The Vagus Nerve Myth: Why Positive Thinking Cannot Fix A Dysregulated Nervous System

For people who have done the work, know the language, and have nonetheless found themselves somewhere the standard grounding tools simply do not reach. You are not failing the tools — the tools have a domain of usefulness, and you have wandered beyond it. With Abi Beri — Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Ireland. In person across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare; online globally.

I can see my pattern. I know exactly what I do. I know where it comes from. I have read enough books to write the book myself at this point. And I still do the thing. If that sounds like you — you are not broken. You are not failing your healing. You are running into one of the great open secrets of inner work: self-awareness alone doesn’t change much. It is the door through which everything else becomes possible. And the entire self-help industry has been selling the door as if it were the room.

A morning practice for people who wake up already tense. Not relaxed. Not neutral. Already a little tight in the jaw, already a little high in the shoulders, mind already running. You are not failing your mornings. Your system has been online since 4am, scanning. The most useful place to do nervous system work is before the day starts. Guided by Abi Beri — Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Dublin, Ireland. In-person sessions across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare; online globally. Drawing on polyvagal theory (Stephen Porges), the cortisol awakening response research (Clow, Fries, Hucklebridge) and Somatic Experiencing. Work more deeply with morning anxiety, chronic activation, or burnout: somatic therapy in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare, or online globally.

What if you didn't have to be your tiredness, your anxiety or your anger? In this Sacred Talk, Abi Beri offers a single phrase that changes how you meet difficult emotions: "the one inside me who is tired." Drawing on parts work, Internal Family Systems and centuries of contemplative practice, but without the jargon, Abi explores why a small shift in language creates real space between you and what you feel, why being with an emotion often helps more than fixing it, how to use the phrase in everyday life, and when inner pain needs skilled support. The talk ends with a short guided practice of turning towards the one inside you who needs attention. Abi Beri is an IPHM-accredited integrative somatic therapist and family constellation facilitator based in Ireland, working with clients online worldwide. One-to-one sessions:https://somatictherapyireland.com Family Constellation groups:https://familyconstellationseurope.com

You could read a room before you could read a book. And people praised you for it — which is the part that makes this so difficult to see. You were not a child who was neglected. You were a child who was employed. Guided by Abi Beri — Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Ireland. In person across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare; online globally. Topics: parentification and the distinction the research draws between its instrumental and emotional forms, and why the second does the deeper damage — practical burden completes, and responsibility for an adult's inner state does not; the three factors that determine whether childhood responsibility was developmentally fine or harmful, of which the most consistently significant is whether it was ever acknowledged, since being needed and recognised is survivable while being needed and invisible is not; the adult presentation, which is not a childhood complaint but a personality and usually an admired one — the impossibility of rest, the genuine absence rather than indecision when asked what you want, over-functioning followed by unvoiced resentment, attraction to people in difficulty because difficulty is a legible situation, the flinch at being helped, and a low persistent guilt with no identifiable object; the family ledger of giving and receiving running across generations, and what happens to an account that is never settled; invisible loyalty, and why understanding the pattern perfectly changes nothing, because it was never a thinking error; the systemic account of a child standing in a place that was not theirs, which never looks like power; a fair treatment of the parents, who were in the overwhelming majority of cases drowning rather than malicious; and why over-functioning in adult life is so often still an attempt to build retrospectively the family in which somebody was looking after you.