Tag: parasympathetic nervous system

I once read a story about a woman who adopted a  stray dog that she found wandering the highway. He   was a sweet mutt. He was good with kids, he was  well behaved, and he didn't make messes in the   house. The only downside was that every time  they got into the car he would get worked up   into a tizzy, he would run back and forth across  the back seat frantically panting with anxiety,   and if that wasn't bad enough he would then  throw up all over the back seat. This happened   every time they got into the car. Now you can  imagine the dog owner was about at her wit's end.    In desperation she decided to take  the dog to a trainer and ask for help.    The trainer taught the woman to teach the dog to  be calm by having the dog lay down in the car.

She   explained that when the dog's body is in a calm  position it sends messages to the brain that he's   safe and triggers him to relax. The woman started  working with the dog every day putting him in the   car, gently making him lay down, and before long  he stopped throwing up in her car. Problem solved.   In previous videos in this course we learned  that our emotional reactions are much deeper   than our thoughts, they show up in the body and are  powered by the fight-flight-freeze response in our   limbic system. Now we're going to talk about  how to soothe anxiety in your nervous system   through the skill of self-regulation. Basically  this means calming down your nervous system   and creating the physiological response  of feeling safe when we are actually safe.    This video is sponsored by Take 2 Minutes. Take 2 Minutes is a non-profit dedicated to helping   improve your happiness. They use text messages to  send you a positive message every day and you can   just text them to get sent a custom activity  designed to help improve your mental health.    They have guided meditations, an easy gratitude  journal, and some great resources to help with   anxiety, sleep, and improve your mental health.

  Their service is free. Sign up now. Just go to their   website at take2minutes.org, or text the number on  the screen to start getting positive messages and   activities today. Is it possible to have an anxiety  disorder or ptsd if your body is calm? I've worked   with many professional trauma educators who say  that you cannot have ptsd or anxiety disorders   in a relaxed body. Anxiety and ptsd are the  outward symptoms of having your nervous system   stuck in high alert, when when your amygdala is  sending the message that you're in danger and   it's triggering that fight-flight-freeze response.   So this is why anxiety is something that you feel   in your stomach, or ptsd locks you into hyper  vigilance, you know, jumping at the slightest   threat. This is because your nervous system gets  stuck in that sympathetic response. People often   feel helpless to change their stress response  and it can feel impossible because this   fight-flight-freeze response is an autonomic  reaction, but we have more influence than we   realize.

So for example, when stressed, our muscles  get tense without us consciously thinking about it,   however, we can control our muscles when we think  about it, or when we feel nervous, our breathing   gets shorter and shallower, but if we consciously  take a deep breath, we can slow down our breathing.    These are two autonomic reactions that we can  influence. We can change how stressed our body   feels by doing simple techniques. The coolest  thing about this is not only does your brain   send a message to your body about whether to be  stressed or calm, but your body sends a message   to your brain about whether to be stressed or  whether to be calm. So when we choose to breathe   deeply or slowly, we choose to turn on that  parasympathetic response, which fosters calm.

   So in this video I'm going to teach you a half  dozen ways to regulate your nervous system   and turn on that parasympathetic response. When  you practice this, you can transform your nervous   system from being dominated by the stress response  to being dominated by the rest and digest response.    Now a quick side note, many people are familiar  with relaxation skills. With relaxation skills   we stop doing a task, we step away, and we engage  in an activity that takes a lot of our attention.    So for example, watching tv right? Relaxation skills  really are important, but again they are hard to   practice daily, I mean the healthy ones are hard  to practice daily, obviously watching tv is really   easy, but um they can be a form of avoidance that  leads to problems in the future. So we sometimes   have this idea that if we're working, we also have  to be stressed right? If we're working- we have to   be stressed- these are fused, and that the  only way to be relaxed is to be away from work.    Seeing a situation this way creates a dependence  on avoidance and if you remember back in section   4, avoidance makes us anxious.

When we think of  situations as the cause of our stress, we create   helplessness around our stress levels. So if you  have the belief that 'I'm stressed because of my   job', then you may feel like the only way to escape  that stress is to quit your job or just grate your   way through it. Now there's another way to think  and act, we can train our minds and our bodies   to separate the situation from the response. So let  me give you an example, if instead you recognize-   'I'm stressed because I constantly believe that I'm  in danger when I get feedback at my job', this can   help you reduce that stress response at work. Now  we're going to talk a lot more about this, this way   we think about danger, in the sections on Perceived  Danger and Creating Safety, but when we acknowledge   that it's the belief that we're in danger, when  we're actually safe, that's making us anxious, then   that opens up a little space to change how you see  your job.

So if you have a massive stress response   in the face of your job evaluation, you could  change your thinking by reminding yourself-   'this is not a threat to my physical safety,  I don't need to fight off a tiger right now,   I'm safe.' So in this way, relaxation skills can  sometimes backfire, they're helpful and important,   but self-regulation skills are things we can  do while we're still at work and while we're   changing our thinking right? Unlike relaxation  skills, self-regulation skills are things we do   while performing a task to keep our nervous system  balanced. We can practice them throughout the day   and while doing almost any activity. They keep our  nervous system calm while active, and they decrease   stress and exhaustion. So basically the goal of  self-regulation is to pair the type of thinking   that says 'I am safe right now', with a relaxed  body which keeps us calm, clear-headed, and focused.    So when we're calm, we're better able to make  value-based decisions instead of being reactive,   and practicing this creates relaxed vigilance.

Let  me tell you a story about how I learned this right.    I used to work at a treatment center for teenage  girls. I really liked the job, it was very rewarding,   but for me it was also really stressful. Each of  these girls faced many challenges and I cared a   lot about them. I always wanted to do my very best  to help them. One of the most stressful parts of my   job was parent weekends, when the parents of these  girls would fly out and visit for three days and   we would cram as many individual family and group  therapy sessions into the weekend as was humanly   possible.

For my first two years working there  these weekends were times where at work I felt   like I was sprinting right, I didn't sleep well, I  was high strung, I was stressed out, I was trying to   almost frantically cram as much intensity into  my day as possible. I didn't know any other   way. I thought that in order to perform under  pressure, I had to be worked up and wound tight.    That if I cared about my work it was natural  that I was going to be stressed and that the only   alternative was to choose a job that was boring or  not important.

I really didn't know any other way.    So I just kept going through this like stress  and exhaustion cycle. Then one January, I attended   a conference on treating trauma that changed my  perspective. Using many of the activities that I'm   going to teach you in this chapter, the facilitator  trained us to foster a calm body while engaging   in an intense activity.

As I practiced these  skills, I developed the ability to facilitate   a parent weekend without having to be completely  stressed out. I still cared, I still brought my   A-game, and I was excited to be there, and we  still did a million sessions in a weekend,   but by monitoring and relaxing my body's stress  response, I was able to stay more regulated in   my body, I was able to think more clearly, and I was  able to go home at the end of the day feeling more   energetic and less exhausted. It was still hard  work, but it became enjoyable and sustainable again.

   The ability to be busy, engaged, even vigilant,  without our nervous system freaking out, is a   skill that can be learned. Eric Gentry, who trained  me in this, he trains ER doctors and Policemen and   Special Ops and Soldiers with ptsd, and he teaches  them how to be active, how to actually create   safety, this experience, this felt sense of safety,  even in genuinely life-threatening experiences.    How to do it without being  dominated by the stress response?    We create this state by pairing the belief that  we're safe- 'okay, I know that no one is killing me   right now', with mindful awareness and physical  self-regulation, and when we do this we perform   the same tasks that we previously found to be you  know, exhausting and stressful, we do this instead   while keeping a calm body.

Now in a previous video  I taught you four skills that send a message from   your body to your brain to calm down. They are deep  belly breathing, the valsalva maneuver, peripheral   vision, softening your gaze, and the yawn. And in  my last video I taught you the shake it off skill.    Many of these are simple things you can do  throughout your day to regulate your stress    even when you're facing stressful tasks.

I think  it's pretty cool that your phone or your smart   watch can also remind you throughout the day to  take a deep breath or to pause or to go for a walk.   Now all these skills can help your nervous system  calm down, and it's like they're strengthening your   calm muscle. The more you practice, the better  you'll get at getting calm. Now there are   lots of other activities that help stimulate  the vagus nerve and its calming effects,   so I'm gonna teach you four more right now.   So go ahead and write down your anxiety level   right now on a scale from zero to ten. This  first skill is an interesting one, it's called   the emotional freedom technique or tapping. So  go ahead and just gently tap on your forehead   seven times, and now do that  again right here next to your eye, and then right here under your eye, right here above your lip, below your lip- one two three four  five six seven, your collarbone, right here under your arm, and then right here on the karate chop  area- one two three four five six seven.

   Okay, now that the activity is over, write down your  anxiety level again on a scale from zero to ten.    Now for most people, their  anxiety goes down a little bit.    Now here's the thing about this technique,  there is no scientific evidence to back this up.    Proponents of tapping say that you're doing work  with your energy or your meridians or your chi,   but there's really no research to back this up.   What we do know is that it tends to take the   anxiety level down a notch for most people. In my  opinion, almost anything we can do to get grounded   in the body can help the body remind the brain  that you are safe right now, so that's why I think   this works for some people. Just look around your  room right now, open your eyes, look beyond to the   screen you're looking at right now and just notice  you're safe in this room.

You're okay right now.    This is how we calm the brain and the body.   Okay, number two is a lot more fun. Laughter   triggers that parasympathetic response. Have you  ever noticed how when someone has a near miss,   like they nearly get hit by a car or something,  they have this instinctive laugh? That's the   body's way of relieving that pressure, that built  up fear response. So when you can, take the time to   laugh throughout your day. Another way to do this  is getting upside down, getting inverted right?    So you could do a headstand or you could use  an inversion table. What this does is this sends   blood to the heart, it slows down its beats, and  that can trigger a relaxation response. Another   way to trigger that parasympathetic response is  washing your face in cold water.

This triggers the   dive response which slows heart rate and breathing.   There's a couple of other really good ways to um   foster that balanced nervous system, one of them  is monotasking right? I mean just do one thing   at a time. The reason this is important is because  your brain perceives multitasking as a threat,   so whenever possible just do one thing at a time.   Another thing that's helpful is mindfulness, this   is a big word for saying- be where you're at,  be present doing what you're doing, and that's   because 99.9% of the time, we're actually safe, we're  physically safe.

We're going to talk more about   this in the next video, but we have the perception  of danger when we don't notice where we're at.    Something else that's helpful in triggering  that parasympathetic response is just doing one   slow thing a day, so stop to pet a dog, sit and  drink cold water without doing anything else, just   one slow thing a day. You know what else  is good for the parasympathetic response   sex. Sex takes you through these natural cycles  of the parasympathetic response, and then the   sympathetic response for orgasm, and then the  parasympathetic system rebounds afterwards.   So sex can take you through these healthy cycles  of nervous system activation and relaxation.    If you want to foster a healthy nervous system  it's also important to pay attention to your   biorhythms.

That means eat when you're hungry, sleep  when you're tired, you know exercise when you feel   that need inside of your body. Here's another  really great way to trigger that parasympathetic   response- hug someone you care about. So hugs  send a sense of safety to the brain, which   then releases oxytocin, which lowers blood pressure  and heart rate, and turns down that stress response.    And stretching can also turn down that stress  response, so when we release muscle tension it   sends a message to our brain to calm down.   So go ahead and try one of these right now.

   I'm gonna just do a quick stretch, my shoulders  get really tight, and if I do this little (exhale).. let's do the other arm (slow breaths)- ahh. Now, I hope you're  feeling a little bit better. Please remember   from skill number five that if we try to  force, control, suppress, or avoid our emotions,   these attempts tend to backfire. If you're feeling  anxious and you try to force yourself to calm down,   it can make you feel more anxious. So instead,  practice willingness, allow yourself to feel your   emotions and then expand your awareness to the  calm and content areas that are already in your   body. Gently lean into these sensations of calmness  instead of trying to force your anxiety to go away.

   You should have plenty of opportunities  throughout your day to feel a little tense,   notice it, and actively work to soften while still  doing your activity, your work or whatever it is.    Practice this act of self-regulation every day, it  takes almost no extra time, just a little bit of   awareness. We should be doing self-regulation  every couple of minutes throughout the day.    So this practice of checking in, regulating  your muscles and your response, it just takes   a second or two to do, but if you can  if you do it consistently throughout   your day, this can completely change your  nervous system to be dominated by calm.    In the next video you're going to learn how to  soothe your mind and create that felt sense of   safety. You're going to learn about perceived  danger and actual safety. Thank you for watching   and take care. This video is one skill from my  30 skill course- How To Process Your Emotions,   where I teach 30 of the most essential skills for  resolving depression, anxiety, and improving mental   health. Emotion processing is an essential skill  for working through intense emotions, but most   people have never been taught how to do it.

I'm  putting every single main video lesson on youtube   for the world to access for free. You watching  these videos, sharing them, contributing to my   Patreon, and my sponsors make this possible. If  you would like to access the entire course in   one place, ad free, with its workbook, exercises,  downloads, extra videos, live Q&A's, additional short   readings, and links to extended resources, the link  to buy the course is in the description below. .