Keeping our nervous system regulated.

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Hello everybody, I'm Pam. I am the founder and owner of Pam Poole Self Discovery Coaching. You can find out more about me on www.pampoole.co.nz if you're interested.

Today, I want to talk to you about keeping our nervous system regulated and why it is important. It’s important because, dependent on the state of our nervous system, we will either act or behave in a way that's balanced and suited, we will under-respond and do nothing and maybe let other people have more of a say than they should, particularly in our own lives, or we will overreact in some way and our response will be outside of what is really aligned or appropriate for that particular situation.

When I'm talking about our nervous system, within the human body we have two primary nerves that run through our entire body. So basically, from our brain all the way, down through our body, main organs, to our feet. They are called Polyvagal nerves. One of those nerves is more primitive developed from the “reptilian” brain, as a result this nerve is directly instinctive, the other Polyvagal nerve also runs from the brainstem but it was created as we evolved into mammals.

They do two very different things. So firstly, the primitive polyvagal part or nerve, slows us down, shuts us down or activates a freeze response.  I'm sure you've all heard about fight flight freeze. Well, it controls our freeze response. The other side of it, the side that was created. as we evolved into mammals, that controls our fight and flight, it speeds us up, gets us moving.

Okay, so why is this important? It's important because some of us respond in a way that is more likely to be part of the freeze response or shutdown response, if you've ever seen an animal pretend to be dead, that's the freeze or shutdown response inaction. Many lizards do it, tortoises do it, they go inside their shell. It's a very primitive nervous system in play. The mammal nervous system that evolved activates our nervous system, so instead of shutting it down, it actually floods us with energy (adrenalin) and makes us want to move and run.

Because fight, flight and freeze are usually spoken about as a group we think it is the same nervous system controlling both, but although together they work to create a whole nervous system, different parts control the different responses, like a hot water system that mixes the two extremes so we can adjust it to the temperature we want.

Normally as a mammal our first nervous system response, the newer response, fight/flight is activated, but if we're trapped or we can't move for some reason, like say we're in an accident, we were pinned under something, then the primitive nervous system takes over and shuts us down, that's when you hear a lot of people, say I just froze. Literally, their nervous system has shut that down for them because they couldn't get out or leave.

I don't want to go too much into that, if you want to know more about that stuff, just go to my website, join my private friends only email list. There's a lot of free stuff there. I will aim to put up a bit more of a scientific explanation about the polyvagal nerves if that's something that piques your interest.

I specifically want to bring this to your attention today is our nervous system receives information via our sensory systems, both internal and external, so anything that we feel, anything that we hear, the smells, the tastes, and anything that's happening inside our body, like the body telling us we need to go to the toilet, eat or our body letting us know that we have an ache of pain somewhere. Both of the Polyvagal nerves get all of that information from every part of our sensory and biological system. They also get information from the way we think, interpret, see, view, act. So, our nervous system is constantly receiving information that it's making sense of in terms of risk assessment.

I want to say that again, our nervous system is constantly assessing how safe or unsafe we are and letting us know that by sensory input, it then attempts to communicate that to via sensation, thoughts being triggered etc.  perhaps a feeling of anxiety or it might, trigger a thought or a memory, the problem is that our nervous system can interpret information incorrectly particularly if we have a history of trauma.

So again, don't want to get too complicated because this is a huge, huge conversation but I think it is important to have some understanding. Some of the information or input our nervous system gets, is completely involuntary, we literally have no control over it, other parts of it, like the way we think and things like that, we have influence and ability to decide and choose. This is that middle zone that I work with in life coaching while I work with both zones within Equine Emersion.

At all times we are somewhere on the spectrum between feeling unsafe and safe and our nervous system lets us know that. Now most of the time most of us sit leaning towards a feeling of safety. Feeling either end to the extremes when we are doing something is not helpful because if we feel nothing but completely safe, we don't notice any possible risk or issues, like watching tv completely zoning out and we don't hear that the fire alarm's going, that’s one extreme, there's that spectrum that is just feeling so safe we lose complete awareness.

Then there's the feeling of really unsafe that is complete panic, often people who have experienced trauma, are inclined to be already leaning a bit that way. They primarily feel more unsafe than safe, so it doesn't take a lot to then tip them to that end of the spectrum.  

It's important to know where our nervous system is at on that spectrum because if on a scale of 0-7, we are outside of, between say four, five, then chances are whatever we're engaging in and our response to it won't be very balanced. We are likely to overreact if we're down to a two or a three and we're feeling quite unsafe, or we're going to underreact or pay no attention whatsoever if we're starting to move up to feeling really safe. So, it's really helpful, particularly if you've had trauma in your life, to be able to notice where your nervous system's at, to notice it regularly during the day and get familiar with it because for some people, they're really comfortable sitting at a 7 and for another person they're actually okay with sitting at a 3, and if you're comfortable with where your nervous system is that’s perfect.

So, getting to know what your usual setting on a day-to-day basis is, when it's not under-activated or over-activated, is really helpful to know because then when it changes you will notice. It is also good to know because if you're a person who notices that you tend to regularly overreact or regularly shut down a little bit, perhaps isolate yourself or don't engage socially as much as you'd like to, then we can look at adjusting the setting.

It's really important to be able to identify the setting that is most helpful to you and to identify what kind of things activate your nervous system and what kind of things help bring your nervous system down. We get to decide as the individual our nervous system setting. I'm not saying we can stop being activated or we have that kind of control, what I'm saying is once we become aware of it and we notice it, we have the ability to adjust the setting of our nervous system, but to be able to do that on the fly and really well, we have to be able to identify what effects our settings and for that we need to self-resource.

This is just a skill and like any skill you really need to practice it before you need, you're not going to try and use something after you've read about it or heard about it in a situation that needs skilled application. That would be like sending a person into a soccer game who's read the rules, read how to play, never actually tried to play, or practiced anything, but then putting them in the premieres, like it doesn't work, okay.

What's really important is that whatever you identify, whatever resources and/or skills you discover work for you, that you practice them before you need them. Like in your day to day, every day. So first off, practice just noticing where your nervous system is at, give yourself a scale between one and seven so that you can, make it a little bit more tangible, notice when it's up, so when you're feeling anxious, where does that come into your body, is it more in your upper body, also when you're perhaps shutting down or withdrawing where do you feel that in your body, or a lack of feeling in your body or energy.

I believe self-regulation of our nervous system is where it all begins, because when we do self-regulate, when we're in a really good place of nervous system balance, it's so much easier to access our self-wisdom, great decisions, to see all the possibilities and options. It's a very healthy and helpful place to be.

Okay, so... If you would like to learn more about it, you can go to my website so www.pampoole.co.nz, I have 30 minute free inquiry calls, there's no obligation, or you might like to join my friend's email list and when you do that you get an email very quickly that actually has the private link, that gives you access to more of my content and that particular content is for friends only so you do not get access to it any other way.

I hope this has been educational, informational and in some way helpful to you because I suspect that if you're finding on your day-to-day that you're just not feeling like doing anything, so a bit lethargic, or if you're feeling quite anxious most of the time, there would be a lot of benefit from simply learning how to regulate your own nervous system.

Alright my friends, I love talking to you, I appreciate your time, I know that that's valuable, and your interest.

Thank you so much and I'll see you in the next podcast. Bye for now. 😊