Simple Somatic Healing, Nervous System Regulation, and Stress Management Using Creative Self Care
You're not broken. You're burned out, dysregulated, and running without a manual. Creative Self Care with Crystal McLain is a podcast about nervous system literacy, radical self-reclamation, and what it actually looks like to take care of yourself in a world designed to exhaust you.
Crystal McLain is a somatic practitioner and nervous system educator who is passionate about empowering women with stress and trauma education, and practical tools for reclaiming their energy, agency and fucks in life.
She delivers truth, humor, and science without the toxic positivity, spiritual bypassing, or bullshit.
This is self-care as resistance. And you're in the right place.
Simple Somatic Healing, Nervous System Regulation, and Stress Management Using Creative Self Care
Numbness + Shutdown Reclaiming your energy & agency after chronic stress & trauma
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We talk about numbness, shutdown, and functional freeze as a nervous system state of hypoarousal that can make life feel flat and hard to engage with. We challenge the “I’m lazy” story and share a practical reframe that helps you start getting back online in your body.
• defining numbness, shutdown, functional freeze, and hypoarousal
• why the brain avoids effort, change, and challenge even when they seem “good”
• how loss of follow-through blocks walks, hobbies, friendships, and basic tasks
• how toxic self-beliefs grow when you cannot show up the way you want
• reframing “laziness” as nervous system protection
• stress driving the bus and learning to take back the wheel
• celebrating evidence that you can invest in yourself
Numbness And Hypoarousal Explained
SPEAKER_00Which is why today we are going to talk about numbness, shutdown, functional freeze, the state of hypoarousal. We're going to talk about why you've lost your zest for life, who's benefiting from you becoming a zombie, and most importantly, what you can start doing to get yourself back online. But not the internet. Online in your body. Your
Why Good Change Feels Impossible
SPEAKER_00brain is going to come up with all sorts of creative ways to convince you to avoid anything that feels like effort, change, or challenge, even if those things are consciously perceived as quote, good. That's why it's going to be harder to follow through with going on that walk or picking up that hobby or making plans with a friend. Your rational brain may know that going for a walk would probably make you feel better, that starting a hobby might actually be satisfying, that spending time with your friends may quite possibly be exactly what your body and soul need to feel alive again. You are intelligent and you know you can conceptualize that these things would benefit you and the quality of your life in some way. And yet, you can't seem to follow through. And that's just the shit you want to do. Never mind the things you don't want to do, like scheduling that overdue doctor's appointment, or catching up on chores, or establishing a boundary with somebody who's been draining you.
The Lazy Story And The Truth
SPEAKER_00When you feel incapable of following through or showing up in the ways that you wish you could, that opens up the door for all sorts of toxic beliefs and narratives. You might tell yourself that you're lazy. In fact, it means that your nervous system is doing a really good job at identifying your stressors and trying to protect you from them. The only problem is that the stress has been driving the bus for way too long and nobody showed you how to take back
Taking Back The Wheel
SPEAKER_00the wheel. But that changes today. So let's start by celebrating what you're already doing right. You are already proving that you're capable of investing in yourself because you're here right now with this post. That is evidence that you're able to crawl out of numbness and start reclaiming your life.