Ways To Regulate Your Nervous System

You know the feeling. You go from calm to dysregulated in seconds! Dysregulation is your body’s way of indicating that it’s struggling to maintain your internal states. These parts include your physiological responses, emotions, thoughts, and even your behaviour. You might feel at times like your body shifts into a dysregulated state so quickly, you didn’t see it coming. It might be helpful to begin demystifying ways to regulate your nervous system.

Depending on your experiences, it may not be hard…but it will take practice!

If you’ve had a traumatic experience or you grew up within a chaotic environment, you might find your body gets dysregulated more quickly. There’s noting wrong with you. you’re not broken or flawed. And, what happened to you is not your fault. If your reaction to things – your level of dysregulation – seems higher than others, or than you think it should be, getting curious about the why can be helpful.

Yet, regulating your nervous system can feel more important, initially.

When you feel emotionally dysregulated you likely notice big emotions. Your emotions might be intensely overwhelming. You could notice even if you’re anticipating something stressful, you react emotionally. Perceived rejection is another experience clients will often share as one that leads to dysregulation.

Emotional dysregulation doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you, but it might sometimes leave you feeling embarrassed.

If that senes of embarrassment is familiar to you, you aren’t stuck here forever. Together, we can support your experience to a more positive one. When you have a sense of agency, you’ll feel more grounded and able to navigate the intensity of dysregulation.

From a scientific perspective, your vagus nerve is at play. The vagus nerve is one of the nerves that run from your brain to your body, via your spine. It is very involved in supporting the calming part of your nervous system which is known as the rest and digest part. It’s also known as the parasympathetic nervous system. (It’s sort of the opposite to the fight/flight part.) When your body doesn’t feel safe, often due to past adverse experiences, it sends a message to your brain letting it know. When the brain receives information, it decides what it needs to do to help keep you feeling safe. When your body is experiencing more of a stress response which could include things like an elevated heart rate for example, the vagus nerve helps your brain with regulating. When a stimulus (or a trigger) is too extreme, your body goes into fight or flight.

Your vagus nerve helps to slow down your breathing, thus your heartbeat, leaving you more regulated.

There are ways you can support your emotional regulation and the function of your vagus nerve. Breathwork is one excellent and useful took to support how well your vagus nerve works. Slow, controlled breathing right down into your diagphram is a powerful way to support your nervous system. When your lower abdomen pushes out, you’re getting oxygen in the right way and place.

Another approach and one I use often with clients is a body grounding practice. This involved noticing the couch under your body, holding the weight of yourself. Noticing what it is like to have your back supported by the couch. Next, we will spend a few moments breathing in and breathing out, noticing how it feels to have the full weight of your feet held by the ground beneath you.

I might ask you to drop your shoulders, wiggle your toes, and let your tongue fall from the roof of your mouth.

These are all small but significant ways to signal to your body and brain, that you are safe. When you sense safety, you will be more regulated. If you can practice daily, I imagine you’ll begin to notice a few things. The first is that you’ll feel more regulated. The second is that you may begin to feel you have a little more agency than you did before. Feeling like you have some influence in your own mental and emotional well-being feels so good. And finally, you’ll have a familiar tool to grab when you notice your heart rate increase, your stomach turn, your thoughts spin, or a big emotion. It will feel good to have some resources to use.

If you’d like to navigate and heal from your traumatic experiences, I invite you to reach out. Nervous system regulation is one area I support clients with. I offer in-person appointments in Langley and online appointments anywhere in BC. Please reach out and book your appointment!