Birdie Transformation Program
Week 010
Increasing capacity
This week’s exploration is about increasing capacity.
More specifically, exploration about increasing the capacity to hold charge. We could also say: to tolerate a little more and be able to stay in flow and stay relaxed.
Imagine getting or developing a bigger container to hold charge before it overflows or explodes or discharges.
Increasing capacity could mean capacity to maintain a physical position, or capacity to understand something, or capacity to hold pleasure without discharging, or capacity to tolerate unpleasant physical sensations, or capacity to tolerate nervous system activation, or increasing what someone with early developmental trauma can tolerate in being around people and still remain present to relating and ability to respond vs react/discharge, or increasing capacity to hold light energy coursing through you.
In what way would it be beneficial for you and in your life to increase your capacity?
Be specific and come up with a plan as to how you will accomplish this.
For Example: In myself , I notice that I have a difficult time to flow with sudden, unexpected changes in some everyday events. Noticing the sensations in my body and recognizing the reaction as an old wiring of situations of overwhelm, I can consciously relax and change my thoughts and get back into a flow that is able to incorporate the change…without getting upset. This way the capacity for dealing with sudden change increases.
Clarification:
Charge is meant as in: capacity to hold and conduct energy, without disorganized discharge, explosion, outburst, reflexive automatic physical reaction. Ideally, energy simply flows through the system and does not get stuck at all.
Using the example of a battery: the battery can be empty, the battery gets charged, battery is full. At that point of being full, it cannot accommodate any more energy. A big battery – can accommodate a lot of energy/charge compared to a small battery.
We can look at the human nervous system as if it were a battery that will forcefully discharge when its capacity is reached and no natural energy flow occurs and /or energy is not able to ground.
This forceful energy discharge is usually physical or verbal automatic reaction. Have you ever noticed after a big blow up you feel very drained?
The nervous system in people with early developmental trauma is compromised in the sense of, or as if, the battery is small and energy is held rather than flowing. It is just a beginning analogy as this is actually a huge area of study. A lot has been clarified in the last 2 decades regarding the nervous system throughout the body and various area of the brain. Much more on that later.
Relational stresses/dealing with people/environment can be very challenging and stressful. We can look at stress as charging. More stress, more charge will build up till eventually capacity is nearly full. Further charging either needs to then be minimized or stopped, or unhealthy discharge happens.
For example, one such symptom cascade is: irritation, then upset, frustration, anger and, in the worst case, outburst of rage.
The threshold when that happens varies in different people. The capacity to hold charge and still be responsive, that is, present, vs being subject to the system (battery) overload and discharge of the energy – can be increased.
Capacity for pleasure is also dependent on the capacity of the nervous system/presence. Sexually is only one aspect of it, though an important one and easily practiced.
P.S. – if you don’t have early infant/developmental trauma, (c-PTSD) it will be difficult to understand certain aspects of what some people deal with. In fact, Bessel van der Kolk said: for someone who has not experienced it, it is impossible to understand c-PTSD. Others (normal people without such trauma) never really get it. As a therapist however, if not knowledgeable about this, (that is called trauma-informed) – deep healing usually does not happen when simply other methods are employed. I am working on a page explaining more of this, but given that many people have written and studied this for years, I might end up simply given resource information.
Being knowledgeable about early developmental trauma and various attachment types and how they express in daily life and relational contexts IS an important aspect on this path. It starts with learning more about it. Either for oneself, someone you love or someone you work with.