Over half of us have a chronic disorder, such as high blood pressure or autoimmune disease. Rates of anxiety, depression, PTSD and addiction are skyrocketing. Why?
The roots of these issues and more can often be traced to trauma, adverse childhood experiences, chronic stress and ultimately, nervous system dysregulation. Meet your autonomic nervous system. Let's call it ANS.
ANS takes care of a lot of your automatic functions, like your heartbeat, digestion and body temperature. ANS also manages your survival and stress response, working to keep you alive when your life is in danger. ANS functions as our built-in detection system, constantly scanning our environment for cues of safety and cues of danger.
As ANS scans the environment, it has three general responses or states: safe; You feel calm, relaxed and connected to those around you. Mobilized; when ANS detects danger, it sends a command and your heart rate and breathing increase. Adrenaline and cortisol are released, and blood rushes to your muscles so you can handle the threat.
This is our fight flight response. Immobilized; when ANS detects that the danger is so great that you can't fight or run, it shuts you down. In this state, our heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature decrease and pain numbing endorphins are released.
ANS does all of this automatically without us thinking about it. ANS doesn't just use these states for survival. It uses them to navigate through the world each day.
When ANS functions well, it moves fluidly from one state to another, one minute mobilized and ready for action, and the next resting and recovering. ANS will often blend states together when we play, ANS combines the mobilized and safe states. And when we were intimate with loved ones, it combines immobilized and safe states.
When ANS can stay flexible and fluid like this, it helps us manage and become resilient to stress and negative events. We're able to bounce back and move on. Unfortunately, when we experience trauma and chronic stress, it can keep ANS from functioning in a healthy, regulated and resilient way and can keep us stuck in states of survival.
A friendly get together can become frightening. A simple meeting at work can become threatening. For those with a history of trauma and chronic stress, the ANS detection system often becomes faulty, constantly signaling danger, even when we are safe.
It's like ANS is an alarm system, constantly signaling fire, even when there's no smoke and no flames. Consistently living in these survival states can be debilitating, and we often develop adaptive strategies like using drugs, alcohol, food, work or sex in an attempt to bring regulation and temporary relief. Understanding how trauma impacts us is critically important.
There is a whole spectrum of experiences that can be traumatizing and adversely impact ANS like accidents, assaults and natural disasters, which are often called shock traumas. There is also developmental or relational trauma when we experience chronic adversity, abuse, neglect and lack of safety while growing up. Many other experiences can be traumatizing, including chronic stress, medical procedures and adverse community environments like poverty, discrimination and violence.
Additionally, new research in epigenetics shows us that trauma can get passed down genetically at least three generations. In the past, we've thought about trauma as events that happened to us. We now know that trauma is an experience, not an event.
It's what happens inside of us as a result of what happens to us. It's our response to the event rather than the event itself. Over 20 years ago, Kaiser and the CDC launched a groundbreaking study of over 17,000 patients that showed a direct link between adverse childhood experiences or ACES and long term health and wellness.
In the study, two thirds of participants reported at least one ACE, over 20 percent reported three or more. When participants reported four or more ACES, this corresponded to an increased chance for heart disease, cancer, drug abuse and more. With six or more ACES, life expectancy decreases by almost 20 years.
We are learning that many physical and emotional symptoms may emerge from a chronically dysregulated ANS. When ANS get stuck in survival states, our biology shifts its focus from the tasks that keep us healthy, happy and thriving to surviving the immediate perceived threat. Many conditions and symptoms that are chronic and difficult to diagnose and treat can be attributed to a dysfunctional ANS.
Our childhood experiences can also keep us from connecting with others. This is vitally important because as children, our number one survival priority is to attach to caregivers. When the people responsible for our safety aren't safe and we are living in chronic states of unsafety, ANS doesn't get wired right.
The part of ANS that judges what is safe and what is not becomes faulty. If intimacy and connection were unsafe as a child, as adults we'll often unconsciously reject attempts from friends and partners to connect, even though intimacy and connection is what we want; ANS feels it's unsafe and won't allow it. Trauma compromises our ability to engage with others, replacing the need for connection with the need for protection.
When there has been trauma ANS can no longer differentiate between our unsafe past and our now safe present. ANS can't turn off the need to protect, even though we are now safe. So what can we do when ANS becomes dysregulated?
How do we recover from trauma and develop a healthy, regulated, resilient nervous system? Fortunately, we can retrain ANS to feel safe again. This is best done with the help of others.
Each one of us has an ANS and our ANS is constantly communicating with and attuning to the states of others. We autonomically mirror the states of those around us. This is called co-regulating.
We see it in herd behavior, if one animal senses danger, the entire group becomes more alert, increasing their chances of survival. We're exactly the same. When we're with others who are stressed, angry or depressed, it makes us feel worse.
When we're with others who are calm and happy, it makes us feel better. Connecting with others who are safe, attuned and present is the best way to restore a healthy ANS. For those struggling to recover from the impacts of trauma, there is an emerging field of innovative clinical therapies that have been developed to reestablish safety and regulation to ANS.
We're also learning that many of the activities we intuitively know make us feel better, like spending time in nature, practicing yoga, dancing, helping others and more can help ANS become more regulated and resilient. Healing from trauma and finding release from being stuck living in survival states comes as ANS becomes regulated, increases its capacity for resilience and regains its flexibility. It's not about being calm all the time or mobilized all the time.
It's about having a flexible and resilient nervous system that can accurately assess safety and danger and responds appropriately. We're truly resilient when we can fluidly move from one state to another. For those living with the impacts of trauma and chronic stress, becoming unstuck is like beginning a new life.
For the rest of us, understanding how our nervous system states guide our behavior can help us become happier, healthier and more empathetic human beings. Collectively, we have an epidemic of social issues that are rooted in trauma. If we can do the work to heal past traumas and build healthy, regulated nervous systems as individuals, families and communities, we can end the cycles that continue to reinforce our greatest challenges and create a safer, vibrant and more connected world.
