Dear Nervous System,

Thank you for all the work you do to keep me safe and alive from modern day tigers.  You’ve made me run when I wasn’t safe. Get angry when I needed to defend myself. You’ve put me in freeze mode when I couldn’t run or fight, to get through.  You’ve made me fawn and appease long enough to get to safety. 

Twenty-four hours a day, every day of my life you are on guard, scanning, checking my senses for signs of danger and pattern matching back to what was considered dangerous in the past.  In a flash, you can activate and switch my body out of rest and digest into a fight, flight, freeze or fawn state and get me ready for a huge exercise response.  You take over my brain, change the way I think and act and make me do what is needed to stay alive.

You’re an ancient system living in a different world.  It was a brilliant piece of evolution that humans developed a neo-cortex, a new layer of brain. This brain can imagine an unknown future and bring the past alive.  Humans can invent and create out of thin air because of this modern addition but it is a gift and a curse.

The problem is dear Nervous System, you didn’t get the memo about the new layer.  So, in addition to scanning my internal and external environment for signs of danger, you also scan the theatre of my imagination.  You have no concept of time or the gift of imagination so when you scan the things that I am ruminating on you think these made-up things are happening right now.  You believe what you scan, and you activate the stress response to fight these imaginary tigers.

The thing is I’m safe at home on the sofa or lying in bed and my body and brain have now changed states ready to run or fight.  My thinking becomes black and white, catastrophic, it has a negative bias, as I need to assume the worst to stay alive.  My heart starts beating faster, my breathing changes, my mouth goes dry and my stomach squirms. I might rush to the loo. My hands go clammy. It doesn’t feel good because I’m sitting or lying, and I’m now primed to be running or fighting.

I go into resistance to the feelings of this activation. Now I’m dwelling on the future and fearing the sensations in the body.  It’s a perfect storm.  My main coping mechanism has been avoidance but it could have been numbing, projecting, or distracting.  I avoided putting myself in situations that I knew my nervous system would react. Public speaking felt like a death sentence for me. I knew why, but this didn’t help - you acted as if this was true.  It didn’t feel safe to feel those feelings.  I was in resentment and opposition to you.  I didn’t know how to handle you. I blamed you. I was scared.

I’m so grateful that my years of training and experiences in life have helped me understand how you work and all the endless things that you do to keep me safe.  I know that if I go down a worry rabbit hole you have no choice but to activate – you think I’m in real immediate danger.  So, I take responsibility to come into right relationship with you and become self-aware of the ways that I use my focus of attention.  I make sure that I spend time doing the things that calm and regulate you.  I appreciate everything that you do for me, and I take responsibility for managing you well. I laugh when the ironing board jump scares me in the dark. I love that I can get engrossed in a film and feel it in my body.  I honour my humanness. Thank you, dear Nervous System.

Much love,

Nicola x

If you would like help to regulate your nervous system and learn more about how it works please check out my Nervous System Reset Guided Session. It is just £22 and you get a free 5 day video bonus with it too. https://portal.afreemind.co.uk/.../52bacc4f-739e-4f29...