Welcome back to the Somatic Series!

This is the series where I am using somatic psych theory to help people learn and map out their autonomic nervous system (ANS), develop a healthier relationship with themselves, and eventually build stronger communities.

Congratulations for completing Unit 2!

Unit 2 focused on learning and mapping your ANS with 3 exercises: Grounding, the Body Scan, and the (modified) Notice and Name exercise.

Part 1 covered Grounding: what it is, how it works, how to use it in practical situations, and a demonstration of the 54321 grounding technique.

Part 2 covered the Body Scan: what it is, why it’s an important somatic skill to learn, some practical applications, modifications for chronic pain, etc., and a demonstration on how to body scan.

And Part 3 covered the Notice and Name exercise: what it is and how it can be used as a tool to build or rebuild your relationship with your body.

This chapter starts Unit 3.

Unit 3 is going to cover explaining trauma from a somatic perspective, what triggers are, the concept of biological rudeness, what glimmers are, and how to regulate your ANS out of survival mode through self-regulation and co-regulation. This chapter, Chapter 12, will explain the basics of how fear and anxiety show up in your autonomic nervous system (ANS) to set up the foundation for explaining trauma in the next couple of chapters. I’ve found it’s easier for people to understand when I approach it this way.

[The video version of Chapter 12 is HERE]

Hello, Neuroception, My Old Friend

Like I said last chapter and in chapter 3, Neuroception is your ANS’s ability to determine if you are safe or in danger and how it responds. This kind of decision-making happens in seconds and outside of your conscious awareness, meaning it happens too fast for you to even notice it in the moment. By the time you even notice that you are angry or stressed, your ANS already collected information from inside your body AND from the people, things, dynamics between people, and systems all around us. And depending on that information, your ANS decides whether you need some adrenaline and cortisol so you can fight or flight your way to safety (or maybe you need that energy to play a game) or decides you need to shutdown for your own safety, or maybe decides that you’re safe enough to eat, to problem-solve, connect with your loved ones, or even relax.

Now that you have a solid basic understanding of the theory so far, I can add another part of neuroception: the effect of time and past experiences. Your ANS is not just using information from the present moment to figure out what’s going on. It also uses information from experiences and lessons you learned in the past. So in those same seconds, your ANS is taking in information from the present moment AND THEN quickly factoring in all your life experiences to determine if this moment fits any patterns of safety or danger. Basically comparing the present situation to situations you’ve experienced in the past as a shortcut to figuring out what to do now (I’m going to circle back to this next chapter when I start talking about trauma from a somatic perspective).

Fear vs Anxiety

What is Fear?

Fear is your body’s physical response to an immediate danger. This is when your fight/flight response kicks up to handle something right in your face. Like a lion coming at you or running to catch a bus/train when you are late or being in a physical altercation.

These kinds of problems usually have a clear beginning and end. Either you fight the lion, run away, or die. Either you catch the train or you don’t. Either you win that fight or you lose (or it’s a tie. I guess that’s possible). Once the danger is over, your body can return back to a regulated ventral vagal state either slowly on its own, by regulating yourself intentionally (that’s coming later in this Unit), and/or regulating with people you trust (another thing coming later in this Unit).

Ok So What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is your body having a physical fight/flight response just off the anticipation of something happening at some point in the future. It’s that long term stress. Worrying about how you are going to pay bills. Stressing over a hectic, toxic, or abusive workplace. Trying to survive an unsafe home environment and trying to anticipate that person/those people’s every move for your safety. You don’t know exactly when the shoe is going to drop or when exactly the worst of the danger is going to hit you, so you are ripping and running, unable to stay still, or you could be frozen in anticipation.

One way to tell fear and anxiety apart is asking yourself (when you are more clear-headed. Thinking about this in the moment of fear/anxiety would be harder due to your prefrontal cortex being offline) “Is the thing/situation I’m scared of happening to me right now or is this something that will/might/possibly happen in the future?”

But Guess What?

From a *talk therapy POV*, it’s important to know which one is which so you know whether this is a problem you need to sit with now or if this is a problem for future You. Is this a bridge you should probably wait to worry about crossing until you get there? Especially if you don’t have all the information you need to address the problem in the moment. Why get stuck in rumination, caught up thinking about this all the time, when you can’t solve for x yet?

THAT ALL SAID from a *somatic POV*, your ANS treats both fear and anxiety the same way. It’s all danger, and it all gets the same treatment, basically. Where that becomes a problem is that fear has a defined beginning and end. The body has time to deal with the danger and then recover. Anxiety is not as cut and dry. You could be anxious about something that won’t happen for a week or even months. Or maybe you could be anxious about something that has no guarantee of happening at all. You could end up being stuck in a limbo of survival mode – no end, no closure, no resolution, no recovery/aftercare for weeks, months, or even years, either constantly or every single time you are reminded of the anxiety-provoking thing. And you are likely to also experience dorsal vagal shutdown often too because our bodies were just not meant to carry this kind of burden for such a long time.

Moving Through The ANS Recap

Speaking of dorsal vagal shutdown, this is a great opportunity to connect what you’ve just learned with the previous chapter on how your ANS helps you move through emotions and stresses. Your ANS’s ability to help you process emotions and stress is a huge part of the necessary skill: stress tolerance. Stress tolerance is generally defined as one’s ability to stay “composed” while dealing with stress. People’s capacities for tolerating stress depend on their previous life experiences, history of trauma, their current living situations, and their access to resources and community. Part of building stress tolerance as a skill is learning your body, learning what stress physically feels like to you, and learning how to support your body’s natural processes of managing stress.

Your vagus nerve is literally designed to help you handle stress by activating or deactivating depending on the situation. When your vagus nerve is deactivated, your fight/flight response is free to get things moving and when your vagus nerve is activated, your body is brought back into regulation and feeling safe again (This is part of what makes COVID-19 infections and the resulting long COVID so dangerous. As I’ve said before, COVID damages the vagus nerve, which can lead to issues in the nerve’s ability to reactivate in the face of stress. Meaning people could have issues managing their own emotions, dealing with stress, and de-escalating situations even after they have recovered from a COVID infection).

When your ANS recognizes danger – whether it is something in the here and now or something that could happen in the future – your prefrontal cortex turns off, your vagus nerve relaxes, your body releases adrenaline and cortisol to help you get moving, and your whole body is alert and focused on addressing or avoiding the source of stress. Ideally, you would be able to regulate yourself and/or regulate with people you trust either after the situation had passed or throughout the whole process if this is a longer term kind of stress. This would reactivate your vagus nerve, turn your prefrontal cortex back on, and return your body back to a state of regulation and balance. On the flip side, if your vagus nerve is not able to reactivate, the sense of danger, fear, anxiety, etc. starts to overwhelm your ANS. And then, as you know, you shutdown.

But what happens when the stress completely and totally overwhelms your nervous system’s ability to handle it? That’s trauma.

Thanks for reading. The next part of Unit 3 will cover trauma from a somatic POV.