How To Manage Your Nervous System

Time to read: 55 seconds

One of my doctor friends says, "Mental health is physical health." What she means is managing your physical body is key to managing your brain and stress. So, to our reader last week who asked about how to manage her nervous system, here are some tips:

  • Pay attention to your body and the effect of stress on you. Learn to read your body's cues.
  • Take care of yourself physically. Move. Eat. Drink water. Sleep. These strategies are basic yet vital to your ability to cope.
  • Each of you will respond to different techniques for managing your nervousness. Find the strategies that work for you. Here are some possibilities:
    • Breathe. A simple sigh, deep breath, box breathing, and other fancy breathing techniques can quickly ground you in your body.
    • Rub your fingers together, draw circles on your leg, or use some other physical sensation to distract the stress and bring you into your body.
    • Get up and move around if you start to feel overwhelmed. Walk and take calls.
    • Get outside.

Things like yoga and meditation are excellent practices for managing your nervous system, and you don't have to go to a studio or buy special equipment to find the strategies that work for you.

I hope this helps!

 

Your Holiday Toolkit #3: Care For Yourself

Time to read: 1.15 minutes

As a coach, I think a lot about the nervous system and how to teach people to regulate it. I heard an interesting fact recently (on the Ten Percent Happier Podcast). 80% of information travels from your body to your brain. Only 20% goes from your brain to your body.

This means that caring for your body and learning to regulate your nervous system is crucial to managing your reactions, moods, and daily experiences. This is good news because you can learn to regulate your nervous system. Yoga, meditation, and exercise are all familiar tools for physical regulation.

And there's a tool that's even easier.

Pay attention the micro-moments when you feel regulated and notice what you are doing. Then do more of those things. (This is also thanks to the Deb Dana interview on Ten Percent Happier). This is what that looks like:

  • When your cat purrs on your lap and you feel a moment of "ahhhh…" that is regulation. Spend more time with your cat or snuggle your cat when you feel dis-regulated.
  • When you climb into bed and notice how soft the covers are, that's a moment of regulation. The mental note will enable you to stay in the moment a few seconds longer, increasing your physical regulation.
  • Give yourself a big sigh. As often as you need.
  • When you pull in the garage and have a few moments of delicious silence between work and whatever awaits you in your house, savor it. That's regulation.

The more you notice, the more regulated you'll feel. The goal isn't to feel regulated all the time. That's impossible. Instead, the goal is to know what regulation feels like for you, what brings you that moment of calm, and the easy activities that can help you get back when you get dis-regulated (which can easily happen during the holidays).

I hope this helps you find the micro-moments in your life!

Have a wonderful holiday!