Have You Felt a Glimmer Today?
Glimmers are “small moments that bring you joy, safety, and connection.” Deb Dana coined the term while working with trauma survivors who were struggling to find just that. You might have felt a glimmer petting your pup, listening to music, or laughing with a friend. I think most of us could benefit from some extra attention on glimmers right now.
Glimmers are part of polyvagal theory, which describes how our autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulates our body. The ANS is responsible for the things that happen even when we aren’t thinking about them - things like breathing, heart rate, digestion, arousal, and sneezing. It’s also responsible for how we react when there’s a threat (ie. fight, flight, freeze). There are 3 states in polyvagal theory: relaxed, mobilized (fight and flight fit in here, and so does catching a ball tossed at you), and immobilized (freeze, and also naps).
Glimmers help us tap into the relaxed state. They help us feel engaged, curious, creative and hopeful.
Last weekend I was in a mood…that bleak, worthless, despairing kind of mood…and I didn’t even have hormones to blame. I shared this observation with my mom, and how the “fun stuff” feels frivolous right now. She nabbed that limiting self-talk in the butt, “the frivolous stuff is necessary.”
Of course, the aim isn’t to always be feeling positive and relaxed. We need the range of states and emotions to navigate and respond to life. But, for a lot of us, we can get stuck feeling unsafe (mobilized or immobilized) and struggle to enter the “relaxed” state. We certainly aren’t going to get to the world we want to live in without curiosity, creativity, hope, and engagement.
So, go get your glimmers on!
Deb says if you share and document your glimmers, you get even more bang for your buck. Anecdotally, I can attest, taking a photo, reflecting and/or talking about glimmering moments with people deepens and expands the feeling.
On a related note, I’ve been going down an “awe” rabbit hole. Spoiler: it’s different than joy and it’s good for you! You might find some glimmer inspo in here:
Dorsal Rest - this one isn’t about awe, it explores the state of feeling immobilized*and* safe and it sparked a lot of thoughts for me.
