The Importance Of Your Nervous System & Your Stress Physiology

Hey,

Hey!

Well done on making it to Lunch Break Therapy,

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Tools,

And insights that I've gained from my work as a licensed psychotherapist for over two decades.

Not only will you benefit from what I've learned as a therapist,

But I'm going to introduce little nuggets and teachings from some of the best minds in the fields of psychology,

Neuroscience,

Mindfulness,

Meditation,

Relationships,

And much more.

My name is Robert Oleskiewicz.

I'm a licensed psychotherapist,

Creator,

And host of Lunch Break Therapy.

So I invite you to sit back,

Pop on your headphones,

Enjoy this class,

And recognize that just you being here is an act of self-care.

Hey,

Hey!

Welcome to Lunch Break Therapy.

So excited to be here with you.

So happy you signed up.

I hope you learn a lot.

Let's kick this off right.

Maybe,

No,

Not maybe.

Definitely the reason why nervous system health is the first module is because we now know that nervous system health,

The body,

Is a huge,

I'm going to say this word a lot,

I think,

Huge component of our mental health.

That's right,

The body,

The nervous system,

Is a huge component of our mental health.

And we're just now,

Just in recent years,

Learning to understand the significance of nervous system health and how it relates to our mental health.

It's kind of crazy how we usually think about mental health as just being about the brain and our thoughts.

No,

It's about the body.

And in this module,

I should say,

You're going to learn why the nervous system is such a huge piece of our mental health puzzle.

So let's get into it.

Thanks for joining.

Thanks for signing up.

Let's talk about the nervous system.

You may have heard me say,

Or if you haven't,

You'll hear me say,

That our issues are in our tissues.

We know that our stuff,

The things that we're holding,

Are past issues that include trauma,

Not only shock trauma,

Like some sort of physical incident that took place,

But also emotional trauma,

Maybe abuse,

Verbal abuse,

Emotional abuse,

And even attachment wounds or attachment injuries or attachment trauma.

All of these things are stored in our body,

In our fascia,

In our nervous system,

In the body.

So in later modules,

You'll hear me talk more about trauma and attachment trauma and what I mean exactly by that.

But for this module,

It's just important to know that our stuff,

Our past issues,

Our trauma,

Stressors that we haven't processed.

When something happens and we have a feeling,

An emotion,

A reaction to it,

There's a way,

And it's necessary,

To work with that,

To work through it,

To process it.

And if we don't,

Which a lot of us don't,

Guess where that stressor gets stored?

That's right.

It's in the body.

Irene Lyon,

She's a colleague and a teacher who I really respect.

She does a lot of work with the nervous system.

She talks about the nervous system.

And by the way,

We'll get into soon,

In just a few minutes,

What I mean by the nervous system.

But she talks about the nervous system as we can think about it like it's a swimming pool.

And when we have stressors,

If there's a rush hour traffic,

If we get into an argument with someone,

If we're nervous about a presentation,

Anything,

Any minor stressor or major stressor,

If we don't have the skills and the tools to be able to kind of work with that,

Then what happens is it gets stored in the body,

In that swimming pool.

And that's like a beach ball.

There's big beach balls for big stressors,

Little beach balls for little stressors.

And in that pool,

If we're not working through our stressors,

Either as they happen or shortly thereafter,

Those beach balls start adding up in the pool.

And before long,

There's no room in the pool.

And there's certainly no room for new stressors,

A new ball to enter,

And then move through the pool and move out of that system,

Which is what happens when we work through a stressor.

So if we're not working through our stressors as they happen,

If we haven't worked through our past traumas,

Our shit,

That swimming pool gets full,

Fast.

New stressors can't move in and move out,

And old stressors just get stuck there.

And that's what we mean when we say our issues are in our tissues,

Our stuff is stored in our body.

So when our stuff gets stored in our body,

Guess what happens?

You got it.

Anxiety,

Depression,

Digestion problems,

And a lot of other physical health issues can arise.

The cool thing is,

Instead of going to a therapist or a psychologist or a doctor and getting misdiagnosed,

We now know that we can look at the nervous system as a fundamental piece of any particular,

Many particular issues.

If our nervous system is not regulated,

So if it's dysregulated,

As a result of all these beach balls getting stuck and stored,

Then that dysregulation manifests in a lot of these problems that we end up going to see the therapist for or the doctor for.

So if we don't process our feelings and our stressors,

That leads to a dysregulated nervous system.

And again,

We'll talk more about that in a minute.

So just know that our issues are in our tissues.

If we don't process feelings and stressors,

They reside in the body,

And that impacts our nervous system,

Which impacts our mental health.

So first,

What is the nervous system?

Today we're talking about the autonomic nervous system,

ANS.

And we think of that word autonomic as like automatic.

So everything happening in the ANS is happening without our awareness and without our control.

So that includes the heart.

So the heart beats without our awareness or control.

The lungs,

They breathe without our awareness or our control.

Digestion,

Right?

That happens naturally on its own.

So everything within the nervous system,

The ANS,

Is beneath our awareness.

So what happens when there's a stressor,

Whether that's a big stressor like trauma or abuse or a small stressor like getting cut off in traffic when you're driving?

Not feeling safe in a relationship is also a stressor.

And again,

It's not like we're actively thinking,

I don't feel safe in this relationship.

And we sense that it's not safe to express this part of me.

It's not safe to experience this feeling that I'm having.

When we swallow anger or we bottle it up or any of the feelings that we distract ourselves from or suppress,

All of these are a result of some stressor.

You are familiar with what happens.

We know that one of the reactions,

One of the nervous system reactions is this fight-flight response.

And that means the sympathetic part of the ANS,

The sympathetic nervous system,

Gets activated.

So our heartbeat speeds up,

Our breathing becomes more rapid or shallow.

The blood flows to the muscles because we have to take action.

We have to be mobilized to do something.

The digestion slows down because we don't need to digest when we're in fight-flight.

So this all happens immediately without our awareness or control.

Our body,

In all of its wisdom,

Goes into fight-flight as a very wise and skillful response to a stressor.

But what happens if we don't come back down to baseline?

Because we haven't learned how to process or we didn't know how to process that stressor or because that stressor was chronic,

Maybe we're living in the same house with the same people day after day,

Month after month,

Year after year,

And it's not a healthy environment,

So we can't come back down to baseline?

Guess what might happen?

We get stuck in that sympathetic fight-flight place.

And as you can imagine,

The nervous system is impacted by that.

If it can't come back down to baseline,

If it can't rest,

Regenerate,

Heal,

Then that's a problem.

That's a big problem.

The other thing that happens as a result of a stressor is the freeze or the shutdown response.

That's part of the parasympathetic nervous system.

We don't need to get into that exactly,

Into a lot of detail right now,

What that means,

But just know that if fight-flight,

If that doesn't work,

We freeze,

Right?

You've seen the animal play dead when they're about to be captured or once they've been captured by the hunter.

So if there's a tiger and it captures a gazelle or a zebra,

Oftentimes that gazelle or the zebra will freeze,

Not only as a strategy,

Playing dead so that the tiger might relax and look away,

And so at that point,

Or walk away for a bit,

And at that point maybe the zebra or the gazelle can escape,

But also the freeze is kind of an important response,

Right?

If we're about to be eaten,

We don't want to feel that.

We don't want to have that experience of being eaten alive,

So we freeze.

So we freeze,

We disconnect,

We go numb,

We might have a little bit of an out-of-body dissociation experience,

And then we also shut down.

And so that's less about getting eaten,

But it's more about,

Okay,

I'm not in a safe environment,

And so I can't be in fight-flight 24-7,

So I've got to shut down.

I've got to disconnect.

I've got to disconnect from this need to be safe.

I've got to disconnect from.

.

.

I've got to detach from getting a particular need met,

And so when we go into parasympathetic shutdown,

Everything slows down,

And it's kind of a lack of mobility.

It's not about action.

It's about shutting down,

Slowing down,

And so you can imagine the sympathetic fight-flight if we're stuck there,

Guess what that leads to?

Anxiety,

Right?

Stress,

Maybe even panic.

The freeze or the shutdown,

That looks like depression,

Isolation,

Giving up,

Right?

The third state of the nervous system,

So we've talked about fight-flight as one state,

Shutdown as another,

Freeze and or shutdown as another,

And the third is what we call rest and digest or safe and social.

That's also part of the parasympathetic branch.

Ideally,

We spend a lot of time in that safe and social branch,

But for a lot of us,

That's just not a reality because of how we grew up and who we grew up with and because of life and the things that have happened to us.

Instead of spending most of our time in safe and social and then coming back to fight-flight or shutdown periodically,

But then coming back to safe and social,

That's what we call kind of a regulated nervous system.

So it's not about being in safe and social and staying there 24-7.

That doesn't happen,

But when someone cuts us off in traffic,

Right,

We'll stay with that example,

We go into fight-flight.

First we try to avoid the accident.

Our body kind of tenses up,

We steer away from the danger,

And we try to stay alive,

Right?

The heartbeat speeds up,

The muscles tense,

All of that.

And then when we have successfully avoided the accident,

Maybe we still flip off the person who caused the accident or we yell out the window at someone because we're still in that fight-flight place,

Right?

But after a few minutes,

We're safe.

Everything's okay.

We continue driving and the body starts to relax.

So the heartbeat slows back down,

The lungs start breathing normally again,

The muscles relax,

The tension softens.

So that's what we call coming back to baseline,

Right?

So it's not like we're in safe and social or baseline 24-7.

We get dysregulated.

We go into fight-flight as a necessary response to a stressor,

And then ideally we come back to safe and social.

That's called a regulated nervous system.

Even though there's a bit of dysregulation in there,

Going from safe and social to fight-flight and then back to safe and social,

That's normal and healthy dysregulation because we've made our way back to safe and social.

Unfortunately,

What happens for a lot of us is we stay stuck in that fight-flight.

We don't process that stressor.

We don't come back down to baseline,

And that leads to some problems.

So the same thing with the freeze or the shutdown response.

Yeah,

We go there.

We all have a home and a home away from home in terms of these three states.

So for me,

I'm fortunate,

I'm lucky.

I spend a lot of time in safe and social,

But I definitely drop down into fight-flight.

I can give you an example of that.

When I'm triggered,

I'll drop down into fight-flight.

I have specific triggers that are connected to things in my past.

I mean,

I'll just give you a quick example.

One is when I'm at a restaurant and my food doesn't come,

Once I've ordered it and my food is taking forever,

Especially if my blood sugar is dropping right,

If I'm getting hungry,

I'm getting irritable,

I'm getting frustrated,

That's dropping down that ladder into the sympathetic nervous system that fight-flight plays.

Even if my blood sugar isn't dropping,

When I said it's connected,

This is a trigger for me that's connected to the past.

I can connect it to a time in my life when I was young where I felt a little bit invisible,

Not noticed,

And therefore maybe not acknowledged and not valid.

And so this is a trigger now,

Even if it's not true that no one is acknowledging me,

Even if it's not true that no one is validating me.

If there's even a sense that that might be the case,

Then that's a trigger and my body will kind of start going into this fight-flight place without my awareness or without my control,

Without me even realizing,

Oh,

This is a trigger,

I'm not being noticed,

I'm invisible.

I'm not having that thought,

But the body,

My nervous system is dropping into that fight-flight place,

That sympathetic place,

Because it's connected to this time in my past.

So the point is that we all get dysregulated.

Ideally though,

It's like this up and down wave,

Right?

We regulate,

We dysregulate,

We regulate,

We dysregulate,

But it's all within this very normal range of bandwidth,

Right?

The problem is when we get dysregulated and it spikes way up outside of that normal range,

Maybe that's fight-flight,

And then we stay stuck up there,

And then maybe eventually we'll come back down and then we drop down into freeze or shut down,

And that's below that normal range,

That normal bandwidth.

And so maybe we get stuck down there a little bit and spend some time down there.

So instead of this kind of healthy wave up and down,

It's like these big spikes up and these big drops down.

And that leads,

That's what we mean by dysregulation.

That's a dysregulated nervous system.

So when we shut down,

When we go into isolation,

When we go into depression,

The body,

The body goes there first,

Before the thoughts,

Before the meaning that we're making out of this.

And so that's a transition into what's known as Polyvagal Theory.

And the gist of Polyvagal Theory is it's state before story.

So story follows state.

That means the story that we're making about any given moment,

This person I'm talking to,

The situation I'm in,

The meaning that we're making about this moment,

Happens after the state of the nervous system.

So the state of the nervous system we are in,

In any given moment,

Dictates the story that we tell ourselves about this person I'm talking to,

This relationship I'm in in this moment,

This situation.

And that's fascinating.

We never thought about that before.

So how this happens,

How does this work?

A lot of it has to do with the vagus nerve,

V-A-G-U-S.

And that has the same root of the word vagabond,

Which means to wander or to travel.

And that's exactly what the vagus nerve does.

It's linked to the base of the brain,

That limbic part of our brain that's responsible for fight,

Flight,

Freeze.

And it travels from the base of the brain into the body,

Into all of the vital organs,

Like the heart and the lungs and all the organs responsible for digestion,

The adrenals and the kidneys.

And if this vagus nerve is like a four-lane information highway,

Three of those lanes are sending information from the body to the brain.

These are called afferent neurons with an A.

And only one lane is sending information from the brain to the body.

These are efferent neurons with an E.

And that's amazing.

This helps us understand how the state of the nervous system is connected to the story we tell ourselves and how that story is dependent upon the state of the nervous system.

80% are afferent with an A going from body to brain,

And only 20% are efferent with an E going from brain to body.

So this is huge,

Right?

This is what we mean by state before story.

The state of the body,

If we're relaxed,

If the nervous system is regulated,

If we feel safe,

If the body feels safe,

It sends through those afferent fibers through the vagus nerve,

It sends a message of safety to the brain.

And the story is then one of safety.

It's okay to be here right now.

It's okay to open up to this person.

It's okay to be vulnerable.

However,

If the body senses,

And we'll talk about how the body does this,

How the body senses a lack of safety,

But let's say we're in a situation and the people around us don't feel safe.

Someone's looking at us kind of funny.

Someone's judging us,

Or maybe we sense that someone's judging us,

Or maybe there is a possibility of a lack of physical safety.

Before we even have the type of thought,

Okay,

This might not be safe,

Or I don't feel safe,

Before that thought happens,

Our body has already sensed that,

And it has gone,

It has shifted toward fight flight,

Some tensing of the muscles,

Some elevated heart rate,

Maybe some anxiety,

Maybe this impulse to take some action or to move or to mobilize,

Or maybe shut down,

Disconnect,

Freeze.

And after that happens in the body,

Then the brain and the thoughts and the meaning kick in.

Ah,

This is not safe right now.

I need to get out of here.

Or hmm,

This doesn't feel right.

This person doesn't feel right.

I need to talk to them,

Or I need to maybe get out of here.

And so the way this happens is with neuroception,

And this is the body's threat detector.

So if there's a spectrum of safety versus danger,

On one end it's safety,

And on the other end just a real lack of safety,

And that doesn't have to mean dangerous in the way we usually think of danger,

Like physical danger.

It can just mean it's not safe to be vulnerable right now,

Or it's not safe to open up,

Or it's not safe to share this part of me,

Maybe this part of me that feels confused or scared or angry or sad.

So if the body neurocepts or detects that in this moment,

In this environment,

It's not safe to be authentic,

Or it's just not safe,

Then we will go into one of these three states of the nervous system.

Well,

One of the two states,

Sympathetic,

Fight-flight,

Parasympathetic,

Freeze or shutdown,

Until we can get closer to the parasympathetic,

Safe and social,

However that might look.

So we get a little dysregulated,

And the thoughts then kick in,

State before story.

And so we all have triggers,

I gave you an example of one of mine,

That drop us down this polyvagal ladder,

Right?

So if safe and social is,

Let's say,

Up at the top of the ladder,

Then fight-flight might be lower down on the left side of the ladder,

And shutdown and freeze might be down at the bottom on the right side of the ladder.

And we all have triggers that drop us down,

And we all have glimmers that bring us back up.

So there are a couple of ways.

Actually,

Before I get into how to regulate the nervous system and things we can do to regulate,

Let's give an example of state before story.

So I sometimes share this with clients.

Let's say we're in safe and social,

Okay?

So the nervous system is in that state.

So that means that our breath is normal,

Our heartbeat is normal,

Everything's flowing,

Digestion is fine.

And usually this is a result of,

You know,

We got enough sleep last night,

We got some exercise yesterday,

You know,

We've been eating okay,

We're feeling good about our relationships.

So let's say we wake up,

We got a good night's sleep,

We're looking forward to the day,

We go to Starbucks or the cafe to order our morning coffee,

So we're waiting in line to order,

And then some guy cuts in front of you in line,

Right?

Or maybe he says,

Hey man,

Do you mind if I go ahead of you?

I'm in a hurry.

And so if we're in safe and social,

The story,

That's a state of the nervous system,

And the story is also a safe and social story.

Because a safe and social story is one of connection.

It's one of friendly.

It's one of we're all in this together.

It's one of ease,

Right?

So the meaning that the mind makes of this moment in this situation is,

Yeah man,

No problem,

Go ahead.

I've been in a hurry before,

I know what that's like.

So you let the guy go ahead of you,

It's really no problem.

And you get up there,

Eventually you order your coffee,

You smile at the barista when she hands you your coffee,

You say thank you and you mean it,

And you walk out of there with a smile on your face,

Looking forward to your coffee.

So that's one example of state before story as it relates to the safe and social state.

But what if you're in sympathetic and fight flight?

So last night you didn't get enough sleep,

Or you got in a fight with your partner and you're not feeling good about your relationship.

You didn't exercise,

You haven't exercised recently.

So let's say and something big is coming up today at work that you're not looking forward to.

So you're kind of like charged up a little bit and you're not really feeling good and you're in that sympathetic fight flight place.

And then that guy comes in and he says,

Hey man,

You mind if I cut in front of you?

I'm in a hurry.

The meaning,

The story that you're going to make out of that is dependent on you being in that fight flight place.

And so you're going to have a fight flight story which looks like disconnection.

We're all separate.

Chaos,

Disorder,

Anxiety,

Panic.

And so your reaction might be,

No,

You can't get in front of me.

You can't.

You can't.

Or maybe you let him cut in front of you,

But then you mutter something to yourself or you think to yourself,

I don't believe him,

This asshole.

That's a fight flight story depending on a fight flight state of the nervous system.

And so similarly with the freeze or the shutdown,

That other,

The third state,

Maybe you don't even notice,

Right?

You're just feeling so alone and so disconnected.

You might not even notice that he cut in front of you.

Or if you do notice you don't care,

You just want to give up.

It's like another,

Here's someone else taking advantage of me.

I give up.

I just want to get home and get under the covers and get into bed for four hours or for a week and drink my coffee in bed alone and cry.

Right?

So that's very much a shutdown type of story based on a shutdown type of state.

Okay.

Glad you're still with me.

So let's talk about how to regulate once we get dysregulated.

There's self-regulation and co-regulation.

Self-regulation.

That means things we can do on our own.

So yeah,

We can go out and take a walk.

We can go out and connect with nature.

We can get a massage.

We can eat our favorite meal.

We can gargle.

When you gargle,

That activates the vagus nerve.

That strengthens your vagal tone.

Music can help.

So these are all kind of activity types of ways we can self-regulate.

But there's also the somatic.

And this is maybe the most important.

The body awareness practices.

Like grounding.

You know,

Noticing gravity.

Actually feeling the weight of your feet on the ground.

The sensations of your butt and the chair making contact.

The sensation of your glasses touching the bridge of your nose and resting on your ears.

This is all gravity doing what gravity does.

The sensation of the cloth of your clothing touching your skin.

So aiming your awareness toward that grounding.

Any sensation that is a result of gravity,

Basically.

And sustaining your awareness.

Keeping your awareness there.

That's good for the nervous system.

The nervous system likes present moment awareness.

Another way is orienting.

You know,

Five things I can see.

So looking around and really identifying the things in the room that you can see.

A red motorbike helmet.

Reading glasses.

A green plant.

A blue ball cap.

Two small books and one big book.

So that's five things you can see.

Four things you can touch.

Feel the sensation.

I'm touching the smooth,

The smooth texture of my computer.

The cloth of the sofa.

The soft cloth.

Pay attention to the sensation.

The four things you can touch.

Three things you can hear.

The air conditioner.

The humming of the air conditioner.

Some kids playing outside.

Maybe some traffic noises.

Two things you can smell.

And one thing you can taste.

So these are examples of self,

Sorry,

These are examples of orienting,

Which is another facet of self-regulation.

And then breathing,

Right?

Especially long exhales.

When we really exaggerate and lengthen those exhales,

Really exaggerate long,

Slow exhales.

That's good for the nervous system.

You're shifting out of sympathetic fight flight and into parasympathetic,

Safe and social.

You're sending messages from the brain,

From the body to the brain that everything's okay because we don't breathe like that if everything's not okay,

If we really need to be in fight flight.

Don't underestimate the power of breathing and paying attention to long exaggerated exhales,

Which actually slow down the heart rate a little bit.

Inhales speed it up,

Exhales slow it down.

So at least match,

If you do take a deep breath on the inhale,

At least match the length of that breath or make it even longer on the exhale.

So if the inhale is a count of four,

The exhale should be at least the count of four.

Maybe even a count of six or eight.

These are some brief examples of self-regulation.

Now we can also co-regulate.

That means using another being,

Even if it's a pet,

Petting a cat,

Petting a dog.

The nervous system likes that.

Smiles and meaningful conversation with another person.

That's co-regulation.

Eye contact.

We get co-regulated when the system senses safety.

So when the mother is making eye contact with the infant,

With the little baby,

Looking at the baby and using this full range of vocal prosody,

Meaning the highs and the lows,

The highs and the lows in terms of how we talk to someone,

That's another way we co-regulate.

That full range of vocal prosody that the infant feels very safe and soothed with the smiling,

With the eye contact,

With that full range of vocal prosody.

Now if the father walks in and looks away and doesn't make eye contact and talks in a really low monotone voice like this,

Does that baby feel safe?

Not so much.

So we know that meaningful conversations,

Vocal prosody,

Smiles,

Eye contact,

These are all ways that we co-regulate.

Even if you're at the restaurant and the waitress comes up to you and she looks at you and she says,

How are you doing today sweetheart?

And you can tell she really means it,

Right?

The body,

The neuroception there is this is co-regulation and safety.

And so the story is it's safe,

It's safe to be with this person,

It's safe to talk to this person,

This person is safe,

Right?

That's the story that follows the state.

So this was a quick rundown.

There's a lot more to it than this,

But this just gives you a little brief idea of why the nervous system is so important,

How the nervous system impacts our mental health,

State before story,

How the nervous system gets triggered.

Without our awareness,

We get triggered and we drop down that polyvagal ladder,

We go from safe and social into fight flight and maybe even into freeze and the shutdown.

And if we don't have the tools to regulate with self-regulation or co-regulation so that we can come back up to safe and social,

Then we get stuck in these other states of the nervous system and that leads to problems,

Anxiety,

Depression,

Even physical illness.

So getting familiar with your nervous system,

With what we call your stress physiology,

That means the beach balls in your swimming pool and how to work with those,

That's vital.

That's why I'm putting this as number one in the,

It's the number one module.

This is super,

Super,

Super important.

And if you are a therapist or your doctor is not talking to you about your nervous system and your nervous system health,

Then you might want to bring it up to them because we now know that this is a huge piece of the mental health puzzle.

All right.

That's going to wrap it up for this one,

Everyone.

So excited to share this with you.

If you want to learn more about this,

You know how to contact me,

Shoot me an email,

Sign up for the newsletter at the bottom of the page.

We're going to have a lot more content coming out about this because it's so important.

So thanks again.

This is Lunch Break Therapy,

The Nervous System Module.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Talk to you soon.

Thanks for watching.