How To Soothe A Jangling Nervous System (without medication)
For many years, I worked with people who were experiencing anxiety, panic attacks and stress.
For many, living with chronic, ongoing anxiety can best be described as living with a jangling nervous system. The flight or fight system had been activated, usually since childhood and it has become the ‘normal’ state that the body is used to.
Panic attacks and periods of acute anxiety were a heightened arousal of the same system, but even when those passed, the body would settle back down to a higher than natural state of alertness.
And then, because the mind thinks that stability can be found in the comfort zone of the usual, constant drama is created in the outside world order to keep the system revved up, speedy and familiarly stressed.
That might play out as creating fights with loved ones, frightening behaviour seen in our children, a business created full of social media pings and full inboxes, a love life that’s falling to pieces, money worries, cars breaking down, relatives falling ill or simply running late to an important appointment.
Three weeks of a quiet life then BAM - up comes the drama again.
All driven by a nervous system that has forgotten (or has never known) what it means to be safe so recreates fear in itself and then splats it all out all over the world as a way of proving its theory that life has it in for us, so best we don’t ever let down our guard.
You could turn to medication to dull the jangling nervous system. Or wine. Or exercise, Netflix or cake. Millions do. But there is another way.
Four things for us then here:
To realise this is even happening. Like a fish in water, it’s impossible to have an objective take on our own internal weather state. When it’s cloudy every day, cloudy is just normal, right? The way you know it’s happening is that constant drama keeps on showing up in your life. And when you look back chances are you can see the child walking on eggshells, when these patterns were formed.
Next, watch yourself choosing and creating the revved-up system. As I write this, my daughter asked me for something to which I said no. I could have said yes. But ‘no’ came out of my mouth and there is no doubt an argument and electricity firing through both our systems will now take place. There’s no one at fault here, just a whole bunch of habit and conditioning making that particular choice. Just observe.
Take yourself somewhere quiet, take out your journal and make a note of all the ways you are doing this.
Watch those things start to change. It might be that you notice yourself making changes in your work in a way that honours the nervous system. Coming off social media. Leaving your phone in a different room. Saying yes where you might before have said no. Saying no where before you might have said yes. Exchanging aerobic classes for yoga. Reducing your alcohol intake so the body can sleep at night. Different choices are simply made in the light of this awareness. And the nervous system (and scared child within every one of us that’s been creating all this drama) are finally allowed to heal.
Nicola x
