MOMENT | Love is made in the repair - here's how to do it, with Mastin Kipp

0:07Another thing to understand about human beings, which is true mother to child and certainly in romantic relationships is that there's this concept called neuroception. And what that means is neuroception is just the perception of your nervous system, primarily below your head. All the nerves, all the organs below your body are all like threat detection machines and they're all sending you signals up the vagus nerve into your brain. When you're feeling anxiety or when you're feeling this type of stress, that is typically triggers in the body that the brain is detecting. And that's called neuroception.

0:41And the thing about neuroception is that it changes your vocal tone without you knowing it. It changes your facial expression without you knowing it because the trigger happens before you're aware of it. So anyone who wishes to not get triggered is never going to be happy because the trigger is going to happen. The first thing to understand is you will get triggered. Even like the most untraumatized person who's done all their work still has emotional triggers because we're human. So it's not about not getting triggered. It's about what do you do when you notice it and how you notice it, right?

1:12And the thing about secure attachment and relationship, and siblings know this. I didn't know this because I was an only child. It took me a long time to figure this out. Love is built in the repair. And relationships and safety are built in the repair process. So just like when you're lifting weights and you go to the gym and you're lifting a weight and you build muscle, the muscle isn't built in the gym. You rip the muscle apart and create microtrauma. and then when you're sleeping, the muscle is built during the repair process. Relationships are the exact same way. So it's not so much about not getting upset or not being triggered.

1:49It's more about like do you have a repair strategy? And that is the most important thing, to have a repair strategy because the repair is the most important piece of creating these healthy bonds. And then the other thing I would say is literally one of the most powerful tools for regulating the nervous system and really getting into a better vagal state, which is the vagus nerve is the nerve that essentially is controlling how much anxiety you feel or peace you feel, is to make your exhales longer than your inhales. So if 80 % of your breath can be an exhale, it's going to be very hard to have that anxiety feeling because you can't exhale and feel anxious at the same time.

2:27It doesn't really work that way. And it activates what's called the vagal break. And so literally, you could take 30-second breaths where you have an inhale for like six seconds and then 24 seconds exhale. You just slowly exhale. And then also, especially if you're with a child who's young, humming is a great way to regulate your vagus nerve and to calm yourself down. And it's also very, very calming for a child. So when you kind of have a mom who's holding a baby close and then she kind of intuitively is just kind of humming something and maybe moving the child, all of those things are instinctual regulation behavior.

3:03So you can do that for yourself too. So it's really about regulating yourself. So you don't have to resolve everything. Just slow exhales, some humming, forgiving yourself for realizing that you got triggered because your nervous system responded before you could do anything about it. And then having some repair strategies can be a really powerful concoction for creating secure attachments because everybody gets triggered. It's how you repair that matters.