Learn to Work With Your Nervous System

Join me as I continue the Deep Dive into the 8 reasons why you binge. Episode 3 outlines the 8 reasons why and Episode 4 covers the solutions for each reason.

Today I discuss the importance of learning how to work with your nervous system. The nervous system is your body's command center. It is the connection between the brain and the body.

Learn all about what your nervous system is, why it's important, and how you can begin to identify the state of your nervous system and start working with it today.

This was a missing piece for me in my journey to ending my binge eating. This could be an episode that changes everything for you.

Want to know why you struggle with food and what to do next? Start watching The Food Freedom Mini Series today. 

Transcript

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Welcome to Binge Breakthrough, a podcast designed to help you finally break through the barriers that keep you stuck, feeling out of control around food. I'm Master Certified Coach Jane Hilker, and I want you to know that no matter how long you've been struggling or what you've tried, food freedom is possible. And I'm here to show you how. After years of therapy, eating disorder treatment, restrictive diet, and reading all the books, I was still stuck in the on-again-up-again cycle of restricting energy and how I was able to see it all from a new perspective. Each week I will share the strategies, tools, and mindset that allowed me to overcome my decades-long battle with binge eating. Your journey to body trust starts now. Let's dive in. Hello, trusted listener. Welcome to episode six of Binge Breakthrough. I consider you a trusted listener because trust is such an important word for me and in my practice. I trust that you are listening to this particular episode at the time that is just right for you. I trust that you are going to hear something today that is maybe it's something you've never heard before, or maybe you're going to hear something or hear a concept that you already have some familiarity with, but you're going to hear it in an entirely new way that you are going to be ready to apply to your life and your journey in a way that you've never considered before. So we're in the middle of a little bit of a series here on how to stop binge eating. And this started with episode really, it started from the beginning. And in episode one, I shared my story for anybody who's curious to hear a little bit more about me. And I also talked more about what I mean when I talk about binge eating. So if you're curious about either of those things, that happens in episode one. And in episode two, I discussed the eight reasons that I find that are keeping most people in the cycle of binging. And then in episode three, I gave eight solutions. So a solution for each one of those reasons. And what we're doing now is we're doing a deep dive into each of those eight solutions, those eight reasons how you can stop binge eating. So episode four was understanding why you started and why you haven't stopped yet. Episode five is was all about removing restrictions. And I want to be really clear. All eight of these are very important. So we can't really just pick one and ignore the rest. It's important that all eight are uh just kind of being considered for your specific journey. So, what we're gonna talk about today is the number three reason why you might be binging, and that is nervous system dysregulation. And so the solution to that, how to stop the solution to that problem is to learn how to work with your nervous system. I love this topic. This is absolutely one of my favorite topics, and I will tell you this understanding, truly not only understanding, but applying this knowledge was a game changer for me. So I hope that in sharing this information for with you, you're able to see your binging in a new way and also have some tools to be able to work with it. Now, if you aren't binging, but you sometimes feel out of control with food, or sometimes you just see yourself turning to food to try to calm yourself or to soothe yourself. This is going to be great information for you as well. So I want to just give you a little bit of a summary. We are gonna discuss the basics. I want to give you just enough science for context, but I'm not gonna go into a lot of terminology. So I want this to be um helpful and relevant for you, whether you know nothing about the nervous system. And if you know a lot about the nervous system, I encourage you to keep listening in case you hear something maybe in a different way, or there is um something else that you get out of this. And if you do know a lot about the nervous system and you have anything else you would like to add to this conversation, I would love to hear um about any of it. I love this topic. So I mentioned before, I really consider this information about the nervous system really was one of the fundamental missing pieces that really changed everything for me. All right, so what is the nervous system? The nervous system really, at a very basic level, it's the communication between the brain and the body. I love to think about it as your body's command center. So it's really, it's the command center. It's think about like when you just close your eyes and picture a command center, whether that is, you know, uh in a in a movie that you've seen, or uh, you know, maybe if you are in the military, you kind of understand that idea of a command center. It's that central place where everything happens. So the nervous system, it regulates your movements, your thoughts, the automatic responses, and it even regulates your organs, your heart, your lungs, your digestive system. It runs in the background. Now we it's so important and why it matters because our nervous system creates our experience of life. And many people are unknowingly living with a dysregulated nervous system. And I'll explain to you what that means when I when I get a little bit more into detail about the nervous system, I'll explain what it means when a nervous system is dysregulated and when its nervous system is regulated. And just that knowledge and knowing that can be really, really powerful. It's also really important because it can help provide some understanding around why you binge. So if you remember, number one reason that people stay in this cycle of binging is shame and judgment around the behavior. Well, if if the answer, so the answer to that, that number one solution on how to stop is to understand, understand why you started and why you haven't stopped. For a lot of people, the why you started came from an attempt to regulate the nervous system. And so if we can understand that, and then we can go and work with the nervous system, such a powerful combination. So you learn to work with your nervous system, and then you can develop other tools to regulate it rather than using the food, you can naturally unwind that binging that comes from the attempt to regulate your nervous system. Okay, so let's talk about the brain. The brain has one main job in life, and that is to stay alive. Number one, stay alive. Now, after that, we go into what's called the motivational triad, which are the three main kind of motivations of the brain, which are to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and use as little energy as possible. Now, we also have there's kind of two different parts of our brain. We have the survival brain and the thinking brain. Now, again, I could go much more into detail about the specific names and the specific parts, but I don't think we really need to to just develop a basic level of understanding. So if we just say, just for simplicity's sake, we have the survival brain, which which is the amygdala, we have the thinking brain, the prefrontal cortex. When the brain thinks that the body is in danger for any reason, so its survival is in danger for any reason whatsoever, it's going to put all of its energy into its number one primary job, which is survival to stay alive. Now, this has a direct impact on the nervous system. And we're going to get into exactly why, but I just want to give you that very, very basic description of the brain and its main job, right? Number one job, stay alive. Okay, so the nervous system, uh, I really love the concept of polyvagal theory. Um, and this is by Stephen Porgius, and he talks a lot about um really how the vagus nerve, this is as technical as I'm gonna get with you, the vagus nerve connects our brain, our heart, and our organs, and how it relates to our human ability to connect and relate to each other. So it's really kind of powerful the connection between our nervous system and then our ability to connect and relate to other people. So that's kind of fascinating, but we don't even have to go there for this very basic overview of the nervous system. Okay, so the nervous system, there are three general states of our nervous system. I will give you the technical terms, um, and then we're gonna go into kind of how I terminol term terminology them. That's not uh how I uh refer to them. So the three general states. We have the sympathetic state, the ventral state, and the dorsal state. So the ventral state is what's also known as the window of tolerance. This is where you very you feel very what you would you would call regulated. You feel more like yourself. I call this place in your nervous system home base. It's where you feel at home in your body. So, right now, for example, I'm in home base. I am very, I am what uh what some might call grounded. I am connected with my experience. I have um capacity to connect with my thinking and to describe and have a conversation with you. Um, I'm very much in home base. I love to think about the nervous system as um, I like to think about the visual of a thermostat. So we have a uh you have this area in your body that is kind of like your home base, your place where you feel regulated. So let's just say that is your area between 68 and 72 degrees. My home base is between 68 and 72. If I am in those four degrees, you know what? I'm pretty comfortable. Like maybe I'll get a little chilly if I get down towards 68, might get a little warm if I get if it gets up towards 72, but I can adjust. You know, I could maybe take off a layer, I'm still able to do my tasks for the day, I'm still able to handle something if uh, you know, maybe something doesn't go according to plan. I'm able to kind of tolerate that. But then if something goes above 72 degrees, above that window of tolerance, above my home base, in that place, then I'm in my nervous system has gone into the sympathetic state. When I'm in the sympathetic state, there's more energy flowing through the body. When I get too cold, if I go below 68 degrees, then I go down into my energy, is going lower, and I go down into what's called the dorsal state. So if you think about you've got this um thermostat, the 68 to 72 degrees, that's my home base. That's where I am regulated. Then the amount of energy, if the energy goes up above my window of tolerance, above my home base, if it goes up above that level, then I am more in that activated state. And if it goes below, then the energy, it's the amount of energy. So you can see the energy is going down. If it goes below, I'm in more of that shutdown state. So here's what's important to know the state of your nervous system. It's based on your brain's perception of safety. Now, this doesn't have to mean it actually there really is true physical danger happening. It's your brain's perception of it. So this could be a response to maybe current perception, current perception of safety. It could also be a response to past trauma. And this is why there may be some times where something can happen and all of a sudden we don't even, we don't even have a reference or a real realization that something happened externally, but all of a sudden we might notice ourselves very much out of home base. We are very disconnected from ourselves in some way. And this is because the brain has perceived that there is some sort of danger in in play. And so the brain goes directly into that survival mode. Because remember, the brain has one job, it's to survive. And so when that survival is at risk or even perceived to be at risk, the brain will go straight into survival mode. And what happens is the survival part of the brain, that amygdala, will take over. And there's not a lot of room for the thinking brain to come on board. And this is why when we get um, I'm just gonna use a term that a lot of people use and and is familiar when we might get triggered in some way, where sometimes it's like, I don't even know what happened, particularly if we're talking about binging, it's like, I don't even know what happened. I was fine, or I was working along. And then the next thing I knew, I was driving to the store or I was in the pantry, or I was um, you know, eating as much food as possible. We might not even have this realization. And sometimes when you're in that place, when you do get triggered that it's hard, you know, we might think, oh, why, you know, I know that this isn't good for me, I know that I'm gonna feel bad later. Why can't I come up with better thinking thoughts in the moment to stop myself in the moment? And the reason is that if your brain is in that survival place and the amygdala is the one that is fully kind of responding because it is doing its number one job, which is to keep you alive, it is taking over. It's taking over and the thinking brain really doesn't have access. There's no space, there's no energy available for it. So to think that you are going to be able to have this nice lovely conversation with yourself in the moment that your survival system gets activated is really not even realistic. So that can be even that knowledge right there. I will say it again. If you are triggered in some way, your brain, your brain's perception of safety is triggered in some way and it does not feel safe. The survival brain, when the survival brain comes on board, the thinking brain has very little space and very little energy left for it, which means you are not likely to be able to have a very logical conversation with yourself in that moment while the brain is just think about the brain as like it's running around thinking that the that the alarm is going off, that there is a fire, fire, fire. The house is burning down. It is running around, you know, like trying to get everybody out of the house is all it's trying to do. And so then the logical, you know, we think that the logical brain should be able to come in and say, oh, you know, you're gonna feel really bad later. Like we shouldn't do that. That's going to uh, you know, impact our dinner plans that we have with our husband. No, the survival brain doesn't care. All I care about is surviving. And in that moment, it thinks the brain thinks the only thing that is going to uh create that survival is food because it's made that connection and it's established that connection so many times over the years. This is why sometimes it literally feels like you might come out of your skin. I was talking to somebody the other day and she said, literally, it feels like I might die if I don't eat. She said, I know it's not true and I know I won't, but that's why it feels that way sometimes because your brain is on that alert, alert. Our survival's at risk, and we have learned over time food helps this. So we've made this connection between the food and the surviving. So it's such a powerful realization. Okay. So when we're in survival, there's two different places that the brain goes with survival. So you've probably all heard about fight, flight, freeze. There's also fawning. Um, sometimes I've even heard feeding used as uh one of the survival responses. What happens is the way that we respond is going to be um, it's gonna be one of two things. One, it is based upon the amount of energy that's within our system. So when we get really activated, we have a lot of energy. We're gonna go into that fight or flight response. So this is gonna feel this is where we're going above home base, above the window of tolerance, we're above that 72 degrees. This is gonna feel like um anxiety, overwhelm, worry, um, rumination, things that have a lot of energy, maybe either in your body or in your mind. It's that very kind of like um activated energy. And from that place, that's where the fight or flight happens. Uh, and it's because we have this extra energy. So, what do we want to do with that energy? We either want to fight. Some people can get very um angry or lash out. We might uh flight, we we might uh actually want to go somewhere, we might want to escape a situation. Uh, many of us will use food for that way when we're we've got a lot of that energy uh will go to food. That used to be me. I spent so much time in overwhelm, in worry, in anxiety, a lot of time up in my head, thinking that I constantly needed to be doing, doing, doing, going, going, going, so much energy up there. And what happened was that I basically taught myself that I needed, in order to kind of bring down that energy, food would do that. I taught myself very smartly from a young age that when I had this excess energy in my nervous system, food would help bring that energy down. Now, this works. Food does bring our energy down. But here's what happens it takes us down. The kind of intent behind it is to bring us back into home base where we're grounded. But what ends up happening is that we end up going below home base because we keep eating, eating, eating, and then we're in more of that shutdown place. So when we're below home base, when we're below 68 degrees, that's more of the freeze response. So this is gonna look more like um hopelessness, despair, um uh lethargy, where we just don't want to do anything. And so for me, I used to have all this energy. I would have all this energy. I've got to go, go, go, do, do, do. I would not let myself rest. And then the only time that I would rest would be after a binge. So I would binge to kind of try to bring that energy down. Of course, I didn't know it at the time, but that's what I was doing. But then I would go all the way down. And then I would be in the despair. I can't believe I did it again. I feel so terrible, I can't move, and I would just zone out. And so in that case, then I'm watching Netflix, I am scrolling, um, trying to find the end of Facebook, which I am here to tell you does not exist. No matter how many hours you, you know, swipe that finger, stuff is gonna just keep coming at you. So that is what happens kind of down at the bottom. Now, here's what's important to know both of these places, below home base and above home base, they are both survival responses. It is our brain thinking something is going on. There is some element of safety that is not in play. Something is unsafe, our survival is at risk. So we need to go to the place that we have taught ourselves where we can be okay, where we can be safe. Now, here's what's fascinating about the nervous system and about kind of how we have how it is changeable and how we this is where we can get into actually starting to work with it. Now, you might know as I'm describing these things to you, you might already start be able to start identifying where you spend more time in your nervous system. So most of us, we kind of have a little bit of a blueprint for our nervous system. And this blueprint, what that means is it's just kind of, if you look at over the course of a day, or even you could look at over the course of a week, how much time do you spend in the different places in your nervous system? And we can just look at the three places in your nervous system. How much time would you say you spend? You could you could even think about this just as an overall percentage. So how much time do you spend in home base, that place where you're very grounded? Um, the thing that's interesting about home base is in home base, you are able to basically live life to do the things. Um, it's where your thinking brain is most on board. So you can kind of start looking at that. Then where in your life do you spend, how much of your time would you say you spend above home base? And how much would you say you spend below home base? Most of us have a little bit of a default. Our bodies kind of default more towards one or the other. If you are somebody who struggles with binge eating, I'm gonna guess you're gonna be defaulting more towards either above or below rather than defaulting in the middle in home base because we end up using the food to try to bring us into home base. So if we have a lot of energy, we end up using food to try to drain that energy and bring us down. And then we kind of go all the way down. And then when we're in the low energy, we can end up using food to try to get more energy into our bodies. Have you ever noticed that when you're particularly tired, you might have more um cravings, more desires, more urges. It's because it's one of the ways that your brain knows how to get energy into your body is through eating more. And so it's kind of, we kind of keep ourselves in this cycle. So you can start to get curious about which state your body is more comfortable in. And this is this is just based on your past and based on your upbringing. So this is not any indicate, any reflection of you. I want to make that really clear. Like, so for example, um, you might think about yourself as, oh, I'm just an anxious person. And that we really want to get away from identifying as your state. Oh, I'm just a depressed person. I'm just an anxious person. I just worry. I'm just a worry wart. Your state is not you, it's what our bodies have become kind of just really conditioned and become more comfortable in because we've spent more time there. But what we can do is we can learn how to change our state. Our state is actually changeable. And this is what is amazing about the nervous system. We can learn how to change it, and we can learn how to increase our window of tolerance, our home base. So instead of being from 68 degrees to 72 degrees, we can increase that tolerance, that window, that home base. We could increase it to be from 65 to 75. What if you got three more degrees on either side? If you can just picture that in your mind, that area, that space where you have access to your thinking brain, despite what's happening, is so powerful. That means in those cases, as you expand your window of tolerance, you have more access to be able to do things even when you're tired, even when you start to notice, oh man, I'm starting to notice, I'm getting a little like overwhelmed. I'm starting to see myself kind of question or think about these things. And then I can see what's happening and bring myself down before I get out of the window of tolerance, before I get out of my home base. So let me tell you this about what do I mean when I'm talking about a dysregulated nervous system? So the nervous system, we are not meant to always be in home base all of the time. That is just not the human experience. A regulated nervous system is one that can move in and out of the home base and the window of tolerance on a regular basis. So we can move in, it can move out. You can um you can go above and kind of notice, bring yourself down, you can go below. There's movement there. A dysregulated nervous system happens when we get stuck, meaning you're kind of always in that either fight or flight space, or you're always in that freeze space. And it feels very hard to get out. That is a dysregulated nervous system where it kind of feels stuck. We get into one or the other and we feel like we can't quite get out. So that kind of gives you that visual of a dysregulated nervous system versus a regulated one is going to be more flow and it's going to increase the size of your home base, of your window of tolerance. You might right now find you have a very small window of tolerance. Rather than a range of 68 to 72 degrees, your range may literally be from 70 degrees to 71 degrees. And when you have a very small window where you actually feel kind of connected, able to do the things, or otherwise you are just worried, stressed, overwhelmed, or completely shut down. And that's not wrong. It's not bad, it's just awareness. Oh wow, I can see. Yes, I actually don't spend a lot of time in home base. Now, home base is kind of when you are um you're able to come up with new ideas, you are able to respond to when you're in home base, you can still have conflict and respond to it. You can um deal with here's a great, here's a great way to know if you're in home base or not. If you get on the phone with your uh your your TV company or your cell phone company. And I don't know about you, but I generally spend uh half an hour at least talking to multiple people, um, it can be a very frustrating experience to talk to sometimes to have these customer service conversations. I can tell when I'm in home base based upon how I can handle one of those conversations. So I might still, if I start one of those conversations in home base, now by the end of it, I may be towards the top of my home base, but I can watch it and I can witness it and I can bring myself back down. And if I start a conversation towards the top of home base, I would never even get on the phone if I was already out of home base, unless I absolutely had to. But let's say I start a conversation, I'm kind of at the top of my window of tolerance, at the top of my home base. I might very quickly make my way out and up into that survival, that fight or flight place. Where and I will tell you, I have had many times where I have been on one of those calls with one of those companies and have been in literally binging while I am talking to them. And now I can look back on it and be like, oh yeah, that makes so much sense as to how that happened. So that is something also. Now, when I look at myself, so for example, I used to spend so much time above the window. And now, and I would say my nervous system, I really operated very, very much above home base. And now I have this ability to recognize and just even check in. So the key really is to learn to recognize the various states. So now I can check in and I can be like, okay, where am I in home base? Even if I'm in home base, am I like at 70 degrees or am I at 72 degrees? Because if I'm at 72 degrees, I'm pretty darn close to being above home base or out of the window, which means my survival brain is going to be way more on board, which means that my logical brain is going to be less on board. So I'm going to be more likely to want to check out, to want to escape, to want to look for other things to kind of calm myself down. If I'm kind of towards the bottom, then if I don't do something to try to increase my energy, I'm going to go all the way down and I'm going to get into that hopeless despair. I don't really care. I'm not going to do anything. I might as well just eat type of place. So the first thing to do is to just understand this concept, which if you have been paying attention, you have so much more understanding now. The next is to learn how to recognize your various states. What does home base feel like for you? What does it feel like in your body? What do you notice? What are you able to do in home base that you're not necessarily able to do when you are feeling more above home base? When you're feeling more anxiety, worry, overwhelm? What does that feel like in your body? What do you notice? What about below when you're below home base, when you're feeling kind of checked out and low and flat and depressed? Can you discern what it feels like in your body? And can you discern different levels? So it's not like this is not just a switch. I'm either in or I'm out. This is a continuum. And it's beautiful to see that because if we can start to catch it while we're going up, while our nervous system is starting to become more activated, if we start to notice and we start to catch it, then we can bring ourselves down before we pop our lid, before the steam just kind of blows out, right? And then we end up binging. So I will often tell my husband, oh, I'm like at the top of the window. I can see right now, if I keep going where I'm going, I am gonna be over. And I know what that means for me. And so then I have the tools where I can bring some of that energy down. Or I can watch myself if I'm going down below the window or even towards the bottom of my home base. I can see that happening. So this is such, it's such great awareness. The other thing you can do this, think about, just notice when you binge. You can even think about the last time you binged. Or if you, if binging isn't your thing and you just like the last time you overeat or you checked out with food or whatever. Think about this. What was the state of your nervous system? What was it before you ate, and what was it after? You might even be able to discern this the sensation of having a whole lot of energy flowing through your body, feeling this like I have to eat, I have to eat. Eating, you um, you might even be able, if you can think about it, you might even be able to discern where that energy kind of started coming down into your home base, and then when it went all the way down to below. So if you can start recognizing it, then the process is that can you catch it sooner? Can you just see where you are? Oh, I'm out of home base. Oh, wow, I see this connection of being out of home base and wanting to eat. Wow, I noticed I actually really spend way more time above home base than I do below, or vice versa. So the goal isn't to always be in home base, it's to be able to flow in and to flow out and to not get stuck. So let's give you some practical tools now that you kind of have this understanding of what it is. Practical tools. Learn how to, when you're above home base, when you are noticing that kind of anxiety, that worry, that overwhelm, anything you can do to bring your energy down. So I love the power of the breath. With you're gonna take an inhale and an exhale, but your exhale is going to be longer than the inhale. You can do that three times, three nice deep breaths where the exhale is longer than the inhale. So powerful. Meditation can be an incredibly powerful way to bring that energy down. Also grounding yourself because you have this excess energy, you want to ground yourself to bring the energy down. You can do this with nature. This is why, for so many people, being out in nature is such a powerful and calming and grounding presence. So you can do that outside. Um, if you are, as we are approaching the winter months, um, outside is not always as accessible. You can even ground yourself visually. So I'm looking outside right now at um the outside and at some of the plants and at a particular um plant that I love, and I can ground myself to that even just with this visual reflection. You can also ground yourself to yourself by putting your hand on your heart, um, putting your hand on your neck or on the side of your face. You can also ground to other people. So if you have people in your life that you know are safe people that you can go to when you are feeling high levels of um that activated energy in your body, pets are amazing. Stuffed animals are amazing for this type of thing as well. Now, if you're below home base, what that means is you have low energy. You need more energy into your body. So movement is an amazing way for this. If you have like a favorite playlist, um, a song, maybe even like funny uh videos on YouTube to like get yourself going. Cold water can really help sometimes if you just splash some cold water either on the back of your hands or on your face. Uh, music again, just any sort of movement that you can get. So those are a couple of tools for you there. Now, this is a there's a deep dive for you on the nervous system. And I use this information myself all the time. Being able to just check in with myself, notice where I am in my nervous system. It's so powerful. And I use this information with my clients all the time as well. Being able to see that connection. I walk them through specific exercises and show them how they can bring their energy down. Mo so many, I would say most of my clients spend more time above home base than below. Not all, but um, there are some just very easy, quick things that you can do in doing this. And it's such a powerful thing. So I hope that this episode has given you some great resources, some additional understanding about your nervous system, what you can do personally in working with your nervous system and how that can help you unwind the binge eating process. And next week's episode, we're gonna dive deep into solution number four, which connects with this episode so clearly. It's learning to connect with your body. So join me then. I will see you next week. Bye. Thank you for listening to Binge Breakthrough. If you would like to download the eight reasons why you binge and what to do about it, visit binge breakthrough.com forward slash why. That's binge breakthrough.com forward slash W H Y. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast so that you don't miss any future episodes that will dive deeper into how to create lasting food freedom. I'll see you there.