Episode Details

This week, we’re making Polyvagal Theory even simpler with the help of Rainbow MagnifiCat and your own beloved animals.

I developed Cattitude (aka Cat Coaching and Feline Better Every Day) after adopting Rainbow MagnifiCat from the rescue cat shelter in 2013 and realising how attending to her nervous system, practising what I had learned about Polyvagal Theory and other trauma-informed therapies was helping me (and later clients and groups).

With ADHD and/or trauma histories, your extra sensitive nervous system can be a gift when you treat your whole self with compassion.

In this week’s episode, this simple but effective practise, adapted from Deb Dana’s Befriending your Hierarchy exercise (from her book, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection, Norton) is a wonderful way to build on what you’ve started from last week’s dopamenu episode (and deeper dives in the Sole to Soul Circle).

It really works. Simple Cattitude.

Am really looking forward to hearing how you get on with it.

le grá,

Evei

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Rainbow is part of my branding so I do probably have a disproportionate number of clients and supervisees who love cats but it works with any kind of creature and it just I love seeing people's faces change as they embody that sense of care for themselves that they've already been giving to their cats or dogs or toddlers or others they love. I love seeing the way people light up and I love that kind of eventual recognition that of course they deserve, of course YOU deserve the same compassion and tenderness and care.

Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and welcome to The Feel Better Every Day Podcast.

I am so excited to be sharing new trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly ideas for you to help you take better care of yourself, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself, as well as the basic self-care which we all know can be so challenging at times. I really appreciate you tuning in. If you want a deeper dive you'll be getting bonus content each week if you sign up to the Soul to Soul Circle.

You can do that for free or from as little as eight euros a month and you can also find more ideas in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing.

Hi, welcome to episode 48 of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast. For today's episode I want you to grab a piece of paper and a pen and get ready to improve or even transform any issue that you've been struggling with just by befriending your nervous system more.

We're taking inspiration from cats to work with Polyvagal Theory in a really simple but fun and effective way. I started the whole Cattitude element of my work years and years ago after I brought Rainbow Magnificat back from the cat shelter in 2013. I'd learned about Polyvagal Theory doing my yoga therapy for mental health training and, as I realised how Rainbow was helping me embody it, I created Feline Better Every Day and cat coaching.

So much of what I have done with Rainbow and now with Meadbh, and Teri Crews Cat and Angel Houdini, helps my nervous system as well as seeing the enormous improvements with them. Angel now lets me hold him and purrs at me! And then looks at me and remembers, oh no, he's feral and runs away. But there's something transformational about talking to ourselves as if we were a beloved cat, kitten, puppy, toddler, someone, another mammal.

I often say lizard as well, I know they're not mammals, but find something that you love. I'm going to slow down and I'm going to read from the script because there's so much I want to include, I don't normally use a script.

But basically we humans have very similar nervous systems to cats and by thinking in terms of cat coaching or Cattitud