Nervous System Regulation: Five tips to create calm and connection
Would you like to feel more resilient? To feel calmer and more connected? These five strategies will help you harness our understanding of the nervous system to create a greater sense of wellbeing.
Understand Your Window of Tolerance
The Window of Tolerance is a concept coined by the psychiatrist Dan Siegel, which describes a person’s optimal range of physiological arousal. In this state, the autonomic nervous system is in its parasympathetic mode or the “rest and digest” state. When you are in this optimal range, you will feel calm and connected, be able to regulate your emotions, and face life’s challenges without becoming overwhelmed. Physical signs you may be in this regulated, resilient mode include a slower heart rate, steady breathing, lower blood pressure, and a sense of being relaxed yet aware of your surroundings. Trauma and chronic stress can shrink an individual’s Window, leading them to shift into a survival response more often and feel dysregulated more easily.
When our brains sense a real or imagined threat, our nervous system shifts into the sympathetic mode to help us survive; this is also known as the “fight, flight, freeze, fawn or flop” response. Physical signals you are in a “fight or flight” stress response could include faster heart rate, quick and shallow breathing, blood flooding to extremities, and pupils dilating; you could feel energized, anxious, vigilant or even angry. On the other hand, a “freeze, fawn or flop” stress response could feel like fatigue, freezing, numbness or losing track of time and reality.
While sympathetic activation is essential to respond to existentially dangerous situations, it is not as helpful when responding to modern day stressors. They tend to be less life-threatening, longer lasting, and more complex (e.g. being chased by a saber tooth tiger versus paying your mortgage). In order to navigate these contemporary challenges, we need to problem solve, communicate clearly, and utilize logic as well as emotions. We are much more likely to achieve this if we can regulate our nervous system response, and return to our Window of Tolerance.
Learn Mindfulness & Tracking Skills
Knowledge is power, and it’s impossible to build a more resilient and flexible nervous system without understanding the unique signs and signals it is sending. Mindfulness and somatic tracking skills will enable you to have a conversation with your nervous system, ultimately cultivating safety.
What is mindfulness? Simply, mindfulness is the non-judgemental awareness of the present moment. Mindfulness can be practiced in many different ways, from formal meditation to walking in nature. Somatic tracking is a specific mindfulness practice which involves paying close attention to physical sensations in the body. By noticing these sensations without applying meaning or judgment, we can send messages of safety to our nervous system. Tracking our physical response to different situations can also help us build insight into factors which might be contributing to either stress or relaxation. Here is a simple way to practice:
Notice any physical sensations in your body at this moment (e.g. temperature, heaviness or lightness, fizzing, tingling etc).
Notice whether those sensations are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
Shift your attention around your physical body, perhaps finding and pausing with neutral or pleasant sensations.
- Build a Regulation Toolbox
Finding tools to help you regulate your nervous system is a personal process which involves experimentation. Some strategies which could be added to your toolbox include:
Orienting to the Present Moment
Scanning the four corners of the room.
Looking out the window or at something pleasant.
Naming the time and date.
Name it to Tame It
Accurately naming emotions, sensations and thoughts you are experiencing.
Mindful check-ins.
Grounding
Using your senses e.g. naming 5 things you can see, 4 things you can here, 3 things you can touch, 2 things you can smell, 1 thing you can taste.
Pushing against a wall
Intuitive movement.
Holding ice cubes. - Cultivate Self Compassion
Self compassion is the ability to be kind and reasonable with yourself when you are suffering or facing challenges. It can be helpful to imagine how you would treat a close friend or loved one. The researcher Kristen Neff suggests asking yourself: “What can I do to alleviate my suffering?”; she argues that self compassion can be active and fierce, as well as soft and tender. Sometimes it will involve making changes or setting boundaries, and other times it might involve turning inward and practicing acceptance. - Tap Into Co-Regulation
Co-regulation is the practice of calming and connecting the nervous system through positive relationships and interactions. As fundamentally social beings, humans are able to influence each other’s nervous system states; this has been observed most notably in the child-caregiver relationship. It involves sharing emotions between one or more people, known as limbic resonance. You can harness the positive impact of co-regulation by spending time with supportive people, interacting with animals, or finding a mental health professional to work with.
Maddie Bishop, APCC is a psychotherapist at The Lighthouse Therapy Group and TherapyNest, A Center for Anxiety and Family Therapy, seeing clients in person in South Lake Tahoe and via telehealth across California. She works with adults, teens and couples, and specializes in evidence-based treatment informed by neuroscience for trauma, chronic stress and anxiety disorders.
