Visibility and the Nervous System - Your Vagus Nerve is the Key to Clients Finding You
How do you get your ideal clients to take notice of you without being everywhere and doing everything, all the time?
Being visible in your business often feels as hard as getting your kids to take notice of you (the first time) when you ask them to tidy their room…
When you drill right down to the core, being seen and heard by your kids and your customers is a nervous system issue. Let me explain…
Your stress response is supposed to be a short-term solution for escaping danger and then restoring balance and calm. The extra surge of energy you feel when you’re under stress isn’t meant for pushing your agenda (will) through, but is intended to motivate you to find a safe place to discharge the arousal energy and let your body return to ‘actual’ normal. ‘Actual’ normal is your unique biological set point where your nervous system functions with ease and flow.
If you spend too much time outside your biological normal, your blood pressure increases, your heart beats faster than it should, blood vessels and capillaries constrict, pupils stay dilated longer than is healthy, adrenaline production goes up – so many internal bodily functions over which you have no control are negatively impacted.
When stress – even just a little bit – is your everyday norm, your nervous system’s dial is permanently turned up to ‘survival’ mode. Even though you feel like you're coping with the stress, your survival dial is not meant to be on ‘high’ for extended periods of time. While you are in this survival state, some important bodily functions are turned off – digestion stops working, you stop producing saliva, higher brain functions are restricted, and your immune function is disrupted. The kind of restorative rest required for deep healing and repair escapes you. Just like babies, who need sleep to develop and grow, adults also need deep and nourishing sleep to support their health and wellbeing.
While all that dysfunction is happening inside you, your external environment mirrors your bodily distress. Your kids stop listening to you and start getting out of control. They melt down emotionally because they react to the energy around them, and to the energy inside your nervous system that you can’t control, no matter how many deep breaths you take. Potential new clients keep their distance too.
What most people aren’t aware of though, is the biggest impact of prolonged stress is on our ability to feel connected and relate to others.
When we are in a survival state, the physiological and neurological systems that support relational connection go offline. Empathy, compassion, patience and love can’t be spontaneously felt – we have to try to feel them. That’s extra work we have to do that wouldn’t be necessary if we were in a relationally-available nervous system state.
For optimum health and longevity, humans are not designed to be disconnected from tribe and family for extended periods. This is not purely psychological; it is inbuilt into human biology – even introverts sometimes need another nervous system to co-regulate with to help them feel peaceful, safe, connected to themselves and others, and a sense of belonging.
So what’s the cost to our business if our nervous system is not relationally-available?
If we don’t feel safe and connected, our nervous system is always scanning for threat and preparing for danger. We are in a heightened state of sensitivity, with emotions on a knife-edge. Our reactivity repels people energetically. Nervous systems talk to other nervous systems, and nervous systems in survival mode broadcast the message, ‘Stay away!’
Some nervous systems dysregulations are a bit sneakier, and they subconsciously hide your offer posts on Facebook by energetically warning prospective clients that if they are not your absolutely ideal person, they shouldn’t bother you. The problem is, your ideal clients also see your ‘don’t bother me’ sign, even if it is not meant for them, and they stay away too.
How can you tell if you’re in survival mode?
If your muscles are chronically tense and your body can’t fully relax even when you sleep, these are sure-fire signs of a bracing pattern. Bracing protects us from feeling the overwhelm stuck in our body. The double-bind is that we need to open our nervous system to receive clients and money, but we can’t open it because we would feel all our uncomfortable stuff – and maybe that would be too much. You tell yourself you have to hold it together for your kids and your clients, but if you don’t find a way to relate to what’s happening inside you, that overwhelm is going to leak out and have a toxic impact on your life.
Energy has a way of being reflected in everything anyway. When you feel stressed, your kids misbehave, and your business breaks apart.
Unless you find a way to safely open your nervous system, you become more closed off than is comfortable, which eventually leads to dissatisfaction and maybe even depression. When that happens, you lose your capacity to be present which affects your energetic attractiveness. When everyone around you notices you aren't fully present, it stirs up their trauma of others not being there for them. To avoid the discomfort of feeling stuff they don't want to feel, they stop seeing you and you become invisible.
Read more about the nervous system here.
Important Takeaways
Your stress physiology determines whether you will be seen - especially in online business.
Even if you don't FEEL stressed, if your nervous system is constricted, you will be invisible.
Your external environment will not only mirror your emotions, but it also mirrors your nervous system state – stress inside means your kids and your customers feel tight and reactive when they get near to your energy.
The biggest impact of prolonged stress is on your ability to be available for connection with others, and that affects people’s ability to relate to YOU and to SEE you..
If being more visible is one of your business goals, and you’d like to know how to do it without triggering your nervous system, check out my training.
In my somatic trauma therapy training for healers and neuro-sensitives, I teach methods to eliminate overwhelm and rewire patterns of protection, banish procrastination and self-sabotage and metabolize trauma that's holding back neurodivergent practitioners from thriving. All set within a safe container of shamanic wisdom practices.
Expansion Training for Healers is a 10-week group program for just 12 healers and neuro-sensitives - with plenty of individual support.
Doors are now open for the next round of Expansion Training for Healers, starting Tuesday 9th May, 2023.
If you're curious how healing and expanding your nervous system can help you, book a co-regulation call to explore whether this trauma resolution therapy is for you.