Welcome beautiful soul! I’m so sorry for the pain and trauma you’ve experienced in your life that’s brought you here, but so happy you’re taking the steps to get healed. Darkness, trials, and trauma are parts of life we can’t escape, but YOU are in control of how you navigate them, and more importantly, who you become on the other side of them.

What is the Nervous System?

The nervous system is the body’s command center. If your brain is a computer, the nervous system is the network that sends messages between your brain and the other parts of your body. Along with your brain, the nervous system consists of the spinal cord and nerves. It’s the nervous system’s job to monitor all that goes on inside and outside the body and to decide how to respond in any situation you’re in. The nervous system regulates complicated processes like thoughts and memory and plays an essential role in automatic functions like blushing, sweating, and blinking.

The nervous system governs all the bodily systems. Healing your nervous system is the key to healing your other systems. If you want to heal your immune, digestive, or endocrine system, start with your nervous system. If you want to change your inner world and your emotional experiences of the world around you, start with your nervous system. If you want to better your mental and emotional health, you guessed it, start with your nervous system. Healing your nervous system will change your life!

Dr. Stephen Porges coined the term neuroception which describes how the nervous system automatically detects and responds to environmental cues. Your nervous system constantly scans the environment, picking up signals from facial expressions, voice tone, body language, and the energy around you to determine whether a situation is safe or dangerous. After processing the information, it sends messages to your brain which decides how to react—and you guessed it, trauma and its effects on your brain can cause you to misread those cues.

How to Spot Dysregulation

Dysregulation can make you feel spaced out and numb, or overreactive to anger and fear when something triggers you. It causes an extreme surge of emotion and is often followed by an equally extreme drop to feeling almost nothing. Dysregulation can make you check out at significant moments, causing you to make repeated mistakes and forget important information.

Dysregulation manifests in many ways and can be associated with different conditions like anxiety disorders, PTSD & CPTSD, mood disorders, and personality disorders. It can be the cause of weight problems, chronic pain, immune system disorders, memory problems, learning difficulties, and intense emotions which distort perception and damage relationships.

Some of the common symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system include hypervigilance, hyperarousal, hypoarousal, chronic stress, emotional instability, sleep disturbances, fatigue, desire to isolate and disconnect, self-neglect, poor impulse control, and digestive issues.

Signs you are in a state of dysregulation include feeling spacey or scattered, difficulty concentrating, clumsiness, impaired memory, flat voice or facial expressions, rage leading to loss of control, or numbness in hands, mouth, nose, or feet.

Healing the Nervous System Through Regulation

Regulation is the foundational “R” in what I call, “The 3 R’s of Healing”. Check out this post, The 3 Rs of Healing Trauma, to learn more!

Trauma produces dysregulation because of how the brain responds to the feelings of fear, shame, overwhelm, and helplessness caused by dangerous or stressful experiences, so you must create the opposite experiences for your brain to heal and move into a state of regulation—safe, gentle, calm, supportive, loving.

Endless practices are effective in regulating the nervous system. Things like deep breathing, mindfulness, somatic exercises, calming music, time in nature, and visualizations, to name a few. These are all great, but I can’t stress enough the importance of your approach.

The healing process is often rushed, especially in the early stages of learning and implementing new things—this is when the crucial step of laying a solid foundation can be missed.

Regulation is about much more than a practice, just as trauma is about much more than an experience.

You must be present to create true safety within yourself—within your soul. This requires learning the art of attunement and cultivating daily rhythms of self-love and care. Regulation isn’t about checking practices off your daily to-do list. It’s a mindset shift, and often, a lifestyle change.

Before you begin regulating practices, you can incorporate plenty of simple things into your daily life that will significantly impact your nervous system’s health and help build the strong foundation necessary for a successful healing and transformation journey—soul hacks I like to call them. Soul hacks are simple ways to bring feelings of joy, connection, creativity, safety, playfulness, rest, and relaxation into your daily life.

7 Soul Hacks to Support Nervous System Regulation

1. Cast Your Cares. 1 Peter 5:7 tells you to cast all your cares or anxieties on God because He cares for you. God is the best therapist you could ever hope for, and it doesn’t cost anything but time to cast your cares on Him! Vent. Let it all out. All your fears, all your doubts, all your concerns. Don’t hold anything back. He wants to be the safe place you run to, no matter what you’re feeling.

2. Love On Yourself. Look in the mirror and smile at yourself. Go on. Do it. Marvel at the masterpiece that God created. Say something positive or kind to yourself. Encourage yourself. Be to yourself what you wish others would be. Give yourself a hug. Seriously. Wrap your arms around yourself and speak loving words.

3. Make it Special Because You Matter. Prepare a delicious and nutritious meal or snack for yourself because you matter. Break out the pretty plate or fancy glass because you matter. Buy some flowers or something special because you matter. Have your coffee in a cute mug because you matter. Don’t wait for special occasions to enjoy “extra” things because you matter today and every day.

4. Step Outside. Glorious things happen outside. You can feel the positive effects of the great outdoors in as little as five minutes. Soak up some sun on your skin. Plant your bare feet on the earth—grass, or other natural elements like sand or stone. Take a big breath of fresh air. Find a beautiful bloom and take a whiff—better yet, pick it to put in a vase, and make it special because you matter!

5. Mindfulness Time-Out. Pause for a few minutes and pay attention to something in the room. It can be a possession you’re particularly fond of, or if you’re outside it can be anything that catches your eye. Notice its sensory details—colors, shapes, textures. Notice how it makes you feel when you observe it. Or pick another sense, like touch. Notice what you’re sitting on and what the points of contact on your body feel like using sensory language. Does it feel hard, soft, squishy, warm, cool? Take time out to truly notice and feel.

6. Shake Your Groove Thang. Yep. You guessed it. Crank up the music and … dance. Move your body to the beats. Turn off your thinking brain and follow your body’s lead. Flow. Groove. Smile. Laugh. It’s all good for your nervous system.

7. Gather Glimmers. Most of us have heard of triggers, but glimmers are little treats that don’t get nearly enough press. They are the exact opposite of triggers. Glimmers are the things in everyday life that cause you to feel joy—a lovely dopamine hit. Things that make you smile. Things that warm your heart. Be on the watch for your glimmers in day-to-day life. Take note when something brings you the warm fuzzies and when you notice, enjoy it. Savor it. Be thankful for it.

I hope this list helps you build a firm foundation for your healing journey. For a bonus soul hack, I call “Flood Your Gates with Goodness”, check out this post, 3 Life-Changing Tips for Faith-Based Holistic Trauma Healing.

Check out this post, Soul Trauma: The Heart-Brain Connection, to read about the fascinating connection between the heart and brain.

If you’re interested in learning about the journey that helped me heal from decades of layered trauma, check out this post, 3 Phases of Faith-Based Holistic Trauma Healing.

Click the butterfly to learn more about the Dark Sky Flutterby 3-Phase Faith-Based Holistic Healing & Transformation Journey!

"The breath of the Almighty gives me life!" Job 33:4

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