You listen to the news and are filled with anxiety. You feel compelled to do something and have no idea what to do.

Or you feel exhausted with all the demands being placed on you. You feel driven to get away or get a break, even though you know that isn’t possible right now. 

Sound familiar?

These are the types of situations clients often share with me.

Unfortunately, many times their attempts to deal with situations like these increases their stress rather than decreasing it.

Round and round and getting nowhere

My clients usually get stuck for a couple of reasons. 

1. They don’t check in on the state of their nervous system.
2. They try to solve the whole problem rather than figuring out what they need in the current moment.

Would you do the same thing?

If so, you are certainly not alone. Most of us tend to go right to problem solving or to figuring out a way to get a break or escape. 

Rarely do we first check in on our nervous system or what we need right in the current moment.

There are some good reasons that we tend to skip these steps. 

In this post, I want to address the role of the nervous system. I will come back to the importance of the current moment, in my next post.

I need it now!

Most often when we are feeling an urgent need to act or escape during stress, like after watching the news, we have tipped, or our nervous system has triggered a move into a defensive state.

In this state, the goal is survival and relief—right now in this moment—not tomorrow or even an hour from now. In my last post, Dysregulation and the Unattended Baby, I compared the nervous system to a baby.

A baby’s needs are immediate. The same is true for the nervous system—it operates in the moment. 

Being tipped is the adult equivalent of a baby screaming because of a wet diaper or hunger—the nervous system has triggered a response in the body to get relief and get it now.

Planning for the baby’s life is going to do nothing to stop the screaming. That baby needs relief right now. Her nervous system needs to be calmed by getting her needs met.

When tipped, we are propelled by our nervous system to get immediate relief. We feel a sense of desperation to “do something.” 

Our thoughts often reflect and fuel the desperation with ideas like, “I can’t take this” or “This has to stop” or “I’ve got to do something about this.”  

“But what?!!”

I loved how a client described being tipped in our session this morning, she said “I find myself just staring at the cabinets.” She felt desperate to act and was so lost about what to do that she found herself just staring at her cabinets. 

While tipped and with a dysregulated nervous system, the ability to think, reason or plan have been disabled by the stress hormones. 

So, round and round we go, feeling propelled to solve the problem, being unable to figure out what to do and feeling even more desperate.

Sound familiar? I think most of us have been there.

We have to calm our nervous system first

A few weeks ago, I finally got my new flooring. It had been in the works for a long time, and I was ready, or so I thought. 

I had removed all of the little things, cleared my bookcases, emptied my file cabinets, etc. 

It turns out furniture installers, at least the ones the flooring company sent, don’t move furniture and had expected me to do it.

They weren’t happy and neither was I. Was I tipped? You bet!

My heart was beating a million miles an hour and I felt like I would explode. My nervous system was ready to fight. All kinds of angry words were bouncing around in my head.

This was one of those “go either way” moments. And believe me, in the past, it has gone both ways.

What did I need?

Without the resources of the thinking brain, it is hard to know what we need when we are tipped. Our nervous system is in defense mode and that is what we are pulled to do—defend ourselves.

We want relief. We are likely to disconnect in some way – either through our words or actions.

Luckily, in this case I recognized that I was tipped and knew that what was most important was getting myself back upright—to help my nervous system move out of a defensive state. 

Deciding what I needed to do about the installation from a tipped place could have been disastrous. This is what I meant, earlier, when I said it could have gone either way.

I might have been propelled to act on my anger. That might have felt good in the moment and angering the installers wouldn’t have done me any good in the long run.

Or I might have felt paralyzed, not knowing how to solve the problem without having the reasoning abilities of my thinking brain available to me.

Recognizing that I was tipped gave me the opportunity to help my system to move back into regulation—to the state where my thinking brain was fully onboard and I could figure out what was best for me.

What was best for me was getting my flooring installed. To do that I needed to think rather than react.  And to think, I needed a calm nervous system.

Can you tell when you are tipped?

Checking in is going to be critical in determining the state of your nervous system—the first step in figuring out what you need. You are going to need to be able to determine when you are tipped. Can you recognize the signs of being tipped?

Here are some signs.

• You feel desperate to act—to do something.
• Your emotions are intense. Anger may have turned to rage, sadness to hopelessness, fear to panic or guilt to shame.
• Your thinking may be obsessive, or you may be unable to think.
• You may feel numb or find yourself staring into space not knowing what to do.
• You may feel an urgency to get away or to tell someone off.

In my post, A Little Secret to Help You Stay Motivated, a share more about the experience of being tipped and suggestions for what to do when you find yourself in that state. You can find them by clicking here.

What is your plan?

Getting good at checking in with your nervous system is like anything else, it won’t happen without intention and practice.

Coming up with a plan for practicing checking in at times when you are not tipped, is much more effective than waiting until you are tipped.

I often equate waiting to check in until you are tipped to learning to play tennis by signing up for a tennis tournament. 

It’s not likely to go well and there’s a good chance you will decide you can’t do it.

Practicing noticing what is happening with your nervous system at random times throughout the day will help you be more successful at noticing when you are tipped.

Our brain places a priority on efficiency and that means it prefers “business as usual,” or doing things the way you have always done them.

So, if you don’t come up with a plan to add something new it is unlikely to happen.

It isn’t a matter of motivation it’s simply the brain’s preference for doing what has been done before—why take an unfamiliar path when there is a highway right there?

In my last post, I shared some ideas for remembering to check in. Here is that list again, in case you missed it.

You might

• schedule it on your calendar
• put an alarm on your phone 
• pair it with other activities like meals, or even getting in or out of your car
• wear a piece of jewelry that is new to you and will get your attention
• put up sticky notes

What will you do?

What will your plan be to check in on your nervous system?

I’d love to hear your ideas and I bet other readers would benefit from reading them as well. I’d also feel grateful for any feedback about whether you are finding these posts useful, as well as other topics you would like me to address.

I learn so much from my readers and clients. You can share your ideas by leaving a comment below or by emailing me at [email protected].

And if you found this post to be helpful, please forward to anyone you think might benefit from it.

With warmth and kindness,
Deb

---

If you find it hard to be yourself in the world, need to keep others happy to feel okay about yourself, or get derailed by disapproval, check out my book Never Enough—Separating Self-Worth from Approval

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to signup below so that you will receive notification when articles are published. Want to share your thoughts or have a topic you are interested in learning about, scroll down to leave a comment.