What is the Nervous System? (In Simple Terms)
Disclaimer: This blog post is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your healing journey. I am not a psychologist, therapist, or medical doctor. I do not offer any medical or professional advice. If you are suffering from mental illness, please seek help from a qualified health professional.
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I am so grateful for the level of importance that the media has brought toward the nervous system! It was about time I made this post.
When I write “nervous system” I am referring to the autonomic nervous system and its two branches, the parasympathetic and sympathetic. (AKA, your internal safety and protection modes!) The nervous system has many parts relating to the brain, spinal cord, and how you’re able to feel things through your nerves, which will not be discussed in this post.
If you’re like me, you've been in talk therapy within the medical model of mental health for many years, before stumbling upon the knowledge of the nervous system.
The medical model usually goes like this:
You list your symptoms to a therapist or psychiatrist
They diagnose you with a mental health disorder from the DSM5
They prescribe you with medication and therapy for behavioral change
Unfortunately for many of us, after a while, this method becomes stale and no longer effective.
This is why I felt like I struck gold when I learned about mental health through the nervous system lens, more specifically known as Polyvagal Theory.
What is Polyvagal Theory?
Polyvagal theory explains how our nervous system responds to stress and experiences safety through three states: fight or flight (sympathetic), freeze or shutdown (dorsal vagal), and social engagement (ventral vagal).
Your nervous system state affects your mood, your ability to manage day-to-day life, your “overwhelm threshold”, how you naturally respond to stressful events, and simply how you feel!
When we feel safe, we connect and thrive. When we sense danger, our body either goes into high alert or shuts down to protect us.
Hence, anxiety (fight or flight) and depression (freeze and shut down). This is a different lens of research and a new perspective on typical mental health symptoms.
Stephen Porges is the one who is most credited for the creation of Polyvagal Theory. Much of his initial research was based on how animals responded to life-threatening situations (eg. a mouse getting chased by a hawk).
The best way to understand about Polyvagal theory is to view the Polyvagal Chart below:
The goal is that our default state of being is social engagement, or the “green” zone. We feel “normal.” We’re able to move freely, focus on what we’re doing in the current moment, sit comfortably, eat, talk, breathe and best of all....enjoy our lives!
However, if you’re reading this post, I have a feeling you probably experience more of the other two states.
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn (I won’t really talk about fawning much in this post–maybe in a future post) are all survival responses. These states are intended, biologically, to increase the chance of survival in a life-threatening situation.
This is why you’ll often hear being stuck in these responses being called “survival mode.”
Your body naturally detects danger or threat through something called neuroception (your danger detector).
Note, if your body goes into these states, it is a completely involuntary response! Your body naturally detects danger and simply knows if a situation is safe.
Signs of Fight or Flight (Sympathetic)
Fight or flight, or the “yellow zone” is the one most people are familiar with.
Systems prefer a fight or flight response (over freeze) in threatening, overwhelming situations. The body prefers to mobilize the survival energy, if it is able to.
When an animal is getting attacked, instinctively, it will try to fight back or run away in effort to survive the attack.
When humans are threatened, the biological responses are very similar.
Fight Response Symptoms:
Feeling angry or irritable
Clenching your jaw or fists
Feeling the urge to argue or confront
Feeling the urge to injure someone/something
Increased heart rate and muscle tension
Feeling defensive or aggressive
Shallow, rapid breathing
Thoughts in the mind racing
Flight Response Symptoms:
Feeling anxious or panicked
Fast heart rate and rapid breathing
Sweaty palms and lightheadedness
Difficulty focusing or feeling scattered
Sense of impending doom or fear
Feeling the urge to escape or move away
Signs of Freeze and Shut Down (Dorsal Vagal)
Freeze is the survival response I know best, unfortunately.
Freeze is the “play dead” response in classic possum examples. It is the “red” zone.
When the animal is close to being killed by a predator, the nervous system will intensely slow down the breathing, and make the limbs go limp. This makes the animal appear dead, hoping the predator will get distracted long enough for the animal to make a run for it and survive.
In humans, the response is very similar. When a threat is detected the body will go into fight or flight if it has the option, but if not, as a last resort it will go into freeze mode.
Freeze Symptoms:
Extreme exhaustion
Feeling emotionally or physically paralyzed (feeling limp)
Feeling numb or emotionally detached
Feeling stuck or unable to move/speak
Slowed heart rate and shallow breathing
Feeling foggy or dissociated or “blank”
Sense of helplessness or heaviness in the body
Difficulty making decisions or responding to stimuli
Feeling disconnected from your body (depersonalization)
Feeling like the world around you isn’t real (derealization)
Lack of facial expression or flat tone of voice
Digestive issues (like nausea or loss of appetite)
Feeling cold or having chills
Brain fog or difficulty processing thoughts
Feeling invisible or trapped
Trouble remembering things
Inability to take a full, deep breath
How did I get dysregulated without ever being attacked by a tiger?
While I sincerely hope that this is true, I assume no one reading this is getting almost-attacked by animals or experiencing near-death situations every day.
Yet, many adults live in survival mode every single day.
Then how come so many people are suffering with nervous system dysregulation!?
There are hundreds of reasons why a person might become dysregulated. However, there are some commonalities between what causes people to have a dysregulated nervous system.
Here are 4 potential causes:
Overwhelm and pressure of modern life
Lingering trauma and wounding the past (these emotions are still living in the nervous system and were never fully processed or released)
Unmet needs (nutrition deficiencies, lack of sunlight, lack of connection with others, not being heard/seen, not doing fulfilling work, etc.)
Chronic Stress (You were once in a long term stress-filled environment, even if it was many years ago, or you are in one currently)
Overwhelm and pressure
Overwhelm and pressure have the same affect on your nervous system as animals almost getting eaten (yes, seriously). So many people are overwhelmed with the amount of things they need to keep up with, and feel an intense pressure to do more and do better in every aspect of their life.
Adults are expected to work 40 hours, maintain a clean home, exercise hours a week, look good, give their partner attention, hang out with their friends, maintain hygiene, take care of pets, go to doctor’s appointments, and for some…..take care of children!
This long list of expectations creates so much overwhelm. This alone can set off a survival response in your system.
Lingering Trauma
Trauma and emotional pain don’t really go away until you deal with it. Many of us have realized this first hand.
When you experience a traumatic event, something emotionally painful, or have experienced a lot of neglect, your body remembers it. From that point forward, your body will do everything in its power to ensure you never experience something like that again.
So any time you are in even a remotely similar situation, your body remembers the trauma from the past, and launches you into a survival response as a protection mechanism.
This is to protect you from feeling the same pain that you once did.
Of course, this can be really problematic. Especially when the similar situation is as simple as waking up, going to work, sitting at home, etc.
Related Post: The Best 10 Books for Inner Child Healing
Related Post: The Beginner’s Guide to Healing Trauma: Stages of Recovery and Things You Should Know
Unmet Needs
Having unmet needs is a big reason that many people stay stuck in survival mode. We need to have our physical, financial, and emotional needs met to survive. PERIOD.
Here is a brief list of what I think is hitting the bare minimum of getting your needs met looks like:
Physical
Getting 7-9 hours of sleep each night
Drinking 120 oz of water per day
Eating balanced, regular nutrient-dense meals
Getting 2.5 hours of physical activity per week in
Financial
Making enough money to live comfortably
Doing work that doesn’t feel too difficult for you do accomplish daily
Being in a work environment with reasonable expectations
Doing work that gives you a sense of impact or purpose
Emotional
Having someone to rely on in time of need
Feeling known, understood, and loved by at least one consistent person
Feeling liked and wanted by one or more people
Feeling accepted by society
A sense of belonging to a group or community
Feeling safe to be your authentic self around others
When any combination of these needs are not met, the body detects that you are under a threat and the defense mechanisms will go up in order to protect you.
Related Post: 4 Uncommon Reasons You Might be Stuck in Survival Mode
Chronic Stress
If you were born into a dysfunctional family, have worked in a high stress or frustrating job, have young children that you are raising, or lived through a worldwide pandemic….you understand chronic stress like the back of your hand.
These environments do a number on your nervous system. When you experience high stress, high overwhelm environments, the amygdala in your brain (your danger center) is going off like an alarm every single day. Over time, it becomes hyperactive. It learns to go off super easily or it just stays on all the time. Then, your nervous system gets stuck in a survival response, even long after you leave the high stress environment.
What actually is Nervous System Dysregulation?
Dysregulated, meaning you live most of your day in fight, flight, or freeze without a direct cause. When something stressful, unwanted, or out of the ordinary does happen, it pushes you over the edge and feels very intense for you.
Your system is not dysregulated if your system goes into a survival response during an intense situation (giving surgery, car accident, etc), but then defaults back to ventral vagal (green zone) after the situation has passed.
Dysregulated means your nervous system is “stuck” in fight, flight, or freeze, without ever really coming down, regardless of your present experience. See below for types of dysregulation.
Example: You wake up in the morning and you get out of bed and your thoughts are racing, you feel panicked and are filled with immediate dread–when all you did was stand up and walk to the bathroom. No apparent threat is actually there, yet you are flooded with survival energy.
5 Different Types of Dysregulation:
Disproportionate responses to events
Eg. You almost drop an expensive antique glass bowl, but hours or even days later you continue to ruminate about it and still feel a sense of panic remembering the incident.
You move into a survival response (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) very easily over “little” things
Eg. You get intensely angry (level 10) in only a level 2 situation.
You have low capacity to get very much done in one day. You’re running on willpower.
Eg. Simple, non-stressful tasks exhaust you.
You feel frustrated, anxious, or shut down for the majority of the day, without a direct cause.
You’re in a long-term stress-filled environment currently, triggering a survival response
Related Post: How to Make Change Feel Easier
Understanding the autonomic nervous system and Polyvagal Theory gives you helpful insight to why your body reacts the way it does to stress and overwhelm. Dysregulation happens when these survival responses become overactive or “stuck” due to chronic stress, lingering trauma, or unmet needs.
Leave a comment if you learned something new or if you have a question! I love to connect with my readers :)
