The Four Phases of Nervous System Restoration
A few weeks ago, I was having another illuminating discussion in session with a client. We were talking about the various phases of physical and emotional awareness and mindfulness. He compared these to the 4 Stages of Competence.
Unconscious Incompetence - we don’t know what we don’t know
Conscious Incompetence - we know there is a gap and we might start to identify how we can fill it.
Conscious Competence - we are working on filling the gap, but we are new to it
Unconscious Competence - filling the gap becomes instinctual and it happens naturally
These stages feel like they are so perfectly aligned with what I like to call Phases of Nervous System Restoration.
Blissful Unawareness
Uncomfortable Awareness
Comfortable Awareness
Blissful Awareness
Blissful Unawareness is the phase where our nervous system has been operating a certain way for a certain amount of time and it has become all we know (fight, flight, fawn, freeze, etc).
Uncomfortable Awareness is probably the longest phase of this process as I believe it has two parts:
That place where we finally acknowledge that how our nervous system has been operating is not sustainable (maybe because we start to feel the impacts of stress and anxiety in our everyday lives through interrupted sleep, pain, health issues, etc)
When we start to shift our nervous system to a place of awareness and notice EVERYTHING, and it is all uncomfortable because it is new and unfamiliar.
Comfortable Awareness is the phase where we begin to be able to tell the difference between the discomfort and what it feels like in our body and ease and what that feels like in our body.
Blissful Awareness is the place where we find flow in our nervous system, where it is operating again in a nature state of balance and when we don’t have to work so hard to calm, sooth, resource, or get back to center. In this phase all of this happens automatically more often then not and we can experience these moments more holistically.
Are you identifying with any of these phases right now? Do certain situations shift your nervous system from one phase to another?