They’re Doing The Best They Can

Our threat perception is unconscious, so is our response.

Accepting people as they are is complex and nuanced. They did the best they could from the level of consciousness they were at then. It’s easy to say statements like these and like all cliche’s, they hold some truth.

“When we know better, we do better.” Maya Angelou

So much of our “better” depends on the influence of our individual and cultural environments on our biology. We all move up and down the polyvagal ladder from ventral (calm, trust) down into sympathetic arousal (fight, flight), and sometimes further down into collapse or freeze (dorsal). We carry our history and experiences of safety and threat, connection and disconnection in our nervous system.

Our threat perception is unconscious, and so is this response or movement. Through mindfulness, we can be aware of when we are going into fight/ flight/ freeze or emotional flooding. The benefit of practicing emotional regulating is that we develop a new baseline of resilience, and we know how to come back more quickly into a state of calm and connection. We develop confidence that we can manage our nervous system without so much reliance on external aids like food, screens, alcohol and other drugs.