personal growth
REWIRING YOUR BRAIN ONE CHOICE AT A TIME b y D r. J e n n i e W a r d
The amount of stress in the world has increased dramatically in the past year. COVID-19 has disrupted our ability to connect with others, our ways of unwinding and releasing stress, our financial security and safety around our health. Our bodies and our minds could benefit from a little TLC right now. One way of supporting yourself is to learn more about your nervous system and how it responds to stress. Based on polyvagal theory, there are three states of our nervous system that can help us understand the impact of COVID-19 and other stress.
Nervous System States The sympathetic state is when we’re in fight or flight mode. We feel overly anxious and have too much adrenaline and cortisol coursing through our body. In this state, most things seem like a threat. COVID-19 has resulted in many of us being in this state far too often. Thoughts like “they should be wearing a mask” or “the government is failing us” or “why are they travelling?” can all get our sympathetic state activated. The dorsal vagal state is where we’re feeling frozen, numb, collapsed or exhausted. It can feel like there’s just not enough energy to power you through the day. This can go along with a sense of sadness or a “blank” feeling. Often, we get into the dorsal vagal when we’ve maxed
22
|
out on the sympathetic state. Have you experienced this during COVID-19? Most people have been in the dorsal state more than usual. The ventral vagal state is when we feel secure, comfortable and content. When we’re in our ventral state, we feel connected to those around us and have a sense of safety that allows us to move through our life easily. . Ultimately, we want to train our body and mind to “find our way home” to ventral vagal.
The Way Home It’s important to recognize, however, that it’s not realistic or even desirable to be in ventral all the time. We wouldn’t want to feel relaxed and happy when there’s an emergency situation that you need to deal with right now, a tragic world event or when a loved one has died. It’s natural, and helpful, that we feel stressed, a surge of energy or a sensation of sadness and loss when these types of events occur. A wonderful life is characterized by a continual flow of ups and downs. If we never experienced sympathetic or dorsal vagal, we wouldn’t know the true joy of ventral. It would be like reading a book with absolutely no conflict or difficulty- where everything just works out again and again. It’s actually quite flat and boring.
