The Nervous System 101

Why understand Our Nervous System? 

Simply put, to understand your nervous system and how it works is to understand your stress physiology. You have the capacity to re-­learn and re-wire how you, your nervous system, and your brain responds to stress which means you can improve your health and your stress responses even if you have suffered from traumatic events, injury and/or abuse.

Working at the level of the nervous system is effective for addressing stress because it is something we can learn to sense, feel and observe in our body with practice. By doing so, we can change how we respond to stressors in our environment. 

We will have learned to handle stress from our early environment, how our parents handled stress, genetics, and all of these experiences wired us up in a certain way in response to stress. 

We live very differently now than we did when this stress physiology developed, we are not living directly in nature, we have cars, tons of technology… Back then we had very real stress (hunting and being hunted) but we didn’t have the kind of ongoing daily stressors that we have now which can have a huge impact on our nervous system health especially if we do not understand them. Additionally, these stressors are ongoing.

Stress itself is not bad. When we understand our stress physiology we know where we are in the stress spectrum, and therefore how we can come out of these stress responses. 

As we learn about how our body is designed to respond to stress,  we become more aware and when we have awareness we can begin to work with our responses and change them. 

So, what is the nervous system? 

Basically put, it is a system of nerves in your body that takes in information through our senses, processes that information and triggers reactions, such as making your muscles move or causing you to feel pain. It runs through your entire body. From your eyes, into your brain, down your spine, through your organ system and digestive system … It is everywhere in your body. 

Autonomic Nervous System: 

This part of your nervous system is responsible for: 

1. Automatic body functions, like digestion,, metabolism, blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, your sleep / wake cycle, hormonal release, and tissue repair, production of fluids, etc

2. Your Fight / Flight / Freeze Responses. Your survival responses. These keep you, or  attempt to keep you safe from danger. 

   1. Fight: engage

   2. Flight: run

   3. Freeze: Shock, shut down, collapse and conservation mode. 

I want you to think of this as a spectrum of responses - you are never fully in one or the other. They blend together and you dance between these branches all day long.

Why would we move into one branch or the other?

When we encounter a stressor, or a challenge is another way to think about this, we will perceive whether we can do something about it or not. 

Again, back at the beginning of this I said your nervous system takes in information through our senses, processes that information and triggers reactions. This is what perception means - it is your ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.

So, we perceive a challenge and our system assesses if we can do something or not. 

If we feel we can do something, our sympathetic system will come on line and we will mobilize to fight, or run away. If we encounter a stressor that we perceive we cannot do anything about, our system will start to collapse. This activation in the nervous system is what we mean when we say we are dis-regulated.

Clues we are in a Sympathetic Response- Freeze, Flight, Fight MOBILIZATION

• Hyper-alert 

• Hyper-vigilant 

• Increased heart rate 

• Defensive 

• “Pounding” sensation in the head 

• Anxious 

• Excessive Motoric Activity 

• Overwhelmed, Disorganized 

• Highly irritable 

• Uncontrollable bouts of rage 

• Aggressive 

• Dissociation 

Clues we are in a Parasympathetic/Dorsal Vagal Response - COLLAPSE

• Helplessness 

• Appear lifeless 

• Non-expressive 

• Numbing 

• Lack of motivation 

• Lethargic/Tired 

• Dulled capacity to feel significant events 

• Emotional constriction 

• Depression 

• Isolation 

• Dissociation 

So what does regulation mean?

As we go through our day, we will meet stressors that we can handle. Maybe, the store is out of something we wanted. We are mildly frustrated, you may have a slight spike in heart rate, and then you take a breath and think of an alternative and move on. 

In this case, you were able to be with yourself in the experience you were having. Your observer self stayed online and functioning, and you were able to think logically. 

Another way to put this is you were bigger than the experience, the experience was not bigger than you. 

This ability to be with yourself, aware of what you are doing as you are doing it, is what being in a regulated state means. 

Other examples of how you feel in a regulated state include: 

• Think logically/clearly 

• Able to make conscious choices

• Able to make eye contact 

• Display a wide range of emotional expression 

• Feel “grounded” 

• Able to notice breath 

• Sleep Cycles Stable 

• Poised 

• Internal awareness of both mind and body 

• “In the body” 

• Able to communicate verbally in a clear manner 

What we want is to have a constant ebb and flow, activation and deactivation dance in our body and nervous system Stress (challenge) enters, we go into peak arousal state and then we return back down to a resting baseline state.

What I want you to take in is that none of this is bad - dysregulation is not bad! It is necessary. You are designed to meet challenges everyday. And when you do, you are designed to get dysregulated. Why? It is uncomfortable, so you attempt to do something about it, you develop skills, adaptations, you learn. Then, eventually, you have a moment of regulation, so you can rest. And then you do it all over again! 

This the nature of being alive. This is how we learn, grow and expand. It is just that if we get stuck in one mode due to chronic stress, trauma, etc, this can lead to disease. 

And this leads us into what Resilience is. Your Resilience is your ability to move from deregulation to regulation, that’s all. This will be for different people and in different circumstances. So, I may have high resilience in one area and lower in another. 

What can we do to regulate our nervous system once we understand the symptoms? 

• Orient to your environment. What do I see, hear, feel, smell right now? 

• Movement: Run, jump, spin, dance, yoga, sports, anything that feels good for you 

• Breath

• Go out in nature

• Singing

• Music: sing or play your favourite tunes

• Massage

• Drink through a reusable straw 

• Hang upside down off of a bed

• Snuggle with a person or pet, or wrap up in blankets

• Take a bath or shower

• Describe what is happening in your body out loud- “My tummy is going in circles”, “My legs feel heavy”, etc... 

• "Doodle" on paper one 

• Run, jump, etc and crash into something soft (i.e jump on a bed and crash repeatedly) 

• Bounce on a yoga ball 

• March or sing during transitions (great for kids)

• Play with a “fidget” of some kind (a squeeze ball, koosh ball, etc)

• Play classical music

• Roll across the floor back and forth

• Put a cold or hot washcloth on your face

• Sit in a chair and push up 

• Read a book 

• Swing 

• Learn about “Brain Gym”- tons of ideas 

• Carry or push heavy things around 

• Do isometrics

• Deep pressure on arms and thighs

• Eat (particularly crunchy things)

• Shake head quickly (if safe / comfortable)

Again, as we learn about our stress responses and what to watch for, we are empowered - we know what we can do when we recognize different symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system and overtime we have more moments of regulation - we learn to BE WITH our experience, not avoid it. 

As we learn how to increase our moments of regulation, and we trust we can come back from a deregulated state, then we can choose the challenges we want to walk towards and take on.