How to Regulate a Traumatized Nervous System
Are you constantly reacting more than acting? Do you have multiple addictions? Do you act impulsively, or explode or shut down when emotionally challenging situations arise? Are you afraid to leave your comfort zone? Well, your nervous system has likely been traumatized.
Over the last decade, talking about the nervous system has been a hot topic, and more studies are showing up every day on how the nervous system is working and how to regulate it.
Most people have a traumatized nervous system because we live in a toxic and narcissistic society where values and education are twisted. That’s a fact; of course, not everyone is impacted the same way. Dysregulation varies from light to severe depending on your childhood and your environment.
There is a rise in consciousness that started more than ten years ago, and as we evolve and return to innocence, we are forced to HEAL. To do that, we must calm down and regulate our traumatized nervous system.
In this article, I will share with you a little bit of my journey and how to achieve a more peaceful life. Here is my guide on how to regulate a traumatized nervous system.
What is the Nervous System?
The nervous system is like the motherboard of a computer, it’s the command center. It is at the core of every action, thoughts, feelings, and movement you do. It dictates how you react to any situation, stressful or not stressful.
It is also responsible of many processes like breathing, digestion and heartbeat.
A complex network of information runs through your body, What you experience is conditioned by the nervous system.
Information is received by the nerves that send an electrical signal to and from the organs, the muscles, the cells, and the glands. The nerves get a signal from your external world and interpret it to control your response or to give the appropriate response which is often about safety.
In cooperation with the endocrine system, the nervous system is also responsible for maintaining homeostasis.
Even if there is only one nervous system, it is subdivided into different parts.
The Central Nervous system (CNS) includes the Brain and the spinal cord, its main task is to use your nerves to send messages to your body. And The Peripheral Nervous System which sends signals to and from the CNS and dispatches information to your organs. It is also subdivided into two distinctive parts:
The Somatic Nervous System is responsible for your voluntary movements and actions. And The Autonomic Nervous System is in charge of your automatic actions, the ones that you do without thinking about it. It is divided into two parts that most people know about.
The Sympathetic Nervous System, aka the fight or flight or freeze mode, is the one that is ready for a stressful situation. Most people live in that state without even noticing. Being in that response mode make us age faster, and depletes organs from vital energy.
The Parasympathetic Nervous System is the rest and digest mode. The one we should aim for. It makes us stay calm and relaxed the whole day, keeping our organs energized and our emotions in balance.
This is just a summary of what the nervous system is, a complex process of nerves, glands, organs, and information that impacts everything you do and how you live your life.
What are the Causes of a Traumatized Nervous System?
The nervous system is impacted by stressful situations, be they emotional or physical.
When a child got his emotional need denied or ignored or even mocked, it leads to inner stress that will in time create an inappropriate response to a similar situation. Those responses become a way of surviving.
We then wont learn how to respond properly to our emotional needs, leading to disrupted behaviors, extreme reactions and fear to the external environment and developing addictions as a way to calm down or numb our nerves.
Because we live in an egotistic and narcissistic society, where most values are inverted and everything is designed to put you down in a way, we all grew up being traumatized. Commonly, we have to repress our emotions as a child (but also a lot as an adult) because it seems shameful and we need to obey our dictators. We grew up obeying our parents, then the teachers, then the boss, then the government, each one of them believing they know better what we need and how we should act, feel and behave in life, resulting in the creation of an invalidating environment for most of us.
Most people, aside from those who faced what society recognizes as trauma (rape, physical abuse, war, etc..), will tell you that they don’t have any traumas and that they had a nice and happy childhood, and loving parents. The reality is different though, your brain until the age of 12, is not armed with rational thinking, so any experience even the ones that seemed nice can lead to inner stress because you believed it.
Trauma is not what happened, but what happened INSIDE you.
Your parents may behave nine times out of ten appropriately but you will remember the ones that they don’t. This is how the brain works. Parents repeat what they learned from their parents. They also have to deal with their traumas and lack of emotional support. We live in a perverted society, everyone is trying to survive and please predators. We forget about ourselves and real values to fit into the codes that this twisted society has created.
Let me give you one example to understand how we develop traumas and later on unbalanced behaviors.
Imagine now a child is crying and because of that he got hit by his parents! That’s an extreme response to what seems a reasonable emotional experience we all had. What may happen in the long run, is that you may start to develop some erratic behavior to cope with unwanted emotions.
When you got hit, your nervous system will switch and fire the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight mode (often for a long time or permanently) to prevent any future danger. We will become hyper-vigilant, scanning the environment all the time to anticipate a similar situation we experienced (being hit). We may start to be aggressive with people as a way to protect ourselves or ward off any person that may seem dangerous to us. Or we may develop a fear of people and places because they represent a potential danger. we may have insomnia because our brain believes we are in danger if we sleep (we can’t see the danger coming). There are many ways to cope with the situation.
But because it is tiring to be in a constant state of stress and vigilance, we may start to develop some addictions to calm down our intense emotions and our nerves. Those addictions will then create physical stress for the body because it has to deal with toxic substances.
All in all, living like this is a sure ride to hell and discomfort. Over time the body may start to show symptoms like pain and disease. We often shut down to the point of freezing, paralyzed to take action, lunch a business, or approach someone we like.
That was just one example, I can write a hundred pages of examples. From insignificant situations to negative and toxic situations, those millions of experiences lead you to develop a traumatized nervous system. And we all have.
You may want to read Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal. He is on point with Trauma and how to heal in this toxic culture. You may also watch The Root Cause of Trauma & Why you feel Lost in Life.
To finish this paragraph, physical stress is also a cause of an unregulated nervous system. Our toxic environment, chemtrails and pollution, smoking, processed food, and sugar participate in developing a disrupted nervous system. Every time you eat sugar, your cortisol level rises and signals the brain to fire the fight or flight mode. How many times do we eat sugar in this modern world? Every day for most of us. The body can deal with toxic substances until it can’t, so a poor diet and unhealthy lifestyle will put a lot of stress on our body and nerves.
The real root of the problem is a lack of consciousness and benevolence in society. This twisted illusion of society is working for the devil and he needs to feed on your emotional distress, so everything is created with inverted values. Since most of us have a low level of consciousness (no offense but it is true) and live in spiritual amnesia, we fall into the trap and try to survive in this jungle.
We can retrain our nerves and with time and dedication regulate our traumatized nervous system. In the next paragraph, I will give you some tools to help yourself.
How to Regulate Our Traumatized Nervous System?
Awareness is the first step, start to recognize your patterns, and observe them. We need to reconnect our bodies and our mind.
Feeling is healing.
There are multiple ways to heal and you should find the ones that work for you. First of all, there is no shame in seeking help and starting therapy to support you in the process. However, there are also proven ways to deal with a stressed nervous system. Let me give you some effective tools.
Slow Down and Regulate your Breathe
Breathing is the most fundamental action we do all the time and it’s my number one tool to regulate the nervous system. Every time we experience some stress, our diaphragm absorbs it and over time becomes atrophied, that’s why we shift from deep and slow abdominal breaths to fast and shallow chest breaths.
When we breathe fast, it signals the brain to activate the sympathetic nervous system, to put us on alert. Indeed, when facing a life-threatening situation, breathing starts to fasten. The problem is that we tend to stay in that mode due to the diaphragm being blocked. Therefore it is impossible to calm down and regulate our nerves.
By learning how to breathe slowly and with the belly, we will retrain our nervous system and nerves to calm down, and not have the foot on the accelerator all the time.
Breathing better brings you back into your body and less in your head. We need to heal the body to heal our spirit.
I would suggest avoiding techniques that focus on hyper-ventilation, like the Wim Hof method or Holotropic breathing because they don’t teach you how to down-regulate your nervous system and most people need to down-regulate. Those techniques are good only if you master the subtle art of breathing first.
I’m personally using the Breathing with Bryan method, it makes total sense as it teaches you how to breathe slowly and how to get in touch with yourself. I love it and I’ve been practicing for two months now. My diaphragm is starting to loosen a little bit already and I feel calmer.
You can also read How Breathing Slower Will Reverse Aging and my review of the Breathing with Bryan method.
Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises Method (T.R.E)
Tension & trauma releasing exercises is a powerful and simple method that helps release trauma and tension in the body. It was invented by Dr. David Berceli.
what T.R.E does is activate a natural reflex mechanism of shaking or vibrating that allows the body and muscles to release tension and trauma accumulated over the year, calming down the nervous system.
You can practice it yourself, it is quite easy, and you have a few exercises to do to make the body ready to shake. You are in control and you can decide when you want to end the session.
Every time I gather the courage to do a session (myself), I always feel amazing for two to three weeks. It’s quite incredible, to be honest, and so easy to do. The reason I need courage is that it is quite tiring afterward, you better do it when you don’t have anything to do or before bed. Your body will release a lot of tension and you will feel exhausted in the beginning but after a couple of sessions, your body will adapt. You feel amazing after and that’s all that matters.
Check that video tutorial on how to use T.R.E for a clear understanding of the practice.
T.R.E is, in my opinion, an excellent and safe way to regulate your traumatized nervous system. (and it’s free).
Change Your Environment And Your Lifestyle
Lifestyle and Environment can play a major role in our well-being or can be detrimental to our inner peace.
If you already facing stress and anxiety and have a shaky nervous system, it would be better to avoid living and working in a toxic and stressful environment. I can understand that you may have a good salary and pursuit a successful career but is it worth the price to pay?
You may as well be in a relationship that is toxic and not supportive, one that creates stress and violence both emotionally and physically, but is it worth the price to pay?
Spend time in nature as it is a powerful way to reconnect with your essence and will calm you down. Spend time with animals as well, they are powerful healers.
At the end of the day, you should respect yourself and do whatever is necessary to grow in a loving environment, that respects your emotional needs and your physical integrity.
Start to take care of your diet, we are what we eat.
How do you think your body will cope with poor nutrition and junk food when you are already feeling overwhelmed by your emotions? When you change your diet to a natural and whole food, you will allow your body and emotions to calm down while bringing what the body needs to stay balanced.
We are creatures of habits, and bad habits are usually the ones we use to cope with our emotional stress. That can work for a while, bringing you some illusional peace and relief but at the end of the day, those habits control us, impact our health and maintain the nervous system traumatized.
To learn how to develop and sustain good habits, I suggest you read Atomic Habits by James Clear. Amazing book.
Conclusion
What to say! We are collectively healing the planet and ourselves.
In the last three, or four years, a spiritual war and revolution are taking place. We are forced to HEAL, and that is beautiful. You are not alone on this journey, thanks to many beautiful human beings that dare to face the discomfort of pain and trauma to bring back light and love.
There is no more space for toxicity and narcissism, society as we know is dying slowly and painfully, it’s just a matter of time.
Love is the answer, God is the answer.
