Your nervous system may play a more important role than you realize.
Have you ever been to an amusement park and experienced butterflies in your stomach and felt your heart racing when sitting at the top of a rollercoaster waiting to make its descent? That feeling may not be dramatically different from standing in front of a large audience ready to give a presentation (or whatever might feel scary to you), but the context is different, and your interpretation of these signals likely takes on a very different meaning (in this case, excitement versus anxiety).
Our bodies and nervous systems are sending us signals all the time, often outside of our awareness, and we create narratives to interpret and make sense of these signals.
If we look beneath the hood, our brains are constantly scanning our environment for cues of threat and danger, or for cues of safety. When we perceive a threat (which could be an audience full of people who we worry might judge us, an angry tone from a loved one, or people not paying attention to us at a social gathering), our nervous system responds by trying to protect us. Our sympathetic nervous system (running on old survival programming from our “Stone Age” days) kicks in to increase our heart rate, get blood pumping to our muscles, and release hormones that prepare us to fight the predator (e.g, saber tooth tiger) or run away to safety. Sometimes, when these parts of our brain perceive increased “danger” and overwhelming threat, a different part of our nervous system (the dorsal vagal branch of our parasympathetic nervous system) takes over and immobilizes us like an animal playing dead (which, in our modern lives might look more like feeling stuck, shutting down, isolating, and withdrawing). We then interpret what is happening in our body by creating a story about it.
The challenge of this is sometimes our stories can be inaccurate and unhelpful, and yet we can get locked into them and take them as truth.
Additionally, our stories can further shape the physiological changes in our bodies. For example, we might criticize and beat ourselves up for feeling a certain way: “What’s wrong with me that I’m so anxious about going on this date?” “What’s wrong with me that I’m feeling so stuck and can’t take action on this thing that I know I need to do?” This internal criticism becomes another threat that further activates our stress response.
Understanding the role of our nervous system in trying to protect us when we perceive “threats” (especially when they are not real physical threats) can help us to reshape our stories to be more accurate and helpful.
Try This
The next time you are feeling anxious, angry, down, or stuck, try these four steps:
- Be curious about the story you are telling yourself. Is it fact? (Hint, usually not).
- Reinterpret the signals you are experiencing in your body by understanding that this is just a reflexive response of your nervous system trying to protect you. Thank it for trying to help you. What changes when you do that? (For one, this can help take the intensity out of what you are experiencing and remove blame, shame, or self-criticism).
- Reappraise your environment to see if you can find cues of safety present. Help your nervous system understand this is not a true threat. One way you might do this is by connecting with something that you care about in the context you’re in. When we can activate our neural circuits of care, we turn on a different part of the brain that can help to dial down our threat response.
- Choose one small action step that moves you in the direction of well-being.
Examples
Situation 1: You are at a social gathering and feeling ignored.
Your story: I’m not an interesting person. No one likes me. I may as well leave.
Using the four steps: My nervous system is feeling threatened because no one is talking to me, and everyone’s head is turned away from me. It’s very possible people are just caught up in their own conversations and aren’t noticing me here. I came here because I care about having interesting conversations and meeting new people. I can strike up one conversation and see how it goes.
Situation 2: Being in front of an audience ready to speak and feeling anxious.
Your story: I’m so anxious to give this presentation. How am I going to possibly pull this off? What if I make a fool of myself?
Using the four steps: This is just my nervous system trying to protect me because I’m in front of a bunch of unfamiliar people. But as far as I can tell, there are no real tigers out there.
Ah, there is a friendly face. I’m going to remind myself that these people are here because they are interested in learning more. I care about this topic. If I can reach just one or two people, this will have been worth it. I can use this mobilized energy in my body to fuel me.
Situation 3: You’re in an argument with your partner and feeling very angry.
Your story: I can’t believe he said that. He never listens to me; he doesn’t care about me.
Using the four steps: My nervous system is reacting here to his angry tone and throwing me into a protective fight reaction. I need to walk away and take a few deep breaths to calm my body. I care about my partner’s well-being and about not saying something I’ll regret. He is feeling threatened too and overwhelmed with work stress.
Situation 4: You are procrastinating on an important project.
Your Story: I’m such a loser that I keep putting things off and can’t get this paper done.
Using the four steps: Wait, this is just feeling daunting to my nervous system and putting me in a shutdown/freeze mode as a way of trying to protect me. Thanks, nervous system for trying to help, but I’ve got this. I’ve handled plenty of things like this before.
It’s too overwhelming (for my nervous system) to think about taking on this whole project but writing the introductory paragraph doesn’t feel so bad. I can handle that. I care about finishing this project and contributing to my team. I also care about my own well-being and know that this will help me feel great relief to take a small step forward.
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This article was originally published on Psychology Today.
