Understanding Anxiety, Depression & the Nervous System

Episode 2

Today's episode introduces you to the nervous system and provides a framework for understanding anxiety & depression through a nervous system lens.

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Disclaimer:
The Regulate & Rewire podcast and content posted by Amanda Armstrong is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information from this podcast, materials linked, or content found elsewhere is done so at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.

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Transcript

00:00

Welcome to regulate, and rewire and anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong. And I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life.

00:23

Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. Welcome, welcome. I am so excited to be starting this journey of supporting you and understanding anxiety and depression through this nervous system lens for me and my healing journey, understanding how this mind body system worked, and how I could work with it towards healing was a huge turning point in my own journey. And I am so confident that it will be for you too. And it is an honor to get the opportunity to support you in that. 

00:55

So today, we are going to lay the groundwork by talking about the nervous system in general and the role that it plays in anxiety and depression. And just a reminder that at the end of each episode, I will be giving you three tangible takeaways from our conversation that you can start applying to your healing journey today. So without any further delay, what is the nervous system, and instead of taking you into some, you know, nitty gritty, deep dive into the anatomy, or the physiology of the nervous system, you can find that in a textbook somewhere, I want to help you understand the nervous system in a functional way. And to understand the role and the impact that it has in your everyday life. And the way that you think the way that you act the way that you feel. The nervous system is at the center of all of it. 

01:43

Now, I'm definitely going to use some scientific language, there's no way around that. And I don't want to dumb down the education because I'm a firm, firm believer that education leads to empowerment, understanding how the system works, getting the psycho education is going to empower you in your healing journey and allow you to advocate for yourself in a really, really important way. But I am going to pair that scientific language with a deep intention of trying to keep it as understandable and relatable to as many people as possible. So when we talk about our nervous system, or when we talk about mind body connection, that's really what we're talking about is our nervous system.

02:22

So your nervous system is this highway of information traveling from your mind to your body and your body to your mind. And what we've learned in the last decade of neuroscience psychology and trauma research is that 80% of this Mind, Body conversation happens from your body, to your brain. And up to this point, most of the main stream mental health support that you might get, and that I initially got my healing journey really stays focused on the brain, on our thoughts. And what we now know is that so much of this healing work happens when we can bring the body into the equation. And understanding the nervous system and how it works and how to leverage it in really tangible ways, is such an important piece, and I think is a piece that is missing for so many. 

03:15

So when we talk about kind of this mind body connection, when we reference the body, when I say nervous system, nervous system dysregulation, the state of your nervous system that is all happening somatically in the body. And then we have our mind, our brain cognition, our thoughts. So when it comes to this body based system, your nervous system, it is important to know that it is hardwired for one thing, and that is your survival. Now think about your nervous system, and have like this internal computer or database, and it has file after file after file of every time in your past where you didn't feel safe. Maybe you weren't safe, didn't get your needs met, you felt rejected, you felt shame. And it is using that programming, that remembering that awareness of all of these different experiences. It also has files of things that made you feel like yourself that brought you joy, etc. But because it's programming, the system is hardwired for survival. It has an emphasis on keeping files at the forefront that reflect times that we didn't get our needs met or that we didn't feel safe. And most of us didn't have the luxury of waiting. Actually, none of us not most of us, none of us had the luxury of waiting until we were adults with life experience and context and a mature brain to write the programming for how to get our needs met, how to stay safe in this world. 

04:50

And so for the most part, a much tinier version of you wrote the rules, wrote the operating manual, that in many, many ways Use you are still living by today. So your nervous system, again is hardwired for survival. And it has this database of all of the things that might call into question your survival. And the thing about this nervous system and our body's physiological stress response is that it's universal. It doesn't know the difference between a tiger and a school bully, it doesn't know the difference between just thinking about something really scary and stressful or actually experiencing and being in that place. And so this nervous system uses something called interoception, to scan our every day, every moment life and assess for danger. 

05:45

So I want you to imagine now that your nervous system is like a lighthouse, right? Imagining a lighthouse and that beam of light, that scanning, right to left, right to left, and your nervous system is scanning your everyday life. And it's asking, Is this safe? And it's checking back in with this database with this internal database? It's like, Is this safe? Does this person feel safe? Does this situation feel safe? Does this environment feel safe? Is this safe? Is this safe, and it's constantly checking back in. And anytime that anything in your environment or in a situation, it pings as familiar to something in that database of a past situation, when you weren't safe or didn't get your needs met, there's an internal alarm that goes off. And that internal alarm is a part of your brain called the amygdala. And this is essentially our like threat detection center. And when we detect that something isn't safe in our environment, we go into some version of survival mode, right? 

06:44

You've probably heard of fight flight or freeze. Now this nervous system has two primary states. And we're going to talk about some other nervous system states in the future. But for right now, it has to physiological when I say the word physiological I mean, body based. And those two states are called your parasympathetic nervous system and your sympathetic nervous system. So your parasympathetic nervous system is your rest and digest state. This is sometimes called your social engagement state. When you are in your parasympathetic state, you feel present, calm, pretty relaxed, you're thinking thoughts like I'm enjoying being here, even in your parasympathetic state can hard things come up, you might feel frustrated, but that internal narrative is always I have, I have what I need to cope with this situation. 

07:36

And so when we talk about being in a regulated state, we're talking about being in this parasympathetic state, calm present, here. And then we have a sympathetic state. And the sympathetic state is your activated state. This is a mobilizing state, when we talk about your fight or flight state, that is your sympathetic state. And so within your nervous system, I want you to think about these two different systems like a seesaw. Going back and forth. Having a regulated nervous system doesn't mean that you're always in that parasympathetic state. Having a regulated nervous system doesn't mean that you always feel calm and good. Having a regulated nervous system means that you have the awareness to recognize when you are dysregulated. And you have the tools that you need to reset to a regulated baseline. 

08:25

So as humans, our physiology, our psychology, all of it, we want that parasympathetic state to be our baseline. And then life introduces some kind of stressor, we go into our stress response, a totally natural stress response, that threat passes, and then we reset. And then another stressor comes and we go into that sympathetic state that prepares us to handle that stressor, whether that stressor is a work presentation, a crying kid, or a car coming as we're trying to cross the road. And again, that stressor passes, and we reset into that parasympathetic state. 

09:00

Well, here's the catch, modern day life has us stuck in a chronic stress loop, or early developmental trauma gets our nervous system stuck in a chronically stressed out loop. Essentially, that just means that we don't ever reset to a regulated baseline before there's another stressor and another stressor and another stressor. And the more time we spend in a particular nervous system state, the more familiar our nervous system becomes with that state, and that becomes our new baseline. And so when we talk about having a dysregulated nervous system, you are stuck in a state of fight flight or freeze of sympathetic activation, which we're going to learn is more that anxiety state or this what's called a dorsal vagal shutdown state, which is more that depression state. 

09:46

So when we're looking at that sympathetic and parasympathetic, that activated state and that regulated state, thinking about it again, like a seesaw, life is absolutely going to have both and what you're going to learn a lot about on this podcast Are the tangible tools that impact one system or another to help you find better balance. But today, I just want you to understand that these two systems exist in every body. And every single person has a sympathetic state that gets activated when you don't feel safe. And every single person also has access to a parasympathetic state. 

10:24

And so much of the work that I do with clients in my practice, is helping them to learn the tangible tools, first to have the awareness that they're in, again, that sympathetic state, and then the tangible tools that help them to feel safer in their body to be more regulated. Okay, so hopefully, now you have some basic understanding of the function and the purpose of your nervous system, the purpose is to keep you safe. And again, thinking about your nervous system, like this database that has a file of every single instance, in your life, when you didn't feel safe. It operates like this lighthouse that's constantly scanning your everyday life. And it's checking back with that database, and assessing for safety. 

11:07

So what does this have to do with anxiety and depression, how to bring all of this together. And I'm going to do this by introducing you to something called the nervous system ladder. And this comes from something called the polyvagal theory. And the nervous system ladder is a visual way. And in the case of today's podcast, I'll be describing it to you, but I'll also put in the shownotes. A link to this graphic if you'd like to reference it. But in my opinion, this nervous system ladder is one of the best maps that we have to understanding the nervous system and how it responds to our thoughts, our behaviors, our lives, and how that translates to anxiety and depression. 

11:49

So imagine that you have this ladder, and on this ladder, we have a representation of three different nervous system states. So at the very top of this ladder is a green box. So the top third, inside this green box that represents your regulation zone, that parasympathetic state, and then you move to the center of the ladder. And the second third of this ladder is a yellow box. And this represents your sympathetic activation, I'll sometimes call this your yellow zone. And then underneath that, that bottom third of the ladder is what is called that dorsal vagal shutdown state. And this is your red zone. 

12:25

So we've got this ladder at the top is our regulated green zone. In the middle is our activated, sympathetic yellow zone. And at the bottom is that shutdown, red zone. And in future episodes, I'll take a deeper dive into the details of each of these states. But a quick overview, regulation, this green zone, this should be the nervous system baseline, like we've talked about, once a stressor has passed, this is where you should return to. And when you're in this state, you are going to feel safe and reassured connected to your body, your environment to people around you. And overall, you feel pretty calm and in control. And you think thoughts like I can do this, I have what it takes to face this. 

13:05

Now, if your nervous system perceives a threat, it is going to move you into a sympathetic fight or flight state. And so when the load on your nervous system, the threat load or the stress load is really light, I want you to imagine that you are standing at the top of this ladder holding a bucket. And that bucket represents your nervous system. So when there is a low stress load, or you feel like you have the strength to to handle it, you're at the top of that ladder, you're in that green zone. 

13:33

Now your nervous system detects a threat, we add stress to that stress bucket, and it pushes you further and further down the ladder as the load on your nervous system as a load in that bucket gets heavier, you can no longer stay at the top of that ladder, you're getting pushed down. And the first place that you get pushed into is that sympathetic that fight or flight state. And this is the things to note about this state is that this is a state that Prime's you to take action. It is a mobilizing state, right fight or flight it is preparing you to either run from this threat or to fight it off. And this is where you're going to feel pretty big emotions, things like anger, irritability. This is where anxiety lives. And the story that you're often telling here are the thoughts that you're having in the state is a story of urgency, right? I have to do this right now or else I have to run right now or else I have to fight right now or else I have to control right now or else. 

14:32

And if when you're in this state, that energy to fight or flee gets to be too intense or too overwhelming. If the stressor lasts too long or gets too big. It adds even more weight into that stress bucket and pushes you into that red zone. And this is what we call dorsal vagal shutdown. And this is when your nervous system becomes so overwhelmed that it shuts down. And so when you In this red zone in this state, you feel numb, disconnected, dissociated. This is where depression lives. And this is a state of immobilization. 

15:11

So if the yellow zone is a state of mobilization, this is a state of immobilization. And it's important to note that these are not theoretical states, depending on the state of your nervous system, your body has different physiology, when you are in that green zone, everything your organs, your blood, heart, lungs, all of it is working in an optimal way. When we're in that sympathetic state, I want you to think about it like pushing the gas pedal on a car, everything goes into overdrive. 

15:42

So some of the things that happen in your body, when you're in this sympathetic state is your blood gets pushed out to your extremities again, so that you can fight or flee, your heart starts to beat faster, your breath rate changes, even your optics in your eyes change. So your pupils dilate, but you create more of like a tunnel vision. And then in this shutdown state, we also have different physiological changes impacting digestion, etc, that lead to this kind of feeling of being really lethargic, numb, flat, and low. And so in this state, there's a lot of kind of despair and shame and feelings of apathy or hopelessness. And so when you're in the shutdown, state, the stories that you're telling yourself, the thoughts that you're having sound a lot like, I can't do this, I can't cope. What's the point, nothing matters, I don't matter. And again, none of us spend 100% of our time in one of the states or the other. 

16:40

But all of us have somewhere on this nervous system ladder that has become our baseline state, our nervous system spent so long here that this is kind of the new normal, it's also really common for a lot of the clients that we work with, in my practice to cycle between yellow and red, yellow, and red, yellow, and red. And that was my story for a long time. Or maybe they've struggled with anxiety for a really, really long time. And now it's showing up more like depression. And when we understand it on this nervous system ladder, and through this lens, that makes perfect sense, because you've been in the yellow zone for so long, and you haven't had the coping tools to move yourself up. And so life is just gonna hand you more and more and more and more and more. And so it makes sense, you can only run an engine at full speed for so long before it breaks down before it shuts down. 

17:33

And so for me, I lived in the yellow zone for a very long time, I struggled with anxiety for a very, very long time. And it was fueled by just productivity based self worth, I needed to go go go, it felt really important for me to be the person who gave so much to others. And at the complete expense of giving to myself, I'll never forget, I was so overwhelmed when time and a friend looked at me and was like, well, like what are you doing to meet your own needs? And she said, I just looked at her like a deer in the headlights. And then she looked at me and she goes, Do you even know what your needs are. And I just burst into tears. Because I had been so disconnected, I had just been in such survival mode for so long, that I didn't even know I was so disconnected from myself and what I needed. And that was just shortly before my anxiety really morphed into depression. And I kind of shut down. 

18:26

I remember sitting at a table with my mom, we were at lunch with the whole family and everyone else had walked away. And I just looked at my mom and I said, I know that I'm not fun to be around right now I know that I am so low energy. And it feels so frustrating to know that and to not feel like I can do anything to change it. And that was when I finally got to a place where I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go to the doctor and ask for help. I'm gonna go try therapy, and although supportive for a short season, and I can dive into my story more in a future episode. But what turned the page for me was understanding this mind body system. 

19:04

And I was able to look back on my life and be like, of course, of course you're struggling. You have all of these things on your plate, you've been through all of these things. And nobody taught you how to handle that. And so when we talk about trauma, I know this is a loaded word. And we're gonna have so many more in depth conversations about it. But when we think about trauma as being anything, that dysregulates your nervous system outside of your ability to cope. So trauma is not what happens to you, but it's what happens inside your nervous system as a result of what's happening to you. And this is why trauma isn't universal, why you or I could have gone through some very similar things in our life and maybe one of us walks away and we're okay and the other one has lasting symptoms because of that event. And so thinking about trauma as any time that you didn't get to close that stress cycle you didn't get to reset and that extra activated survival energy gets stored in As your system and resets your nervous system baseline, and so taking a moment to kind of reflect on what feels the most familiar to you, is it this sympathetic activation? Is it this shutdown, or maybe it's, you're doing well, right now you've done the healing work and you are feeling regulated more often than not. 

20:18

And also knowing that it's totally normal to have some really high anxiety days, and then to feel like you've shut down for a few days, and then some high anxiety days and to shut down. And again, when we understand it, through this nervous system lens, we can normalize that experience. And I think this is the bottom line. And maybe the biggest takeaway that I want you to have from this conversation today is that it's possible that your nervous system is actually working exactly as it's designed to what if nothing has gone wrong. 

20:51

If you look at the current state of your nervous system, it is always a direct reflection of your past lived experience, plus your current life circumstances, your current life stressors, minus the regulating tools or resources that you have. And I'm going to repeat that, because this I think, allows for so much understanding, the current state of your nervous system is your past lived experiences, combined with your current life circumstances, minus offset by the regulating tools or resources that you do or don't have. 

21:28

And so when it comes to healing, those are the three players that we're working with, you want to minimize the traumatic and lasting impacts of your past live experience. You want to minimize the stressors, and the signals of not being safe in your current life. And then you want to grow this toolbox of things that you know, help you to feel more regulated, feel more capable, feel more confident, feel more safe. And this is exactly what I hope to guide you on in this podcast. This is exactly what we do in our coaching programs. 

22:05

And we actually do this in a little bit of the reverse order. And so where traditional talk therapy oftentimes jumps right into your past, we don't seek support. Most of the time when we're doing well. We seek support when we're dysregulated, when we're struggling, and why I think talk therapy was not a good fit for me was because it took me in such a dysregulated state, and then invited me into conversation about my most vulnerable and hard and heavy experiences in my life. And when we talk about those things, talking can be a beautiful part of healing. But when we talk about those things, it's additionally dysregulated. So if I'm already dysregulated. And I don't know how my nervous system works, and I don't have any tools to keep me regulated. Well, I felt like I got to a place in therapy where I better understood why I was anxious, but I had no tangible tools to be any less anxious. And I would often leave sessions feeling more anxious and didn't have a clue how to reset myself. And so understanding your nervous system, and how to regulate it, in my opinion has to happen first before any of that deep healing work. 

23:13

And so what we do in our coaching is we start with those tools and those resources. And part of that is the education. Part of that is helping you to understand your nervous system, and how to reframe anxiety and depression not from these like dooming diagnoses that you just have to learn to manage your whole life. But to reframe to maybe my anxiety and depression actually makes sense. Maybe the symptoms make perfect sense, based on the load that my nervous system has had to carry based on the life that I've lived and my the current life stressors, maybe it's totally appropriate for me to be in this sympathetic activated, anxious state. 

23:49

Or maybe it's totally appropriate for me to feel shut down because I've been carrying this heavy load for so long. And we can shift this narrative from there's something innately broken and wrong about you to, Oh, of course, I'm struggling in this way. And now I want to learn what I can do about it. And so, in moving through this healing journey, it is so important that you understand that you have this system, you understand how it works and the role that it plays in your anxiety and depression so that you can start to leverage it, you can start to work with it to move towards healing, you can understand the lifestyle shifts that need to happen. 

24:28

You can discover some of these somatic body based tangible tools that can push back against your stress response against the survival mode in real time to increase your capacity. And then with that new increased capacity, you can take on some of that deeper healing work those harder conversations. 

24:48

So in summary, you have your nervous system. It is this database. It scans the world and it's constantly checking back with this database. Is this safe? Is it safe? Is this safe and when something's not safe If that sympathetic state gets activated, you have this nervous system ladder, these three primary states of your nervous system regulated, it's that green zone at the top. And as load gets added to your nervous system, it pushes you further and further down the nervous system ladder first to that yellow zone, this is your activated state, this is your fight or flight state. And if you still don't have the tools to regulate and move yourself back up the ladder, eventually it will push you down into that red zone, this shutdown state. 

25:28

And so the three tangible takeaways I want you to have from this episode, these are the things that you can start to think about or do today in your healing journey. is first, this reframe of exploring how it feels for you to understand anxiety and depression through this nervous system lens? Does it feel hopeful? Are you curious about it, maybe it still feels a little confusing. That's okay, too. But just really stepping into this reframe of like, maybe I'm not broken. And living in this truth of our brain and our nervous system are plastic, they're malleable. If you can dysregulate your nervous system, you can regulate it. And that brought so much hope into my healing journey. 

26:12

So tangible TAKEAWAY NUMBER ONE is just this invitation to explore how it feels for you to understand anxiety and depression through this nervous system lens. 

26:20

And this leads to tangible takeaway number two, which is to get curious about what nervous system state is your current baseline. So I want to invite you to periodically check in with yourself throughout the day and ask yourself where on this nervous system ladder Am I right now? Do I feel good? Do I feel anxious and activated? Or do I feel pretty shut down and depressed right now. And before changing anything, we have to build awareness, we have to come into conversation and start to befriend the system. And so before engaging in any of the tangible tools or practices, get to a place where you can check in at any point in the day and identify? Nope, I feel good. I'm really activated. I feel anxious right now or I feel depressed and start to be familiar with. Well, how do I know? How do I know that I'm in the yellow zone or the red zone? What does that experience look like for me? 

27:11

And then tangible TAKEAWAY NUMBER THREE, is, as you feel anxiety or depression show up for you get curious and ask yourself, if these symptoms were here for a reason. If they were trying to protect me from something, what might that be? So often, when we feel symptoms of anxiety or depression, we immediately turn away we buffer? And of course we do. They're intense, and they're hard. But in moments where maybe they show up in a little bit of a less intense way or a little bit of a less hard way, can you turn towards them with this new, powerful reframe? And just ask curiously, if the symptoms are here to protect me, if it does make sense? What's there for me, and asking these questions can be a really powerful window into future healing work. 

28:00

So that is it for today's episode, my hope is that you're walking away with some new nuggets, some new functional understanding of your nervous system and the role that it plays in anxiety and depression with this powerful reframe that you are not broken, I don't believe that any of us are broken. And the hundreds of clients that we have worked through, I have been able to get each and every one of them to a place where they believe that to where they can see that their symptoms, all their symptoms, and all of them. 

28:33

And my promise to you is that all of your symptoms and all of you make sense through this nervous system lens as well. When you are able to step back and better understand your past lived experience. Be honest about the current life experiences and stressors that you have up against the tools and the resources that you do or don't yet have. And there is so much compassion and hope that comes into your healing journey when you start to see this and ultimately believe this for yourself. So thank you for being here and I look forward to having so many more incredible conversations like this with you so soon.

29:19

Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside Rhys, my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space or apply for our one on one anxiety depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here. And we'll see you next time.