Ro Brown Intimacy Coaching

A resource toolbox is a list of doable, go-to things that you can use to lift yourself out of challenging emotional states. Some of them are things you can do alone, some with other people.

Creating a toolbox for yourself when you're feeling calm, safe, and relaxed, means that you can keep it handy and refer to it any time you're starting to feel activated.

This is helpful because when we're activated, the parts of the brain capable of thinking rationally start to shut down! Having a list to refer to makes it much easier to remember what works.

It’s helpful to categorise resources depending on different emotional states, because regulating yourself out of stress and anxiety looks very different from regulating yourself out of freeze and collapse.

Here are some resources that work for lots of people I've worked with.

Steal any you think might work for you!

Sympathetic activation

(fight or flight / stressed & anxious)

- Going for a short walk in a local park
- Taking some aggression out on a pillow
- Taking 10 slow, deep breaths
- Calling a trusted friend to vent
- Having a good cry
- Watching or listening to some comedy
- Putting some music on and taking a dance break

Dorsal vagal activation

(freeze, collapse, dissociate)

- A slow, gentle walk close to home
- Listening to familiar music
- Eating some simple and nourishing food
- Taking a long shower
- Watching some feel-good tv
- Watching a movie with a trusted friend
- Wrapping yourself up in a favourite blanket and feeling contained
- Cuddling a pet

Which ones would you add to your list?

Share this with someone you think could benefit!

Something we talked about in the Reactivity to Regulation workshop I ran at the weekend was about how the fight or flight response doesn’t always feel like fighting or running away! This can make it difficult to identify when we’re caught up in this kind of activation.

What we call the fight or flight response is governed by the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system or ANS (other different responses, such as feeling safe and connected, or frozen and collapsed, are governed by the parasympathetic branches).

The sympathetic branch is the first to start firing if the ANS picks up on some sense of threat or danger. That might be something obvious, like stepping out into the road and noticing a car speeding towards you, or it might be something that you wouldn’t necessarily label as ‘danger’, such as having to juggle many different commitments without enough space to rest and pause.

As well as wanting to fight or run away, here are some other ways that sympathetic activation can show up:

⚡️ Feeling anxiously compelled to solve and fix problems

⚡️ Over-planning and needing to know you have a plan for every worst-case scenario

⚡️ Feeling the need to get everything done with no time for rest; a sense of urgency

Sometimes these responses show up for good reason and can be incredibly helpful. More often, they show up chronically and in response to circumstances which don’t warrant this level of stress.

Learning to identify where you are in your nervous system is a really important step in being able to then work with it. Taking some deep breaths, going for a brisk walk, (consensually) ranting to a friend, or asking for a hug can all help to re-regulate the nervous system.

What works for you?

Drop me a DM if you know you need some 1:1 support with this.

There’s this cool idea called urge surfing that I want to tell you about. It was developed during treatment of addiction in particular, but I think it’s super relevant to all kinds of situations.

Like when you’re feeling really anxious, scared, or angry, and feel the need to send a text that you might regret later.

Or when you feel a strong pull to overstep an important boundary you’ve made with yourself.

Urge surfing is the practice of noticing the urge and allowing it to be there, so that it can pass all by itself - just like a wave.

Usually, we feel like we have to do something about the urge. We have to take some kind of action to make it go away or satisfy it. But this isn’t actually true - if we let ourselves feel it, it doesn’t tend to last that long.

Something that can really help with this is getting curious about what the urge feels like. What do you feel in your body? What are you telling yourself? What are the associated thoughts, stories, and beliefs? What emotions are showing up?

Noticing and naming all of these can help the experience feel more manageable.

You can also use your breath as a surfboard: breathe into the feeling, allowing it to move, and allowing yourself to move with it.

Have you come across this idea before? Let me know if it shifts anything for you!

There are so many things that can get in the way of having the intimacy and closeness you want - whether that’s emotional intimacy, physical intimacy and s3.x, or both.

Here’s some common ones:

⚡️ Being stuck in a power struggle with the other person, where patterns of dominance and resentment make it impossible to relax and open up to each other

⚡️ Experiencing low self-worth, making it difficult to trust that the other person really wants to be with you, and feeling stuck in your head rather than being able to allow in their affection and care

⚡️ Finding it impossible to know what you really want in s3.x, or ask for it, leaving you freezing up and unable to relax

⚡️ Difficulty regulating your emotions, whether fear, anger, or sadness, and becoming quickly overwhelmed by them - which frustrates the other person and makes it difficult for you to say what you really want to

⚡️ Avoiding conflict, feeling afraid of what might happen if you rock the boat, leading to important conversations being missed and you feeling frustrated

These patterns are not always easy to solve on your own, and that's where I come in.

I'm a therapeutic intimacy coach, which means that instead of staying only on the level of finding tools you can use to make immediate changes, we also go a level deeper. We take the time to understand why this pattern is showing up, what it means to you, where it may have started, and what deeper emotional needs are going unmet.

Sessions may include:

Sessions may include:

💫 Nervous system regulation: noticing when you’re anxious, overwhelmed, or disconnected, and finding tools to gently bring you back into presence

💫 Slowing down the words and feeling into your body, taking time to listen and feel what’s there and developing deeper self-intimacy

💫 Meditation, guided visualisation and imagery, using the power of your imagination

💫 Identifying conflicting voices and ‘parts’ of yourself and dialoguing with them to resolve internal conflicts

💫 Identifying emotional needs that went unmet in your childhood, and finding creative ways to get those needs met now

💫 Gently challenging deeply held beliefs in doable ways, to begin making real changes

This is a really powerful process, and it means we can create lasting change - rather than only fixing a problem in the short term. Patterns that show up in relationships will likely show up in other areas of your life, too, so it’s important to get to the emotional root cause.

Curious to learn more, or talk about whether we could be a good fit? More info on my website - you know where the link is.

One thing that we’re incredibly good at doing on social media is finding new labels for ourselves. Attachment styles are a great example: you can learn about them relatively quickly in a couple of instagram posts, decide which one fits you, and then bam! You have something to label and define yourself with.

You have a new way of understanding yourself and your behaviour in relationships. And that’s really important and valuable.

It also creates a new identity: I am anxiously attached.

The problem with identities is that they can keep us stuck. In deciding that you have an anxious attachment style, you sacrifice something: the possibility that you could be another way.

It’s ironic, really, because the search for finding language that better explains and describes the challenges we have often comes from wanting to overcome those challenges. And it’s true that in order to overcome them, we have to first define them.

But what I’m interested in is the moment when a new piece of language becomes part of the problem, when it becomes a reason why we cannot be different.

You might find yourself explaining your anxiety in a new relationship by telling yourself, “Ah, of course. I have an anxious attachment style. This makes sense.”

This might bring some relief, because it explains why the anxiety is showing up. But what it also does is provide a very fixed view of your experience. It’s almost a resignation; this is just who I am. This is just the way it is.

I recommend using labels such as these with caution, and holding them lightly. In my coaching practice I am careful never to ‘diagnose’ in this way, instead preferring to see everyone I work with as constantly changing, and with huge potential and capacity to grow and heal.

Which labels feel useful to you right now, and which might it benefit you to let go of?

Wow, what a journey! Celebrating the work this client did in our sessions and feeling so touched to have been part of it.

It’s such an honour to do this work and I’m here for all of it: the joyful bits, the crunchy bits, the frustrating bits, the tender bits. All part of this human experience of discovering who we are in connection with others.

If you’re feeling a longing to move through some old patterns and build healthier relationships, shoot me a DM with your fave emoji and we can see if coaching might be a good fit for you. Or read more on my website: helloro.co.uk

Why wait?

Looking forward to saying hi :)