Signs your Nervous System is Dysregulated

We have a very protective body. 

Our body moves through the world in a state of processing input, trying to determine if what we are experiencing is safe or a threat.  I remember when my daughter was one year old and beginning to walk with no real sense of cause and effect.  It was actually quite terrifying.  She would have walked off a ledge if I had let her.  I remember one time she tried to pull on a tablecloth to get to standing and another time the toilet.  Our adult bodies know exactly what happens if you were to pull a tablecloth from underneath it and we don’t want to imagine what happens if we touch all over the toilet.  Our nervous system is stellar at protecting us. But as with everything in this world, there is a complexity to living in our bodies.  

Our body is meant to move between a state of protectiveness and a state of settledness.  I think back to when my first child was one and was diagnosed with a peanut allergy and I was told to remain hypervigilant.  I was already so aware of her fragility and saw the threats around every corner, but after that diagnosis it was like my body got stuck in the threat mode and had a hard time returning to settled. The threats seemed to outweigh the safety in my nervous system. 

Do you notice this happening to you?  Getting stuck in a protective posture and having a hard time experiencing a sense of being present, settled, or feeling peace?

In our helping roles, we try to get curious about what someone is carrying in their body.  What stressors have they experienced lately?  What do their relationships look like today?  Are there experiences in their story that contribute to their body needing to be tipped protectively?  Similar to when I was asked to be hypervigilant by the doctor, did something come along in their life that convinced their body that it was safer to stay protective all of the time?

When our body is tipped towards threat and away from a sense of safety, we experience dysregulation in our body.  I refer to dysregulation in various ways.  I might call it being activated or triggered.  I also notice it can look more like shutting down or dissociating.  Sometimes I might even call it being “outside of yourself.”  

Here are some things you might not think to look for when it comes to dysregulation in your nervous system: 

Your reaction seems bigger than the situation calls for
You are looping around the “what if” or “if only” in your thoughts
You can’t imagine a way things could be different
It’s hard to feel present
Your brain keeps jumping to worst case conclusions
It is hard to rest or sleep
You feel overwhelmed more often than not
You find yourself craving a fix like drugs or alcohol 

If you are experiencing any of these signs, these are indicators that you might want to get curious about what your body is carrying.  Your body might need some support.  

Here are some ideas: 

Deep breaths
Movement
Nature
Prayer
Music
Talking to someone

Trying one of these tools with the intention of helping your body can all be a wonderful experiment to learn how your unique body gets back to a state of settled or safe.

I created the course PEACE PRACTICES as a way for us to begin to partner with our body and experiment with ways to help it settle and feel safe.  Our desire for you is that the loving presence of the LORD would become a refuge for you in what feels threatening. This journey often starts a new chapter when we realize what our bodies are experiencing.  We imagine this is a partnership with our thoughts, our disciplines and our body.  

Psalm 46:1 “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.”

Kaitlyn McCarty 
Therapist and Story Practitioner