DNA and are hardwired to their nervous system. The heart of our relational well-being is literally the skin that shapes and defines what we typically refer to as ‘self’. It is hard wired with cellular memory from our ancestors. This is taking implicit memory to another level entirely and is telling us that the very structure and cells of our being, including our nervous system, were passed down from our ancestors that we have never met.
So - have you joined me down in my rabbit warren or are you being very sensible and choosing to just peer in from the entrance hole above? If the way that I respond to the challenges of my demanding role in social care is, to a degree, shaped by, not just my experience, or even my parents experience, but also my grandparents, my great grandparents and their great grandparents’ experience …. Do you get where I’m going with this? Delving too far in to the causes and triggers may be my new stress factor and not be conducive to my wellbeing after all.
Insight is helpful. Reflective practice and critical thinking are essential in our world of social care. But finding ways to hold us safe and steady in the here and now is also essential.
It’s a bit like holding these two things in our two hands. In one hand we are holding our awareness of traumatic situations and of challenging explicit and implicit memories ( both ours and our mentees). In the other hand we are holding our deep core sense of OKness.
Finding ways to authentically hold these two things in balance is the key to mental health and wellbeing in the demanding profession of social care. It is also the key to healthy relational practice in support of others. For one hand we create our bespoke scaffolding using mindful techniques that gently bring us back to the here and now. I wonder whether those of you that consider the science behind our amazing autonomic nervous system but choose to settle comfortably at the entrance to my rabbit warren, are actually already practicing a bit of mindfulness and are just sitting with what IS right here, with both hands nicely in balance, right now instead of chasing implicit memories back up their family tree.
The message from my evening reflection on my day supporting others:
We have two proverbial hands. If we always give a little time in our day to filling one hand with wellness, practices that develop a deep core sense of OKness, it will balance out the weight in the other hand that holds all of the heavy emotional knowing of things that we cannot unknow and that we hold for others.
Personally, I practice mindful meditation in its many forms. I don’t sit in formal meditation every single day and can be easily distracted, but I do practice enough, both formally and with mini mindful moments and mini emergency breath practices, that I instinctively go to one of my learned techniques to settle my mind as soon as I notice my nervous system telling me that I have been triggered. Now that I have pondered on how far back this nervous system of mine began to be shaped, I think I might add a little smile and a nod to my ancestors at the end of my next meditation practice.
