What is the nervous system?
The nervous system has had quite a rise in pop-psychology in only the last few years. It seems like all of a sudden, everyone is talking about it. It’s become a buzzword. But is it just a TikTok trend? Or is it the key to unlocking your holistic health and wellness?
I first studied the nervous system in my AP Bio class in high school. As someone who was often feeling “nervous” during adolescence, I wondered - is this where the answers to my problems were hiding? Our text book included nerve function, how chemical receptors in the brain worked, and the way neurons sent lightening-fast signals to other neurons, or “fired”. Kinda cool, but probably wasn’t going to help me with feeling angsty and socially awkward.
But science has come a long way since then. We know a LOT more about how our brains and bodies work, and are beginning to better understand how they work together. So as more people focus on holistic health and the brain-body connection, we’re seeing more attention and visibility for the nervous system. And it does play a major role in the mind-body connection and how we go about living our lives.
The nervous system is the brain-body connection highway.
The nervous system is the brain-body connection highway. It sends super fast signals from the body to the brain, and from the brain to the body through the complicated network of interconnected nerves. You can think of the nervous system as a whole tree that connects the tips of the leaves (in the front of your brain) all the way down to the tiny roots (your fingers and toes).
The main trunk of the nervous system connects the body and brain thru the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the nerve that leaves the base of your skull and travels down the spine, branching out to all of the major organs that control your body’s function and allowing you to feel and sense things.
There are two parts of our nervous system:
The Somatic Nervous System includes the nerves in our muscles and skin, which allows us to move and feel.
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) includes the nerves that go to all of your major internal organs, like your heart, lungs, and intestines.
Most people know that we have nerve endings all over the outside of our body. These allow us to feel sensations that give us input about our environment. We know when something we touch is rough or smooth, for example. This is our somatic nervous system, and we control it consciously through movement. Our somatic nervous system is what allows us to send signals to our muscles to move our bodies. Dancing, for example, is controlled by the somatic nervous system.
But we also have nerves all over the inside of our body, too. The other part of the nervous system is an autonomic, or automatic, nervous system (ANS). That means we don’t have to think about it or consciously control it. This system is set up to help us survive. It controls all of your main bodily functions. Your autonomic nervous system controls heart rate, breathing, digestion, sleep, hormones, metabolism, immune function, and so much more.
Your autonomic nervous system controls heart rate, breathing, digestion, sleep, hormones, metabolism, immune function, and so much more.
The brain and body are constantly sending signals to one another, but most of the signals (up to eighty percent!) move from the body up to the brain.
This is why top-down brain based treatments, such as talk therapy, are often inadequate on their own for achieving holistic wellness. Don’t get me wrong, I think therapy is extremely important. (Everyone should go, IMHO). But it’s also not enough on its own.
Leading trauma experts like Gabor Maté, Peter Levin, Stephen Porges, and Bessel Van der Kolk have paved the way for better understanding the brain-body connection, nervous system, and how healing and holistic wellness must go beyond a focus on only top-down, cognitive therapies.
Everyone’s nervous system has been shaped from an early age by their experiences, memories, and even generational trauma.
Everyone’s nervous system has been shaped from an early age by their experiences, memories, and even generational trauma. (This is why the early years of a child’s development is so crucial for the child’s future).
Sights, sounds, even smells can send us immediately into a threat response. An email from your boss popping into your inbox unexpectedly, or the sound of your baby letting out a cry from their bassinet is enough to send automatic signals to your body that something could be awry. This happens even before our logical brain has the chance to determine whether the perceived threat is a real threat.
The goal is not to always be in a state of calm “rest and digest”. Remember, the threat response is there for a reason: to keep you safe. This means if you see a bear in the woods, your child suddenly runs out into the street, or your working on a tight deadline, your threat response will kick in. And that’s a good thing!
Once we can examine whether this threat is real or perceived, we can then return to a place of safety and calm. If we determine there is no real threat (your boss was congratulating you on a project or your baby is settled), or that the danger is passed, you should return to the calm state. The problem comes when we can’t get out of our stress response, even after the threat has passed.
Prolonged exposure to certain stressors or particularly acute memories of extreme stress can make our nervous system more sensitive and we can get “stuck” in a stress response that doesn’t actually serve us or those around us.
So, what are the different stress responses? I’ll talk about that in my next blog.
