Your nervous system is talking. Are you listening?
Your body speaks long before your mind catches up. You just need to be brave enough to listen.
The tightness in your stomach, the heaviness in your chest, the sudden irritability, the lack of motivation, the exhaustion for no reason, are all signals from your nervous system. But because they’re subtle, we often ignore them, push through them, or assume they’re “just in our head.”
They’re not.
They’re messages.
The main function of your nervous system is to send messages from different parts of your body to your brain, and from your brain back to your body, to tell it what to do. These messages regulate your thoughts, memory, learning and feelings. You can see it as your body’s own personalized communication network, that shapes how you react to,feel about, and connect with the environment around you. It’s literally responsible for everything, from making sure you breathe and swallow, to whether you feel safe or threatened.
Your nervous system is constantly scanning your environment for safety or danger, comfort or threat. And when something feels off, stress, overstimulation, lack of rest, your body tells you. When regulated, your mind has room to think clearly, feel and connect authentically. But when it is stuck in survival mode, even the best coping strategies can feel impossible.
Here’s how a disregulated nervous system can show up : (Don’t over analyze or start overthinking things about yourself : this information is not meant to replace medical advice).
- A sense of ongoing stress
- Difficulty making decisions
- Overthinking everything
- Difficulty relaxing
- Mood swings
- Trouble sleeping
- Sense of numbness or dissociation
- Lack of motivation
- Procrastination and avoidance
- Poor eating habits (overeating or forgetting to eat)
From The London Psychiatry Centre
A disregulated nervous system, is when the sympathetic and parasympathetic system are out of balance. In simple terms, the sympathetic system prepares you for action when a stimulus in your environment says “danger” (even if danger means giving an important presentation). You’re alert, stressed, activated. Your digestion slows, your breathing changes, your mood drops.
The parasympathetic system downregulates after the stress has passed. It communicates with you, so you can relax and conserve your energy for the next time you experience “danger”. Your body feels safe. Your stomach relaxes, your mood stabilizes, and your breathing deepens. This is where healing, clarity, and emotional balance happen.
Listening to your body is important. It really tells you everything you need to know about yourself. Don’t you have moments when you feel like your heart is going to beat out of your chest? For some people it happens before a big exam, or a presentation, or you have an important game coming. This is completely normal. You’re heart is responding to a message from your nervous system. You’re not “anxious for no reason.” Your body is reacting to something it perceives as important.
Where it can become problematic, is when you start getting triggered more constantly. Your nervous system can’t always tell the difference between a real threat and an emotional one. So things like deadlines, rushing, overthinking and just notifications you receive on your phone can trigger your nervous system. And the more you ignore these signals (your heart beating faster, trouble breathing and even stomach contractions/pain), the louder your body will get : more tension, more bloating, more irritability, more fatigue, etc.
Consultant Psychiatrist, Dr. Agnieszka Klimowicz says “being in fight or flight affects not just the mind but the body. It raises blood pressure and heart rate for example. And long-term, a dysregulated nervous system (being in survival mode) is unhealthy for both the mind and the body.”
Here are a few tips that she gives on how to get out of survival mode :
- Accepting that you are in survival mode : How am I really feeling? What am I struggling with? What do I wish was different?
- Applying self-compassion : It means asking yourself how you’d treat your best friend or your own child if they were feeling this way, and then applying that to yourself.
- Taking care of yourself : Nurturing self-care looks like taking the time to do something each day that feeds your sense of physical and mental wellbeing.
- Build in some structure : Building structure into your life can help create a sense of order and calm.
- Aim for and acknowledge little wins : It can help with gaining confidence and “release an energising dopamine hit from the brain when we achieve them”.
- Trim down the triggers : Identify things in your life that could be triggering stress and try and limit your exposure to them.
- Reach out to people : Extra support and being heard sometimes can remove some tension.
Here is the link for more information : https://www.psychiatrycentre.co.uk/blog/am-i-in-survival-mode-how-to-know-and-what-to-do-about-it/
Your nervous system isn’t dramatic.
It’s honest.
It reflects everything you don’t always have the words for: stress, overstimulation, exhaustion, emotional buildup, unprocessed tension. When you listen to it, you reconnect with yourself. You understand what you need. You feel more grounded, calmer, lighter.
Your body wants to feel safe and your habits are how you tell it that it is.
With sincerity, Camelia.