A Healthy Nervous System is Not Always Calm

A healthy nervous system is not always calm. It’s adaptable, flexible and resilient.

A resilient, adaptable and flexible nervous system needs to experience some stress, challenges, adversity and even failure. When you’re pushed outside your comfort zone your nervous system learns to function more effectively under stress, provided it gets to fully recover from the stress activation.

If you experience stress that’s too far outside of your comfort zone, or you over-ride your neurobiological limits, you also move outside your “window of tolerance”.You’ll experience overwhelming anxiety, anger, reactivity and hyper-vigilance. Or, you freeze, withdraw & shut-down. Either way, your resilience is depleted.

Over-riding your neurobiological limits may look like:

• Minimising your stress activation by telling yourself it’s “not that bad”.
• Denying or masking how you feel and telling yourself to “just get on with it”.
• Avoiding situations & stressors
• Suppressing sensations & emotions
• Telling yourself that there’s something wrong with you, when really there’s something wrong with the situation.

This can prevent your nervous system from recovering fully from stress arousal.

Over-riding your neurobiological limits signals to your nervous system to activate and leave stress responses turned on when there may only be a challenge, not a threat. Without true recovery for your nervous system, dysregulation can arise. The vagus nerve is interrupted from regulating your nervous system, your organs and your emotions.

Symptoms of dysregulation can include prolonged anxiety, racing thoughts, overworking, overdoing, starting arguments and an inability to switch off. On the other hand symptoms could include chronic fatigue, procrastination, avoidance, withdrawing, burn-out and a lack of motivation.

Nervous system re-regulation and resilience tools help the nervous system recalibrate and this is especially important following periods of chronic or traumatic stress. Your vagus nerve starts functioning properly and you discharge the stress activation. Dysregualtion makes the nervous system less able to cope with stressors and your comfort zone and window of tolerance can shrink.

With the right tools you can expand your ability to meet challenges and demands, without moving into fight-flight-freeze. You can learn what your neurobiological limits are and honour these. This can get to the heart of dysregulation and stop you swinging up to the high of anxiety and down to the lows of burnout.

Re-regulation of the nervous system lies at the heart of having an adaptable, resilient nervous system, that can respond flexibly in the heat of the moment. The ability to stay regulated means that you can still think clearly ad make good choices that align with your deepest values and what you truly want.