The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Regulating Your Nervous System Naturally: The Power of Glimmers in Mental Health | Ep. 120

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 120

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Regulating your nervous system naturally can start with something as simple as noticing a breeze on your skin or a favorite song on the radio. In this episode of The Wellness Connection, Fiona Kane introduces the concept of glimmers - small, positive moments that help calm your nervous system and support emotional resilience.

While society often focuses on avoiding triggers, Fiona explains why it's just as important to recognize glimmers and intentionally seek them out. She shares personal stories, mental health insights, and practical ways to build emotional strength without overprotecting yourself from life’s discomforts. This is a powerful reminder that healing isn't just about what you avoid - it’s also about what you notice, embrace, and allow in.

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay



Fiona Kane:

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today I want to introduce you to the idea of glimmers. So most of us have heard of triggers and people talk about triggers a lot in our society in regards to their mental health. However, you don't hear the term glimmer, and I think glimmer is just as important, if not more, and so I think it's worth exploring that a little bit today. Now, in a previous episode, I think glimmer is just as important, if not more, and so I think it's worth exploring that a little bit today. Now, in a previous episode I think it might have been last week's episode actually I was talking about capacity building for mental health, so I will touch on that a little bit more today as well, because that's kind of along the lines of this topic. So in regards to glimmers versus triggers, so just a quick definition of what they are for you excuse me if I am going to read for a moment, but just to give you the breakdown of what they are. So triggers are sensory reminders that can trigger a negative emotional response. So it might trigger fear or anxiety or sadness or something like that, and it's due to some past experience you've had may or may not be a traumatic experience, but some past experience that has a negative feeling for you. And it could be smell of a perfume, it could be lots of things. So that's what a trigger is, and they activate the sympathetic nervous system, which is a fight or flight response in our body. So glimmers what a glimmer is is kind of almost the opposite of that, but what it is, it's small positive moments that can help regulate your nervous system. So essentially, these glimmers cue feelings of safety and connection and that activate the ventral vagal pathway, promoting relaxation and connectedness, right. So a short-form way of saying that is essentially they relax you and make you feel calm and make you feel good, and so they would put you into your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest system, which is where you need to be most of the time. So you know, glimmers are really important and I think that the problem is in our society.

Fiona Kane:

What I see a lot of is people just all about the triggers I'm triggered by this, I'm triggered by that and just going around trying to completely avoid triggers and completely avoid pain, that sort of thing and first of all, that's not a good idea to completely avoid any kind of pain or discomfort, how capacity building actually comes from. Experiencing pain and discomfort. I don't mean go out and deliberately do horrible things or go out and deliberately harm yourself, but just the challenging things of life, like going for job interviews and getting a job and going on dates and managing your relationships and just being part of the world, looking after your health, all the things in life that life is learning to drive, all those things. That's what life is made of, and so it's really really good to capacity build and make sure that you can do those things and ongoingly, you can do those things. And so when, even if you are triggered right Now, there might be situations where maybe you have a really severe mental health issue or severe PTSD, in which case obviously you can take what I'm saying, but then go and talk to your therapist or someone about it.

Fiona Kane:

Do what's right for you, okay, because we've always got to manage ourselves, but hang on for a moment. Sorry about that. So, yeah, obviously, whenever you listen to any of my podcasts, you take what's right for you. Don't do what's not right for you. If you feel like you need more support, get more support, whether or not it's with me or whether or not it's another practitioner. If you've got really severe mental health issues, you really should be working with a therapist. I'm not a therapist, so work with a therapist or someone who's an appropriate person for you. Also, actually, hypnotherapy works quite well for people who have triggers and when they've got PTSD, those sorts of issues. So, anyway, work with an appropriate therapist for you in regards to that.

Fiona Kane:

But just in general in life, I mean just the triggers of just life, right. So there's triggers of war or horrible, really horrific things and there's triggers of oh. That takes me back to when that horrible thing happened to me that I feel bad about or that I feel sad about or I feel ashamed about. That most people experience, because we all have life experience, right, and those triggers. I don't think you should go out of your way to completely avoid all of those triggers, because it is useful to get used to feeling uncomfortable. Sometimes. It's okay to feel uncomfortable and know that you can actually survive it, know that you'll be okay.

Fiona Kane:

And that's getting back to what I was talking about before capacity building. So the point of capacity building whether this is for you or for your children, capacity building is ensuring that we can survive this thing called life until we don't because we're only one way out, right but so that we can survive and thrive and have a good life until whenever, until time comes that we're not supposed to be here anymore. And to do that we have to actually capacity build. You know so right from birth. When babies you know, I've talked about it before babies learning to crawl, talk, all of those things, you know, if you just spoke for them forever and never let them talk, they're not going to capacity build right, and if you just carry them everywhere for their whole life, they're not going to capacity build. They're going to learn how to walk right. So it's the same thing that we need to do throughout our lives capacity build. But also what we need to do is we need to keep doing things.

Fiona Kane:

So there might be something that you know. You might have put yourself out of your comfort zone a lot, say, when you were younger, and then, as you get older, you get more into a comfort zone and don't stretch outside of your comfort zone, and then your comfort zone gets a bit smaller and smaller and suddenly you don't like to drive as far, or you know you don't like to go as far or whatever it is. So I would suggest to you that you would put yourself out of your comfort zone all throughout your life at different times, just sort of regularly. Just do it doesn't have to be a huge thing, but some sort of small thing that kind of pushes you out of your comfort zone, so that you're just continually affirming to yourself that you are quite capable of managing something that's a bit stressful, a bit challenging, whatever, and that you know you're keeping that capacity. Because so not only do we need to build capacity, but we need to maintain it.

Fiona Kane:

And you know life happens to us. So sometimes sort of you know it goes backwards a bit because you, you go through a grief, you go through a trauma, you go through an illness or something happens in life, and sometimes you know you have reduced capacity. When that happens, and that's okay while you're rebuilding and whatever it is. But essentially life takes its toll on you and if every time it takes its toll on you, you just take a step backwards, a step backwards, a step backwards, and then smaller, smaller, smaller, obviously your capacity shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and your life shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. So we do need to kind of you know, at a certain point just put ourselves back out there and build that capacity again. Same as like a muscle, right. If you go to the gym all the time, you build up the muscles. If you stop going, the muscles you won't have as much muscle and the muscles will atrophy, they'll get smaller. And so if you want to have the strength, which I recommend that you do want to have because you want to have a healthy life and be well as you get older and I've had episodes where I've talked about this and how important that is well then you'll go back out and you'll do something to sort of build the muscle again, sort of capacity building, right.

Fiona Kane:

So it is important that we do expose ourselves to things that trigger us and then, in an appropriate way, if you've got severe mental health issues, obviously get support around that. But if it's in general situation, general life for general people, with our normal, normal kind of anxieties and stresses and things like that, you can just regularly challenge yourself and regularly put yourself in a bit of an uncomfortable situation. So it might even be because sometimes my clients say to me oh, I wouldn't go and sit in a cafe on my own or a restaurant on my own. Well, go and do that. It's a really simple thing to do. Go and experience what it's like to go and have dinner on your own in a restaurant, or have coffee on your own in a cafe or whatever it is. Or the cinema I go to the cinema all the time on my own, and concerts, and things like that. So it might be things like that, whatever it is for you. But capacity build, or it might be look, I don't really like driving outside of this range, but maybe just challenge yourself a little bit further and so say, okay, I'm going to go to do this thing, that's, you know, I'm going to go and do my shopping in the next suburb, over whatever it is. But capacity build, and you do that by putting yourself outside your comfort zone a bit and because of continuing, like, building that muscle, building that muscle right.

Fiona Kane:

So, getting back to glimmers so I want to talk to you a little bit more about glimmers. So, uh, so essentially, getting back to what glimmers are these positive sensory moments that activate the parasympathetic nervous system, and so that's that sort of rest and digest system and, you know, promotes feelings of safety, connection and well-being and um. So. So this is something that it's a really good idea to have plenty of these in your life as well. And that's the thing too. It's about getting the balance, because what we do is we only focus on triggers and we don't always notice or pay attention to glimmers. So it's just like if you pay attention to the glimmers, they'll kind of help counteract things and help keep your body in that parasympathetic rest and digest mode more more often than not, right?

Fiona Kane:

So you know, here it gives examples of what a glimmer is. So it's like, uh, uh, patting a dog or a pet, right, just patting animals, uh and um, smelling a favorite fragrance, uh, so it could be, as you know, like I actually, you know, when I smell french panties, it reminds me of my mom and my grandmother, and even though it's of sad, it also is kind of beautiful as well, because it reminds me of beautiful moments when they were alive. Or seeing a beautiful landscape, eating your favorite food, looking at a photograph from someone you love, feelings of warmth in the sun or the breeze on your skin, those kinds of things the sun or the breeze on your skin, those kinds of things and so they help regulate your nervous system, which is really, really important, and they also, you know, they reduce stress, they build resilience, all of those things. And it comes back to you know this kind of goes hand in hand with having, say, like a gratitude diary or have a gratitude practice. It's the same sort of thing as in what you're doing is you're actively looking for beauty, you're actively looking for joy. So it might be just in that moment in the car and a favorite song comes on and you're singing along to your favorite song and then, just in that moment, you just experience this joy of listening to or singing along to this song. Or it could be having a laugh with someone and you just kind of, all of a sudden, you just like you observe yourself in the moment having a laugh with your hubby or your best friend or whoever it is. Or sometimes I'll be sitting and I'll drink a cup of tea. You know, when you get to your cup of tea at the right moment, you usually get to it and it's too cold, or I'm trying it and it's too hot, you know. But when you get to it and it's at that perfect moment and you know, you sort of sip that cup of tea and it's like, oh yes, just the perfect temperature, just the perfect taste or whatever. It's those kinds of things right.

Fiona Kane:

And it's important that we slow down enough or kind of just be observant enough to look for those. And especially when we are feeling down or we are struggling with our mental health, because the problem is, the more we're feeling down or the more anxious we are, the more we've got that sort of stuff going on in our lives, the more we kind of just zone in on looking for triggers and bad things and scary things. And we're kind of like, you know, looking constantly, just like looking for the danger, danger, danger, danger, right. So we stay in that kind of fight or flight and not only that, but not only we're looking for danger, but we often only see when we're in that kind of negative mind frame, we only see confirmations that the world's bad.

Fiona Kane:

So we look around and kind of say, oh, that person doesn't like me and that person's ignoring me and this is, and a lot of that is kind of just stories. Um, yeah, some of it might be true, because not everyone likes you, whatever, but a lot of it is kind of stories that we make up, though we kind of the person's just busy or they didn't actually see you. Like, I don't, I wear glasses and if I happen to be walking along without my glasses on and don't see you, it's not personal. If I'm not wearing my glasses, you know, I probably didn't see you right and also I've got a blind spot, so quite a big blind spot. So it's a good chance that I didn't see you. Not that I'm trying to ignore you, you know. But there's things like that where we can kind of go oh, that person had a funny look on their face. They don't like me. Well, I've been told that I have kind of resting bitch face, right. So you might think that I'm angry at you or whatever, and I'm just kind of just sitting there and I didn't even see you, or you know, like.

Fiona Kane:

So what I'm trying to say is that what we do is we make up stories in our mind about what's happening with the other person, what's going on. You know, someone hasn't replied to your text and you sort of think, oh, they hate me or they're not talking to me or whatever. And sometimes it's situations where it's friendships falling apart or whatever, but often they're just really busy and it happens to me all the time. So if you're a friend of mine and I haven't replied to your text, text me again. I'm really sorry. Honestly, what will happen is I'll kind of go oh, I've just got to get these things done, and then by the end of the day, by the end of the week, whatever, I've had so many other messages that I just forgot and didn't get back to it, right.

Fiona Kane:

But what we do in our head is we kind of make up a story oh, fiona doesn't talk to me anymore. Fiona doesn't like you know, it's that kind of thing. So the problem is that when we are in that negative mode, what we do is we look around for confirmation of what we believe, and what we believe is that we're unlovable or that everyone's out to get us or everyone hates us, or the world's inherently bad. Whatever the story is. We're telling ourselves, and that's why something like you know, actively looking for glimmers, is really really important part of kind of balancing things out, and it is something that I did I have talked about this quite a few times before, but it's just worth mentioning again when my mum was at the end of her life and she was in palliative care.

Fiona Kane:

I made a real effort in regards to this, because everything felt bad, right, and it was really just incredibly hard time. And everyone eventually goes through it, or most people go through this experience, and you know it is really tough, right. So it is what it is. I'm not kind of making it out to be anything more or less than anyone else experiences, right, but it was really tough. It was a really tough time. It's obviously really sad and really stressful and all those things right, and you put your life on hold and you're running around and you're doing lots of travel and all the rest of it. And what I did in that time is and you know, lots of medical stuff, right, so lots of medical stuff. That's confronting and challenging and you know.

Fiona Kane:

So what I did is I looked for glimmers, so I would go out for my walk, and I'd go out and walk while mum was sleeping and I'd go and walk around near Gosford Hospital and I would look for birds. I'd look for butterflies, I would listen for bird sounds. I would, you know, I'd pay attention to, like, look what the trees look like, look at the flowers oh, look, there's a French, japani, whatever it is, but I would pay attention. But I also paid attention when I was with mum, because there were moments that we just had joy, like I'd put a song on and we'd sing along to a song for a little while, right when she was still able to do that, and you know. So I'd kind of like just like tuck away those little moments in my mind that you know, it's not all bad, there's good things happening here as well, and it's often the truth, actually, that beauty and beautiful moments happen within what you'd otherwise consider to be really horrible moments, or they happen around it, as in you might have a really horrible moment or horrible experience, but then someone will come in and care for you and help you or be kind, you know. So sometimes they happen within the challenging time and sometimes that happens sort of on, you know, afterwards or in a different way.

Fiona Kane:

But essentially, if we are aware of glimmers, if we're aware of those, as we are of triggers, we will actively look for them. And it's a really good idea to do that because it's balancing the scales. It's not all about triggers, it's about glimmers as well. It's actually actively encouraging yourself to look for something that's positive, and that is exactly why a gratitude practice works, because a gratitude practice works in exactly the same way, because a gratitude practice forces you to sort of look around in your life and go, oh okay, whatever your practice might be, but just say like five positive things that happened today, or five things that I've got going on for me in my life that are good, you know, or five things I can see here, whatever that are beneficial and helpful and good in my life.

Fiona Kane:

And when we do look for you know what we have we start to notice what we have because, you know, I live in Australia and I've got hot water, I've got electricity, I've got the internet, I've got a husband who loves me and we've been together for 35 years. You know I've got all of these things in my life. I've got great sisters and great family. You know I've got all of these great things. So I could say, well, I don't have this and I don't have that, and my mom's gone, and blah, blah, blah and negative, negative, negative. And while there's a lot of things, we could all list a whole bunch of things that we've lost or a whole bunch of things that we don't have, or all the challenges in our life.

Fiona Kane:

But it's also important to acknowledge all the good things and you know, if you have your own bed, your own home or somewhere to sleep tonight, someone who loves you and some hot water, you're doing all right and you're doing better than most of most of the people in the world actually. So you know, the point of glimmers is to kind of counteract that trigger thing and know that. You know, know it's really important that we actively look for those things. So you know that, like I said, that little bit of breeze on your face and that you know, when I open the window at night and get into bed, I listen for the frogs, because we have frogs here. So you know, I always sort of my husband and I will say, oh, there's the frogs, right, and I love listening to them at night as the songs are not super loud, but you know things like that.

Fiona Kane:

So it's just noticing the things that you have, noticing the things that are beautiful and noticing the things that are positive. So there's this negative person that I work with, that I don't like and I'm struggling with this person. But hey, there's this really nice person that I work with, or that's a neighbor, or that's a friend, you know, and so, um. So I would encourage you to be aware, just as aware of glimmers as you are of triggers be okay with being triggered sometimes as well, and learning that you, you, you can cope with that a lot better than maybe what you think you can.

Fiona Kane:

So it is important to make ourselves uncomfortable sometimes, put ourselves outside of our comfort zone a bit and really just sort of keep that capacity by kind of constantly just, you know, making sure that we're doing enough, that we keep our capacity, maintain our capacity, build our capacity, as you know, for our mental and physical health, but, yeah, also just any kind of gratitude practice and looking for glimmers so we can manage our nervous system and counteract, you know, the triggers or the negative things in life, because life has both.

Fiona Kane:

Life has good and it has bad and it has, you know, opportunities and it has challenges and it has, you know, happiness and it has sadness and all the things right. And a full life is one where you will experience all of those things, most of those things right. And a full life is one where you will experience all of those things, most of those things right. And what we sometimes do is we sometimes, because it can be painful and because it can be difficult, what we sometimes do, is we kind of opt out or we try not to experience life, or we overprotect ourselves too much, and there might be times where that's appropriate, like when your capacity is a bit lower and maybe you've just had a challenge in life, yeah, okay, fine, be a bit more protective of yourself, but not all of the time. Anyway, I hope that that was useful to you. Please like, subscribe and share and rate and review, and I will see you all again next week where we have real conversations about things that matter. Thank you.

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