What you're scanning for
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Most of us are trained to scan for threats all day. There’s a word for what happens when you flip that scanner. And it changes everything.
Yesterday morning I was sitting at my desk before the world was up. Coffee was still hot. The house was quiet except for the sound of rain against the windows. I wasn’t working yet, just sitting there with the mug in my hands, and for about thirty seconds I felt this wave of something I can only describe as okay. Just okay, in a way that felt rare.
Then I opened my email and it was gone.
I wouldn’t have thought about that moment twice except that I’d just learned a word for it. A therapist named Deb Dana coined the term in her 2018 book on polyvagal theory, and the word is “glimmer.” A glimmer is the opposite of a trigger. Where a trigger is a cue that pushes your nervous system into fight or flight, a glimmer is a micro-moment that cues your nervous system to feel safe. Calm. Connected to where you are.
Coffee hitting right on a quiet morning. Sun on your face when you step outside. Your dog losing its mind when you walk in the door. These aren’t big moments. They’re barely moments at all. But they register in your body whether you notice them or not, and Dana’s work suggests that the more you notice them, the more your nervous system recalibrates toward safety instead of surveillance.
That last part is the thing that got me.
