What Is the Nervous System?
The nervous system is responsible for sending messages back and forth between your brain and the rest of your body. It is made up of the brain, spinal cord and nerves. It uses cells called neurons to carry message that allow our muscles to move, digestion, breathing, heart beats, and more.
Dysregulated Nervous System
A dysregulated nervous system means that the system is out of balance and cannot effectively respond in stressed environments. The body becomes trapped in a high alert state of fight or flight—anxiety, restlessness, inability to relax. It can also be a state of freeze or shutdown—fatigue, leathery, difficult to engage.
This can stem from a various factors, such as birth trauma, concussions, stress, infections and toxin exposure. They can often be set from childhood or traumatic experiences.
Symptoms
- Mood swings, anxiety, stress, depression, aggression
- Avoidance, over apologizing, people pleasing, feeling insecure
- Headaches, weaker immune system, insomnia,
- Memory problems, difficulty concentrating
How to Regulate
Release stress + Signal Safety + Mobilize energy
- Somatic movement: shaking to release energy (dancing, vibration plate)
- Calm movement: walking, stretching, yoga
- Cold plunge, cold shower, dip face in ice water
- Apply warmth, hot bath, heated or weighted blankets
- Chiropractic adjustment and massage
- Acupuncture and acupressure
- Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) (Brad Yates Tapping on YouTube are my favorite!)
- Breath work: restore control and send signal to brain to disarm stress/emergency bells
- Mediation
- Getting good sleep
- Grounding or walking barefoot
- Go outside and connect with nature
- Journaling or speaking aloud your feelings
- Visualization: image the negative emotions in front of you and make it small; helps you get a hold of out of control emotions
- Humming, gargling, crying
- Gratitude practices and laughter
- Doing art
- Listen to relaxing music/sounds: piano, frequencies, tibetan gongs
- Silence: remove unnecessarily stimuli
- Disconnect from electronics more
- Calm Socialization: connect with a friend or pet you safe feel with
- Physical embrace: hugs, cuddles, gentle tickling
- Eating healthy fats: fats build nerve tissue and hormones
- Magnesium supplement, electrolytes
