How we can Yes, And our Nervous System…

There’s a lot about our nervous systems out there. Go on any social media app, click on any article, podcast, or even just in conversation with friends, it won’t take long before we hear some nervous system speak. To “calm, reset, or regulate our nervous system, complete the cycle.”

Our nervous system is a way of understanding our internal experience. For a lot of us, nervous system speak is the first time we’ve been able to make sense of all that’s going on inside! Powerful stuff! And at the same time, there’s a trend to overlay every single aspect of our internal experience onto our nervous systems. So much so that soothing our nervous system has become the answer to every problem we face, every conflict we encounter, every discomfort we feel.

With so much nervous system speak out there, let’s go back to some basics.

What is the nervous system?

Our nervous system is essentially a command and data center. Structurally, it involves our brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. Our nerves send info up to our brain and our brain sends messages back down. Some of those messages include to blink, blush, sweat, run, sleep, eat, increase our heartbeat…

The nervous system does a lot! Yet, nine times out of ten, when we are referring to it (especially on social media), we’re only talking about one part of it: our stress response cycle.

In brief, our stress response cycle (or stress/relaxation cycle) is our alarm/safety system. When we perceive a threat in our environment (internal or external), our nervous system activates in order to protect us and meet that threat. These alarms are our stress responses (fight, flight, freeze, appease, tend and befriend, etc).

When we perceive the threat is over, the alarm winds down and safety mode turns back on. Our nervous system settles, we return to our baseline where we feel safe, rest, digest, and connect. “Regulate,” “reset,” “calm our nervous system” as well as “complete the cycle” are all different ways of describing this return to safety mode.

And this is truly a cycle, it’s our how nervous system is built. We are not meant to be stressed all the time just like we are not meant to be connected and calm all of the time. In fact, a regulated nervous system isn’t a calm nervous system, but rather one that can move through the stress response cycle with ease and agency.

So if it’s cyclical, why are we always told to “complete the cycle?”

Well, stress is a disconnector. When we are stressed out, we don’t feel like ourselves. As artists, it’s really hard to do our best work from this place. And the longer we leave our alarm system on, the more sensitive it becomes, and the harder it can be to turn it off, leading to some nasty health outcomes, chronic stress, and even burnout.

This is when boundaries start to break down, when every conflict or discomfort feels life threatening, when we can’t differentiate between self and character, when we take that bad audition home with us. We can get stuck in a stress response. Completing the cycle can help us get unstuck and turn off our alarm system when we don’t need it. This helps us to feel more connected and to leave work at work.

Not only do we feel more like ourselves, safe mode is where healing and recovery happens. When we cheat our rest days after an intense workout, we feel it! Same with us and our nervous systems, we need time in safe mode to recover. Sometimes this means a full vacation and other times, it’s lots of small grounding practices recovering as we go. Both strategies achieve the same goal and both can help reverse the effects of leaving our alarm system on for too long.

Plus we do more exciting work! When we create from safe (or safer) mode, we take artistic risks, have more freedom in our craft, and feel a lot more joy. It is so much more artistically fulfilling to create from a place of relative safety.

So what happens when we can’t complete the cycle? What if we’ve tried all the nervous system tips, tricks, and tools and… no safe mode?

There are a lot of reasons why we can’t complete the cycle. Some to do with our nervous system and some nothing to do with our nervous system. One possibility is that we’re trying to turn on safe mode when we are in an unsafe or high stress environment. We cannot complete the cycle when we are still under threat!

Forcing ourselves to “complete the cycle” in those cases is more about exerting control than accessing safety. We might be using tools not as a way to cope or move through stress, but to avoid conflict and stress altogether (which is a sneaky flight response). And then when our nervous systems don’t fall in line or feel safe, we jump on that shame and blame spiral.

We think, if these tools aren’t working, then “there must be something wrong with me, with my nervous system.” Turns out there’s nothing wrong with the tool or with us, we’re just setting super high expectations for ourselves to not feel stress in stressful situations!

What if we managed our expectations based on what’s going on instead? At that big final callback, we’re probably going to have some nervous system activation. That’s normal! If we learn to work with our responses, rather than muscling through them, we won’t need to regulate them away entirely. Plus, we don’t need to complete the cycle in order to do our best work!

In fact, when our alarm system is on, smaller cues of safety might be all we need to get us unstuck. That step into the room, that release of our diaphragm, feeling our feet on the floor. That tiny cue of settling might be all we need to reconnect us to our material, our bodies, and ourselves.

And when we count those small shifts as wins, they can have a cascading effect; once we notice one shift, that enables us to clock the next one, and the next one... These add up over time and will eventually give us enough space to complete the cycle when it is safe to do so.

And finally, what if it’s not our nervous system?

We’ve got a lot going on inside! When we attribute every sensation, conflict, or discomfort as a problem our nervous system can solve, we run the risk of missing other factors that may be contributing to our stress and our wellbeing. Our nervous system can’t solve an infection, a chronic illness or condition, an issue with our environment (like poor air quality), systemic oppression, or even just having to go to the bathroom!

All of these factors (and more) can make our alarm system more sensitive and impact our ability to complete the cycle. And although settling our nervous system won’t solve these issues on their own, it may help decrease some of their symptoms, giving us enough space to seek other interventions.

So we’re going to “yes, and” this.

Yes, complete the cycle and understand that not everything is our nervous system alone. Yes, let’s complete the cycle and decrease our shame around having stress responses in stressful situations. Yes, complete the cycle and count those small shifts, work with our responses, cherish our recovery time…

The more we learn about our internal experience, the more we learn about ourselves and all the things that make us complex and nuanced humans.

Complexity and nuance that can supercharge our storytelling.