Seeing Ourself Through the Lens of our Nervous System
Have you ever wondered why you feel a hum of anxiety everywhere you go, even places that are familiar to you? Or when your heart starts racing and your face turns red & hot as the attention is drawn to you in a group of people? Or when you feel confronted by a person and automatically your mind goes completely blank, your body painfully numb, and you cant get any words out?
This is the way your nervous system is trying to communicate with you, through sensations, feelings and symptoms, within your body.
Your nervous system has a language that not many of us have been taught to understand. And the beautiful thing about understanding our nervous system is that it gives us insight into why we feel and react the way we do — and more importantly how we can work with it and not against it.
My desire in writing this is to help you understand yourself through a lens of compassion and to hopefully help you to put the puzzle pieces together, answer your unanswered questions and grow your capacity so that you feel safer to truly feel and be with your emotions.
Ok so lets start with the nervous system.
WHAT IS THE NERVOUS SYSTEM?
Think of it as your body’s security system that is split into two main parts.
We have the central nervous system (CNS) which is made up of the brain and spinal cord. And we have the peripheral nervous system (PNS) which is made up of both the somatic and autonomic nervous systems.
We will be talking about the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in this case, which consists of three main states:
Sympathetic (Fight / Flight) = Get up & go, accelerator, action, energy, gas
Parasympathetic (Ventral Vagal) = Rest, digest, slow, soothe, settle, integrate, brake
Parasympathetic (Dorsal Vagal) = Shutdown, freeze, immobilise, collapse
The ANS is the part of the nervous system that regulates involuntary physiological processes including heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, sexual arousal and digestion. It is also in charge of our threat detection and stress response — responding to threats even before our conscious mind even registers them. It is essentially our bodies automatic survival system — it keeps us alive without us having to think about it.
WHY THIS MATTERS IN REAL LIFE
According to Gabor Mate — a physician and a renowned speaker on addiction, trauma and childhood development — around 90% of us grew up in dysfunctional homes where we were exposed to long term stress. This can include, but is not limited to, lack of attunement, parental anxiety / stress, emotional neglect, mental illness, chronic criticism, shaming, witnessing abuse, being abused, inconsistency, invalidation, feeling unwanted / a burden, not being protected and being forced to “grow up” too soon.
These experiences can traumatise us by leaving deep emotional imprints that shape our nervous system stress responses, self worth, relationships, world view and even physical health. We can end up creating painful narratives about ourselves, other people and the world, leaving us with a distorted view of reality and going on to create more pain and stress in our lives. These experiences stay “stuck” in our nervous systems when we weren’t able to safely go through the stress response that was needed in the moment — for example this happens when your body mobilises energy to deal with danger, but you are unable to fight or flee — so think childhood situations, workplace conflicts, overwhelming experiences. When these are not processed, felt and released, your nervous system keeps scanning for the “unfinished” threat, leaving us stuck in survival mode. This can eventually lead to, overtime, you accumulating more built up stress, tension and emotion, and when you reach a certain threshold, your body will go into a dorsal vagal / shutdown response due to how overwhelmed your system is. This can look like numbness, fatigue, dissociation, depression, rumination, suicidal, stuck-ness, brain fog, shame, memory loss, attention deficit etc.
When these stressors happen at a significant stage of our life like childhood or another developmental stage, it can have a long term effect on our nervous system, paralysing us into a fear based, hyper or hypo-vigilant state where we stay stuck in a stress state as we percieve threat everywhere. It can set us up for a life of dysregulation, low emotional resilience, mental and physical health difficulties.
Trauma isn’t just what happened to us — it’s what got stuck inside of us as a result of what happened to us.
SIMPLE SIGNS YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM IS TALKING
When you’re in Fight or Flight: Racing thoughts, panic, fear, anxiety, anger, rage, compulsive behaviours, loss of appetite, overwhelm, irritation, boredom, digestive issues, low immune response, increased heart rate, high blood pressure, tight jaw, shallow breathing
When you’re in Freeze: Numbness, dissociation, disconnected, attention deficit, fatigue, shutdown, brain fog, depression, helplessness, low sexual response, loss of voice, memory loss, isolation, shame, trapped, feeling stuck, indecision, low blood pressure and heart rate
When you’re in Rest & Digest: Clarity, steady breathing, grounded, witness consciousness, relaxed, creative open, curious, playful, joyful, sexual, mindful, present, centered, self command, feeling safe
WHY NERVOUS SYSTEM WORK IS CRUCIAL RIGHT NOW
We live in a culture that is mind centric and dissociative, cut off from our bodies. We’ve been taught to live from the neck up and disconnect from our bodies — keeping us cut off from our essence, our truth.
In western culture we are told that emotions and bodily sensations make us “weak” and they’re seen as inconvienient. We are told to just think “positively,” “mind over matter,” “I think therefore I am” — reducing the human experience all to thought. Our success is measured by how much we can produce and achieve. we get rewarded and praised for pushing through exhaustion, pain, grief, burnout.
So naturally our bodies become our enemy, therefore we disconnect from them and become numb. Resulting in us developing many mental and physical symptoms and illnesses — our bodies and nervous systems are literally screaming to be heard. But instead, we stay busy, we scroll, we drink, we take drugs, we eat, we date, we shop, we exercise, we power through, we use anything and everything to distract us because we were taught that our bodies are not a safe place to be.
We end up mistaking our survival states, our wounded, defensive selves as our identity and personality — “I’m just an anxious / angry / lazy / bad / stressful / compulsive / controlling / people pleasing / I don’t feel my feelings type of person.” Because living in a constant state of stress became our “normal.”
Many people have not truly experienced themselves in a sustained regulated and calm state — true safety and calmness can feel like a threat to the nervous system thats never experienced it, as it feels so unfamiliar. This is why we do whatever we can to get out of it by creating our own stress and chaos over and over and over again, because this is safe to us, this is known, this is familiar territory.
THE GOOD NEWS
There is hope.
The good news is that when we start to attune to and regulate our nervous system and spend time in genuine safety we will often start to experiences things like “I forgot this part of me existed,” “I haven’t felt this much like myself since being a child.”
This is why this work is so important. It is the pathway back to our truest selves, that is found beneath the masks, the survival patterns, the painful narratives and the cultural conditioning.
Most people don’t know life without constant anxiety, without all the chronic pain, tension headaches and debilitating exhaustion. They don’t realise that this is not who they are — it’s their trauma response.
If you feel like there’s something “wrong” with you, it’s because something happened to you. Trauma is an adaptation not a disorder. It is just undigested life experience.
Please remember that making consistent small changes, make a big differences in the long term and this is no quick fix. Remember to be gentle with yourself and have compassion, go slow, go steady, because these things are not a personal failing, they are nothing to be ashamed of — they are a predictable result of living in a dissociative culture, having childhood trauma and accumulated stress stored in your body.
CALL TO ACTION
Your nervous system holds so much wisdom - it's been trying to keep you safe and help you thrive. Learning its language is one of the most compassionate things you can do for yourself.
I've created a free guide with 5 daily practices to help you start this conversation with your body. These gentle check-ins are perfect for beginners and meet you exactly where you are. They will help you begin listening to your body's wisdom with curiosity instead of judgment.
Whether you're drawn to trauma-informed coaching, energy work, or gentle bodywork practices, understanding your nervous system creates the foundation for all healing to happen more easily.
Fill in the form below to receive your FREE guide to begin listening to the incredible intelligence that's been with you all along.