03 Mar Stuck in Fight-or-Flight? How to Reset Your Nervous System and Reduce Anxiety
If you are a person on-the-go, constantly racing between work and activities may feel like the norm. In addition to work, upsetting news cycles, poor sleep, and lack of self care can make it feel like your body and mind never get a break.
As a therapist who works with capable, high-achieving women, this can feel like an impossible reality that offers no reprieve. In reality, this is our nervous system in constant fight-or-flight activation. The good news is that there are actually ways to change that body state, even for a few moments at a time, so that your body and brain get chances to rest and recover.
What Is The Nervous System?
The nervous system is our brain and body’s safety detector system. It is constantly helping your brain and body scan your environment for cues of threat to safety (both physical and emotional), and cues that indicate safety in order to decide how to respond.
The nervous system developed over the course of human existence, with its primary goal as survival. If it sensed a bear was charging at you, it helped you run or hide without having to slow down and think about what to do.
These days, if you’re living in a metropolitan area like DC, you’re less likely to have a physical threat to safety like a bear, but your brain and body are still scanning your environments for “perceived threats”: meeting a deadline, fitting in to social groups, or trying to get dinner ready for hungry kids. People also identify this as feeling anxious.
The Two Systems: Sympathetic and Parasympathetic
Let’s break it down into the nervous system’s two main categories to understand how it is activated, and how we can signal its calming mechanisms as well.
Sympathetic Nervous System
The sympathetic nervous system is often referred to as “fight or flight response”. It helps us take action to respond to something that feels urgent or threatening.
It does this by increasing cortisol and adrenaline levels to elevate your heart rate, tense your muscle, and sharpen your mind to make quick decisions. This is meant to be temporary in order to fight off or hide from a threat, then return to a calm, regulated state.
But when our nervous systems are constantly activated, say by finishing a deadline then moving on to the next urgent project, the excess of adrenaline and cortisol can lead to fatigue, headaches, digestive problems, and an overall sense of restlessness.
Parasympathetic Nervous System
What goes up, must come down. The parasympathetic nervous system helps bring your body back to a calm state after the fight or flight response has concluded. Often labeled “rest and digest”, the parasympathetic nervous system helps lower your heart rate, slow your breathing, and allow your body and emotions to regulate.
If we do get stuck in a constant loop of fight-or-flight responses, it’s harder to allow the parasympathetic nervous system to kick in and do its job. Luckily, there are ways we can trick our body into telling our mind we are safe to activate this restful state.
Four Ways to Induce Calm
Since the mind and body work together, we can use our body to tell the nervous system (which primarily resides in the brain) that we are physically safe, and can return to normal functioning. Try one of the below exercises and see how you respond.
Lengthen Your Exhale
If we think of our breathing as two sides of the nervous system – inhaling as activating the sympathetic nervous system, and exhaling as the parasympathetic nervous system – it would make sense that we try to extend the exhale for longer. Our body takes a sharp inhale in order to flight or flee. A long exhale? The body cannot sustain releasing a breath if it is trying to take quick actions.
Try this: Breathe in for a count of four, then exhale for a count of six. The focus on the longer exhale both distracts us, and forces our parasympathetic system to come online.
5-4-3-2-1
In the fight-or-flight response, our brain jumps to future worries and worst-case-scenario thinking. This activity keeps our bodies and minds in the here-and-now, noticing our surroundings through our senses, and identifying cues that we are physically safe.
Try this:
→ Identify 5 things you can see in the room.
→ Identify 4 things you can physically touch in the room (and touch them).
→ Identify 3 sounds you can hear right now.
→ Identify 2 odors you can smell (you can pick something up to do this too, like a scented candle).
→ Identify 1 thing you can taste (breath mint, the lingering taste of your morning coffee, etc.).
Humming or Singing
Humming and singing activates the vagus nerve, which is connected to the nervous system. This creates a gentle vibration in your vocal cords that promotes relaxation, reduces stress, and conserves energy.
Butterfly Tap
No client will ever walk away from my office without learning this one. It works by tapping the opposite sides of our body, forcing the left and right brains to work together, which can only happen in the prefrontal cortex. If the prefrontal cortex is working, that means we cannot be using all of our brain energy to power our limbic system.
Try This: Cross your arms in front of your chest so that your right hand is on your left shoulder, and your left hand is on your right shoulder. Then slowly alternate taps on each side (around 1-1.5 seconds between taps). Within a few seconds, you’ll feel your heart rate slow and your focus come back online.
Support For Your Nervous System
You can learn more interventions about the nervous system, or try the ultimate nervous system therapy, EMDR therapy, by contacting me to set up a session. Though we may not be able to fully slow down the activities in your life, we can learn ways to give our nervous system and body a break.
