The nervous system guides our fight or flight response, and understanding the way ours guides us to respond to stress has huge impacts on our overall health. So what is the nervous system, exactly? It’s worth taking a moment to learn more.*
The central nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and spinal cord.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) automatically regulates all the basic functions of our body as well as our survival responses. It has two branches (sympathetic and parasympathetic), and it does all these things on its own, automatically and outside of our conscious awareness. This is pretty cool and useful (your heart just keeps on beating without you telling it to, for example).
This is also why you can’t “make” yourself be more relaxed, or think your way out of situations when you feel triggered. In working with your ANS, we want to focus on feeling safe and taking our time.
The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) helps us rest, unwind, reorganize and regenerate after threat or stress. Some examples of the functions it serves:
Helps us let go of muscle tension
Lowers heart rate and blood pressure
Warms our skin
Aids digestion
Slowing and deepening of breathing
Sends blood to peripheral vessels
Helps immune system function fully
Secretreting bodily fluids (saliva and bile for digestion)
The PNS branch acts like a brake pedal for our nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) gets our whole body ready for action. It regulates arousal and increases activity in times of stress (good or bad stress). It’s active when we are alert, excited or engaged in physical activity. It prepares us to meet emergencies and threat by:
Increasing our heart rate, respiration and blood pressure
Shifting blood away from digestion and to our muscles
Moving blood away from the skin to prepare for potential injury
Dilating pupils
The SNS branch acts like the gas pedal of our nervous system. It gives us energy for any action we plan and helps us prepare for threats.
Ideally our nervous system will move between these two states with ease. Through trauma, however, we can get stuck in one state, or oscillate between the two and that can cause symptoms of dysregulation, which can be unpleasant as well as impact our health negatively. Our nervous system does what it does to keep us safe. Often when we’re feeling symptoms, it's stuck in a pattern that is no longer serving us.
Learning about how the nervous system works and about our personal patterns can support greater regulation and overall health.
Our systems have the capacity to come back into balance. Sometimes we just need a little support to get there. In Somatic Experiencing, we work with your nervous system to release the held trauma and this allows symptoms to reduce.
*The learning in this blog comes from Somatic Experiencing International (traumahealing.org). I am training to become a Somatic Experiencing practitioner, which will allow me to work with clients on nervous system-focused trauma healing. If you’re interested in booking an SE session with me, you can sign up online at a discounted rate while I’m still training.
