Common Symptoms of Nervous System Dysregulation

Chronic pain, chronic fatigue, digestive issues, immune conditions, cardiovascuar and respiratory issues are some of the most common symptoms of nervous system dysregulation.

Stress responses are only meant to be short lived. Chronic and traumatic stress can cause three patterns of nervous system dysregulation: hyperarousal (you're stuck on high), hypoarousal (you're stuck on low), or you may oscillate between high and low.

If you can trace your symptoms back to being associated with hyperarousal or hypoarousal, you see the role that chronic and traumatic stress plays in understanding, managing and treating physical symptoms. Hyperarousal symptoms could be: tension, pain, fibromyalgia, excessive sweating, racing heart, chronic constipation. They may flare up when you feel anxious, agitated or have difficulty relaxing.

If you associate them with hypoarousal you'll see a different cluster of symptoms, and these could be: numbness, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, gastric reflux, low blood pressure, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), migraines and some cardiac arrhythmias. You may feel flat, depressed and shut down. If you oscillate between hyper- and hypoarousal, you may experience symptoms from both categories.

This wear and tear is known as allostatic load. Dysreguation influences your nervous system to increase muscle tension, which can result in chronic aches and pain In addition, the endocrine and immune responses can amplify pain through a number of mind-body system pathways, such as inflammation. You activate the same network in the brain whether you're experiencing emotional, physical or social pain like rejection, so stress can increase sensitise pain pathways.

Dysregulation impacts the digestive system: anxiety, anger and hyperarousal can increase pain because of the effect it has on the gut motility directly (the movement of food through the digestive tract), and also the hormones released and when you're in survival mode. The vagus nerve is what restores the balance and can reduce this affect. It restores gut motility and regulates the gut microbiome.

It's essential to be thoroughly assessed for these symptoms to rule out any organic issue, AND it is equally important to recognise that these symptoms (sometimes called medically unexplained symptoms) may have a common root as a stress- related disorder of regulation. Hope lies in knowing that these symptoms make sense - you're not being too sensitive and they're not "in your head".

They may be an underlying syndrome that can be effectively treated when dysregulation as the cause is identified. Re-establishing self-regulation through balancing the nervous system and increasing vagal tone can improve many chronic health issues. It gets to the root cause of stress related illnesses, rather than treating the symptoms that continue to arise until the nervous system is balanced.

Wouldn't it be helpful to re-conceptualise what health and illness are to include if your nervous system is regulated? Psychological and physical resilience come as a package. Change the nervous system and you also change the immune, endocrine, musculoskeletal, cardiovascular and digestive systems. You can learn more in the Vagus Nerve Masterclass.