Healing your Autonomic Nervous System
What does it really mean to be triggered? Why do I keep overreacting – or under-reacting – in ways I can't seem to change? How come I can't get my energy level up, or slow down when I'm feeling stressed and rushed?
We often look for answers to questions like these in our minds, our habits, and our stories. But they are also – even more fundamentally – questions involving our autonomic nervous system.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) – so-called because it operates without our conscious direction – is the core of our body's physical regulatory system. It controls our heart rate, blood pressure and blood flow, breathing, digestion, and more. It also underlies much of what feels like "mood" to us, and it's the body's control center for responding when we feel threatened or stressed.
Learning to perceive and communicate with our ANS can be one of the most helpful and kind things we can do for ourselves. Befriending our ANS can support healing from anxiety, depression, digestive issues, high blood pressure, tension headaches, or stress-related ailments of any kind. It can also just help us feel way more at home in our own skin.
Three Branches — Safety and Stress
Until recently, the autonomic nervous system was thought to consist of two branches – the sympathetic and parasympathetic. The third and most evolutionarily recent –the social nervous system – was identified by Stephen Porges in his polyvagal theory. Together, these three branches regulate our overall level of physiological arousal, and they determine which of our core biological processes get the most energy and resources.
The social nervous system consists of portions of the vagus nerve as well as other cranial nerves than innervate our face, ears, tongue, neck, and throat. Together, these nerves create and sense our facial expressions, turn our heads towards what we're paying attention to, modulate our tone of voice, and tune our ears to others' voices. The vagus nerve also carries messages from our heart, lungs, and guts to our brains about the overall level of safety that we perceive in the moment.
When we feel safe – or at least, safe enough – the social nervous system helps us engage warmly with the people around us, attending to what they say, matching their tone of voice, and providing a rapid flow of micro-facial expressions in response. When we sense something unexpected in our environment, the social nervous system lifts our head and helps us look and listen around for the source of the disturbance. If we determine that there is a threat, it engages social strategies to address it, perhaps trying to mobilize those around us to cooperate or trying to placate or please someone who seems upset.
The sympathetic branch of the ANS is often short-handed as "fight or flight", but really it controls any kind of energetic arousal, whether in response to threat or excitement. It increases heart rate and blood pressure and prioritizes movement of energy to our large muscles and away from digestion.
When we are feeling safe enough, the sympathetic system gives us the activation needed to dance, play sports, and have fun. When we feel threatened, it mobilizes us to respond actively with aggression or escape. When we blurt out in anger something we later just cannot believe we said, that's the sympathetic nervous system at work. Sustained activation of the sympathetic system can suppress the immune system and wear out the adrenals over time.
The oldest part of our ANS, the parasympathetic branch, slows the heart rate, reduces blood pressure, and directs physiological energy to digestion and rebuilding tissue. When we safe enough, this system allows us to relax, daydream, and be content doing very little. It also controls entry into the last ditch threat response that our bodies can make – shut down. Faced with an overwhelming threat, when fighting and fleeing are not an option, all animals will go into a "playing dead" mode, becoming limp and still, barely breathing.
In the wild this can save an animal's life, giving it a chance to escape if its predator momentarily loses interest. An otherwise unharmed animal will shake it off and go back to their normal activities. When it happens to people, though, we often become very confused and upset, not understanding why we failed to respond to defend ourselves or others in a traumatic situation. More subtle shut down and dissociative states can also become a sustained response to prolonged trauma or stress. We can feel helpless and apathetic, or have a hard time mobilizing the energy to go after what we want.
Now What? Befriending your Nervous System
Once we have an understanding of the basic components of our ANS, we can start to listen and speak back to it. Slow deep breathing, mindful movement, singing or humming, and taking a walk somewhere you can connect with the natural world are all ways that can help settle your system back into a sense of safety and presence. Activating your social nervous system by spending time with humans or other furry creatures you feel safe enough with and just appreciating the simple pleasure of hanging out can be another powerful way to anchor your system in feeling settled.
But probably the most transformative way to heal your nervous system is simply to become more deeply aware of it. When you're going about your days, see if you can start to notice when your ANS moves from a relaxed, socially engaged state to one of your threat responses. Which threat response pattern is most common for you, and what tends happens right before you go there? Equally important, when and how do you get back into feeling settled and safe enough?
As you begin to notice what triggers you out of your window of feeling safe enough, and what helps bring you back, you'll be able to start making that shift more consciously. Over time, feeling safe enough can start to feel like a home base you can rely on. The confidence that you can return to this window of presence becomes itself another resource to help you settle.
I offer in-person and virtual workshops to help you learn to befriend your nervous system. Learn more or join my email list to receive announcements about upcoming events.
