I had the morning off recently I planned to enjoy a slow start to my day - maybe some reading and a dog walk in the park. But I woke up feeling on-edge and anxious, thinking about all the things I should be ticking off my to-do list. I wanted to ease into my morning gently but my nervous system had other ideas! The fight or flight urge to ‘get going’ was strong.

There’s always a message underneath this kind of pull from our nervous system. Our system might fear that if we don’t jump into action we will:

• Fall behind in our work
• Be criticised, blamed or judged
• Let people down
• Miss deadlines or opportunities
• Be forgotten about

So, I’ve learned to listen to the messages from my nervous system. Because if we ignore them or fight against them, we get hijacked by them.

Getting hijacked by my nervous system on my morning off would have looked like frantically working on multiple things all morning, without coming up for air (or even a glass of water). So rather than letting the mobilising energy of my sympathetic nervous system completely take over, I listened to my body and used the energy in my system to be productive rather than frantic: I made a coffee, sat in my favourite spot by the window and chose three things I could tick off my to-do list before lunch.

It wasn’t exactly the relaxing morning I had in mind, but I respected my nervous system’s need to take action and I gently challenged my system to slow down. This is called ‘partnering’ with our nervous system - a technique that comes from Deb Dana, a clinician and specialist in autonomic nervous system regulation. Dana says that finding the right degree of challenge to our nervous system is how we can gently reshape our system to become more flexible and resilient.

It can be frustrating when our survival response gets in the way of what we had intended, but if we can turn towards our nervous system’s messages, we can engage with our responses, rather than get hijacked by them!

Cheers to partnering with our nervous system rather than fighting against it!

If you would like to talk through how therapy could help you live a more satisfied and contented life, or to arrange counselling in Harpenden with me, please get in touch using the form on this website.