6 Nervous System States & Their Stories (Part 2: B2B Series)

In this second episode of the "Back to Basics" series, we explore the six nervous system states and how understanding them can transform your approach to anxiety and depression healing.

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Transcript

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Welcome to regulate and rewire an 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. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. 

Welcome back. This is part two of my ongoing Back to the Basics series where I am unpacking all of the things I think you need to know in order to heal, understand and approach anxiety and depression through a nervous system lens in a way that gives mental and physical health an equal seat at the table. In our last episode, we talked about the nervous system, what it is, how it is constantly looking for safety or danger cues. I talked about how your nervous system acts a little bit like a lighthouse, scanning outside, inside and in between, checking in with instinct as well as past lived experience and asking, Is this safe? Is this safe? Does this feel familiar? And when your nervous system perceives more things as being safe, you are up at that top of the ladder, in that green zone. But as more and more threats or stressors come into your nervous system, that bucket we talked about gets heavier and heavier and pushes you further down that nervous system ladder into protective states of activation, where anxiety lives or shut down where depression lives. So my hope with this was helping you to really reorient to anxiety and depression, not necessarily as these arbitrary diagnoses that you're born with and you're stuck with, but as a series of symptoms, as protective states that make sense given your past lived experiences and your current life circumstances, and that maybe anxiety and depression aren't these completely separate disorders or diagnoses, but they are actually just a spectrum of survival mode. Anxiety is a first line of defense. Can I activate? Can I avoid and flee from the stressor, or do I need to fight and move towards it? And when those stressors get too big or they last too long, that overwhelms our nervous system and it moves into a state of shutdown. 

And today's conversation is to provide more detail, more understanding of these different nervous system states. We're going to talk about the three primary states I introduced you to in the last episode, regulation, activation and shutdown. I'm also going to talk about three different what we call mixed states of play, stillness and freeze. And I think it's important to understand that each of these states has a unique evolutionary purpose. It has a unique set of characteristics and a profile. And when we are in each of these states, we are taking in and interpreting situations in our lives differently and understanding these different states, building general awareness about the nervous system. My hope is that it is going to help you create more specific and unique awareness around your nervous system, because you'll see that there is very different physiology and psychology throughout these states. You have something very different happening in your mind and body when you are in a green zone of regulation than when you are in a yellow zone of activation versus that red zone of shutdown. And as we continue this series and we talk about different tools, different ways to regulate in the moment, reactively and proactively, having this awareness of the unique physiological and psychological characteristics of each of these states is going to help you understand why different tools, different practices, different interventions work different and maybe better depending on which nervous system state you find yourself in, in the moment or most often. 

And I want to preface this conversation to prepare your system for what will likely be a pretty information dense episode. But as always, I promise at the end, I'm going to give a easy to understand summary and our three tangible takeaways. Now, before I move into detailing the different characteristics and profiles of the various nervous system states that you might find yourself in, I want to offer an invitation and then introduce a concept that I think is going to apply throughout that share. 

So number one is, like I said, I am going to be giving you general profiles of these Nervous System States. I want to invite you, either as you're listening or as you go throughout your week to reflect on how do I uniquely experience some of these Nervous System States. Or what is it that Amanda is saying that feels really familiar to my experience. I would love for you to walk away from this episode being like, Oh my gosh. I didn't know that that mixed data freeze was where I'm spending most of my time. Or, you know what? Yep, just like I thought, activation, anxiety, that's my current baseline state right now, having the awareness of where you're spending the most time again can inform how you might want to approach or places you might want to start in regulating your nervous system. This personal application of the general information that I'm going to share on this podcast is something that we call nervous system mapping. And this is something that is foundational. It is something that we support all of our one on one clients. In doing is gaining awareness and creating their unique nervous system map so that in any given moment they can answer the question, What state Am I in right now? How do I know that I'm in that state? And then, what do I want to do, if anything about being in this state, do I want to change it? Do I want to lean in? How can I support myself here? And that is really at the crux of everyday nervous system regulation, is being able to say, Where am I on that nervous system ladder? How do I know and what if anything do I want to do about it? 

Now, the concept that I think is going to give more context for today's conversation is a saying that is used frequently in nervous system healing spaces, which is quote, that your state determines your story, your state determines your story. And instead of explaining what this means, I want to illustrate it through an example. So let's say you have a friend who usually texts you back pretty quickly, and you send him a text asking a question, and now you realize it has been hours with no response. If today you're feeling pretty activated, maybe you woke up anxious. You have a lot going on. You're feeling just your mind is racing. You might notice this and immediately jump to, oh my gosh. What's wrong? Something must be wrong. Maybe they're mad at me. Maybe they're not okay. You might reread all of the last text messages or replay the last conversation that you had. Did something happen when your body is activated, feeling buzzy and urgent, your thoughts will mirror that. 

Now let's stay instead of it being maybe a high anxiety day. You are feeling exhausted, you are feeling overwhelmed, burnt out or shut down. Maybe some depression is present for you. You might notice they haven't text you back, and instead, the thoughts you think are, why do I even try? They don't care. It doesn't matter. I don't matter. 

Now let's contrast that with a day that you're feeling mostly fine, you got good sleep. You're just moving through your day, doing your things. You notice it's been hours with no response. Now your brain might think something like, Oh, weird. They usually text me back. No big deal if they haven't responded in the next hour, maybe I'll just give them a call to get that question answered. They're probably busy doing their life too. When we're in this regulated state, the story that we tell is usually less about us. We're more adaptable. So in this simple example, you can see that nothing about the situation changed, but the story we wrote about it was completely different. The story we had about the situation, about ourselves, about the other person, was different depending on the state that we were filtering it through. You might think about your state like tinted glasses. When you're in an activated state, when you're feeling anxious, it's like you're wearing yellow tinted glasses. Everything around you is going to feel a little bit more urgent, a little bit more angsty when you are struggling with depression, when you're really shut down, you're wearing red tinted glasses, and there's a lot of apathy towards the world around you. The story about yourself other situations, gets put through that lens. And so my goal with today's conversation is really to help you understand these states, to understand the different colored glasses that we put on throughout our life that can alter our perception as well as our responses to the world around us. 

So when we are supporting our clients in mapping out their different nervous system states, we look at five different categories of characteristics that make up the unique profile or blueprint, if you will, of these individual states. So the five categories that we're going to look through and talk about today are sensations, emotions, thoughts, behaviors and. Situations. So sensations are the body based experience, right? You know that you feel different when you are regulated, then when you are on the verge of a panic attack, you are experiencing that very differently in your body. My question to you would be, how? How does it feel different to be regulated, verse, panicked. So each of these different states has a different body based sensational blueprint. Emotions. These are your feelings. Anger. Lives in a different state than contentment, then anxiety, then overwhelm, then we have our thoughts. So when you're in the green zone or the yellow zone or the red zone, what are the thoughts that you think about yourself, others, your ability, situations, the world, and so taking a look at like I just shared, the different stories that you tell in these different states, behaviors are the things that you often do when you are in this state. 

So for example, I only bite my nails when I'm stressed, when I'm activated. I typically only mindless scroll when I'm in a free state, when I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed. I put my clothes away immediately after taking them off or after folding the laundry, only when I am in a regulated enough state, so I know if I look at the floor and my clothes have just been dropped Upon removal, Ooh, okay, I'm not as regulated as I might be. And then we help our clients explore situations. So these are situations specific to them, for the sake of today, specific to you that you know, either create a particular state or increase the intensity of that so this is all about building awareness. We're not trying to change the state that we're in right now. We are simply trying to build awareness of these different states in these five categorical ways, because the more data points you have for your unique experience, the easier it is for you to pick up on what state Am I in and what do I need to do to support myself in this place. And we're going to start first by looking at the three primary states I introduced in the last conversation, starting with regulation, also known as your green zone. So this represents your state of optimal nervous system regulation. This is what we sometimes call your rest and digest, or your safe and social nervous system state. This is when your internal lighthouse, AKA your nervous system, detects more cues of support and safety than it does stressors. And I want to reiterate that we do not aim to stay here constantly, but we do want to be in this green zone of regulation more often than not, because it's when we are here that we are able to heal, that our internal body systems are operating optimally when we are in this state, we are more clear, headed and authentically engaging with our life. 

Now let's talk about the profile or the blueprint of this state. Sensations you might experience. Here are things like being warm, steady, relaxed, stable energy levels, steady heart rate, good digestion, relaxed, breathing, all of those being bodily functions or body based sensations. So maybe think, how do you know? How do you feel sensationally when you're in a regulated, grounded state, emotions that live here, relaxed, present, calm, grounded, curious, creative, capable, content, hopeful, thoughts that we think here, I can handle this. There's enough time. Everything is okay. The world is safe enough. And then our behaviors. This is where we might be, playful. We might have what I call appropriate pacing. We don't feel like we're rushing through all of our tasks. We're able to be introspective and reflective. One of the behaviors I have here is that I'm able to check in with myself before I make a decision. I'm really social. I can be compassionate. And then when it comes to situations, the question here is, what situations help you to access or deepen your sense of regulation? Maybe it's taking a walk, spending time with loved ones, playing with a pet, or your kids exercise. So what I gave you was a generic profile of regulation with an invitation for you to explore how you uniquely experience this in those different ways. And one of the things I want to point out about being in this regulated state is that initially in your healing journey, if you have been in states of activation or survival for a really long time, it is going to feel strange. Change, it might not actually feel safe to feel safe. It might not feel safe to be calm, grounded or activated. 

Almost every single one of our clients goes through this phase of Amanda. I think I'm anxious that I'm less anxious, or the minute that I notice I'm feeling calm or grounded or regulated, that noticing spikes my anxiety, and I want to normalize that experience. Because, of course, it does. Your internal database likely is saying something like, oh yeah. Remember, remember that last time you let your guard down? Remember that last time you stopped catastrophizing and planning for Worst case scenario and that thing, that thing happened, so don't let yourself be unguarded ever again. And so a huge part of regulating your nervous system and healing is re familiarizing yourself with the fact that it's safe to feel safe. It's safe to be regulated, to be calm, to let my guard down. Now, of course, that has to happen in environments and in relationships and in an actual life where you are safe. 

So the first step to being able to cultivate a felt sense of safety around regulation is that you actually need to be around people and in places and situations where safety is the reality. So now let's talk about activation, that yellow zone. This is when you are in that sympathetic nervous system state. Some common sensations here might be feeling shaky, fidgety, a tight chest, fast heart rate, shallow breathing, tension. You might notice there's clenching, or you have tunnel vision. Some clients experience like dizziness, clamminess or nausea, emotions that live in your yellow zone, worry, anxiety, fear, anger, panic, rage, irritation, frustration, guilt, feeling chaotic or urgent. And oftentimes, when we're in these sensational or emotional states, our thoughts are spiraling too. I have to do this right now, or else I cannot rest or slow down. Are they mad at me? There's no time I have to fix this. And our behaviors are catastrophic, thinking. We're often protective in our behavior. So we might yell, we might snap, we might be more confrontational. We have a hard time relaxing. We feel in need to control we might overwork sleep disruptions. So this is a general profile of that yellow zone. 

What are some of the sensations, emotions, thoughts or behaviors that cue you into I'm stressed right now. I'm activated, I'm anxious. And then maybe you want to take some time to reflect on what are predictable situations that I know increase activation for me or worsen it make me even more activated. Maybe that's preparing for a meeting, driving in traffic, maybe it's crowded in noisy spaces, anything that is new or unfamiliar to you. And so it can be helpful to just build some awareness around those situations, because when those situations are unavoidable, this gives you the awareness to say, Okay, I'm walking into a situation I know can be quite activating for me. How can I support myself in that? What tools do I need to do during, before or after to help my body anchor into little micro moments of safety in something I know that can be really challenging for me, then we have our red zone state is your state of shutdown, and this represents your nervous system's final protective option. I want you to think about this as your systems, like emergency power saving mode. This gets activated when we either actually can't, or we perceive that we cannot take action to make the stressors or the threat go away. Or when we are experiencing extreme overwhelm and our resources are severely depleted, like we talked about last week, being in an activated, anxious state, it takes a toll on your internal system. It is very metabolically demanding, and it is not something that we can sustain forever. So if you are in a Go, go, go, go, go. Activated state for too long or too intensely, it is going to lead to burnout or to shut down in some way. And this protective state has two primary goals, immobilization and disconnection. Its goal is to conserve energy through immobilization and to reduce pain through disconnection. And we actually know now that when we are in the shutdown state, our body produces natural pain relieving chemicals to help numb and suppress and so sensations that are common here is a sense of numb, heavy, foggy, physiologically, oftentimes this is where we lose our appetite. There's low energy. We're not really in our body. We're. There's slow, shallow breathing. We feel disconnected, emotions that you may find here, shut down, dissociated, depressed, helpless, hopeless, shame, feeling just kind of out of it, or lonely, disinterested, or maybe some apathy. And thoughts that are common here are things like it doesn't even matter. I can't cope. I can't do this. Everything is so hard. What's the point? I'm invisible. I'm all alone. No one cares about me. And behaviors that are common when we're in this shutdown state are withdrawal, isolation, zoning out. We have a really flat tone to our voice or to our facial expressions, trouble speaking or making eye contact. 

I will never forget this was in a time in my life where I was struggling with depression. I was in an airport after a family vacation, and on this family vacation, we had also gone wedding dress shopping for a sister, and I had been very disconnected, very dissociated through that experience in a way that she was able to sense it had been really hurtful to her. I just remember being in the airport, and it was a moment of just my mom and I, and I looked at her with tears in my eyes, and I just told her. I said, I know, I know that I'm miserable to be around right now, and I want you to know that I'm trying my best, and I know that I'm falling woefully short, but this is like, this is where I am, and I just remember that no matter how hard I tried, I could not bring like excitement or inflection or facial expressions. 

Similarly, this was years prior. This was probably my first season of depression, although I didn't recognize it at the time. I was on my collegiate track team, but I had an injury, so I wasn't practicing and it was raining. One of my roommates was also on the track team. I remember she called and she's like, Hey, like, can you come pick me up? And I must have responded something like, yeah, sure, because she immediately was like, well, if it's like, a problem, like, don't worry about it. And I was like, no, like, I'll come get you. And for the life of me, I had no problem coming to get her, but for the life of me, I could not get the flatness out of my voice, and I was able to use that drive to recalibrate. And I just looked at her, I said, Hey, I want you to know I was totally fine coming to get you from practice. I know it didn't sound like that on the phone. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just like in I think I called it my funk. I'm just in a funk. 

And so how do you experience burnout, shut down, whatever you want to label your unique experience depression. And can you identify particular situations that exasperate this or can create this for you, getting to this point of immobilization or shutdown, this often can come from situations where you feel stuck. There's no clear way out. For me, it often came from prolonged periods of stress or overworking. This can come from re experiencing traumatic memories or being in situations that feel familiar to that. So what does this look like, or how is it experienced for you? 

So that was a overview of our three primary states, and it's important to start there, because we need to understand some of the different physiological components and psychological components of those primary states, to understand the mixed states. And I wish it was so simple that we just had these three primary states and we found ourselves in one or the other, but we are pesky humans, and our experiences are never binary. 

And so let's talk about the mixed states of play, stillness and freeze. So let's start with play. So this is when you have a mix of regulation and activation. When you are if you're thinking about your nervous system ladder, you are falling somewhere in the middle where green starts to fade to yellow. So you're not fully green, you're not fully yellow. This is a regulated mixed state that happens when we have a combination of safety and energized activation simultaneously. So when we're in the state, this allows us to be more spontaneous, creative, excited, while still maintaining a foundation of security. So I want you to imagine for a second that you're playing soccer. It is not very advantageous for you to be super calm and chill. You actually want to have some adrenaline in your system. You want your physiology to be primed for mobilization, so that you can have quicker response times you can get to the ball. You want to be mentally sharp and focused, because it's fast paced. And these are all things that come from your sympathetic nervous system state. But it is also not very advantageous for you to be fully in your yellow zone, where you feel really anxious. Or too aggressive. What we want is to be present and energized with this healthy amount of competition for a soccer game. Now the thing is, this zone of play is not just for athletes, though. This is also the zone that you could be in when you are taking a ceramics class, when you are doing a puzzle when you are playing tag with your kids. And what we know from research, and this is where understanding that this state exists, and the characteristics and the strengths of the state, this is something you can leverage in your healing, because we know that this play state is directly linked to more efficient neuroplasticity. So this is like your brain's ability to change, to learn and to have more habit formation, to also unlearn old limiting beliefs or patterns that are no longer serving you. Now when it comes to this play state and learning retention, neuroscience research highlights for us that being in a play state activates dopamine and serotonin pathways. Okay, we want those. Those are helpful, and this can improve memory consolidation and learning retention. So play based learning can cut the number of repetitions needed to remember or learn something new by nearly half, especially when compared to higher stress environments. 

So for example, if it typically takes hearing something 20 plus times to learn in a neutral environment a neutral state, it could take only seven to 10 exposures in a play state. This is really awesome to know a if you are anybody who works with children or in the school system, what does it look like to create a more playful state when learning new concepts? Or as an adult, we are trying to learn new things all the time. How can we make that experience feel more like play? Or how can we bring a playful state into that? And then something we talk about a lot with clients, is this play state in regards to habit formation, because when it comes to regulated living, remember, if you're not living well, you can't expect to feel well, and a lot of times, we need to change the habits that we have in our daily life, to live in a way that supports nervous system regulation and health. And here, research suggests that behaviors learned in a positive emotional state or in a play state, are more easily ingrained as habits. 

Two really incredible books about habits are Atomic Habits by James Clear and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg, and in both, they emphasize that emotions lock habits in, not just repetition. And so when a behavior feels good or fun, it's easier to stick to. And what the research shows us, in terms of numbers, is that a new behavior generally takes 66 to 200 repetitions to become an automatic habit in a neutral state, but in a play state, habit formation can happen in as few as 30 to 50 repetitions. Okay, cool. How can we make our habit formation a little bit more playful? So that is the mixed state of play. 

Then we have stillness. So this is another regulated mixed state that combines the red zone with the green zone. It is a unique combination of deep rest and present awareness. This is often referred to as immobilization without fear. So you can think about this like a deep meditation, breath work. You might experience this in the shavasana pose after a yoga class. So these are moments of deep stillness, rest and rejuvenation, and this final mixed state is freeze, or what I sometimes call the orange zone, and this represents a unique state where your nervous system is simultaneously activated and shut down. So again, if you're bringing this nervous system ladder to mind, this is where the yellow zone starts to fade into the red zone, right there. There's a little section that blends into orange, hence why I call it the orange zone. So unlike pure shutdown, freeze, creates this really distressing paradox where there is an urgent need to act combined with an inability to take action. You feel really revved up on the inside, and yet you are stuck. You are immobilized. This oftentimes, on the inside is like, I have to right now, but I can't. I have to right now, but I can't. And so when we are looking at this through those five characteristics, sensations might be stiff, trapped, you have the surge of energy inside, met with stuff. Sickness or shut down racing thoughts, but also feeling blank. 

Sometimes clients say this is a really heavy place. Emotions here are stuck, trapped, confused, anxious, met with overwhelm, feeling incapable, feeling like you're always behind the thoughts we think here are often really contradicting. I have to right now, but I can't. I should, but I can't. I feel so behind it all feels impossible. And behaviors that we see here is a lot of thinking about doing something all day but not actually doing it. We'll label ourselves procrastinators here, wanting to do something but not doing it mindless, scrolling or other distracting actions. There's a lot of avoidance here in this free state. And one thing that has been really eye opening is how many of our clients recently have been identifying with this as their default state. And if we had more time, and what I'll likely do in future conversations is probably an episode just on the free state, because there's different spectrums of freeze. 

There's functional freeze, where you are going through the motions, you're doing the things, but you're just on autopilot. You're exhausted, you're unable to relax, you're addicted to media. There's also the fawn response falls here, where there is kind of a mix of activated energy, but also feeling really stuck and trapped, which turns out to be people pleasing. But for the sake of today, I think what people resonate most with in this state is oh yeah, like that internal urgency with the external inability to take action, like almost, if somebody was looking at you, they'd be like, oh procrastinator, or they're shut down, they're depressed, they're burnt out, but you almost don't have the luxury of the apathy of the like, well, it doesn't matter. I don't care. Instead, this external inaction is met with internal distress and guilt and urgency, and that can feel like a really paralyzing experience. Okay? 

Today's episode was very informationally dense. If you made it all the way here to the end, I commend you, and I want to reward you by bringing it together with a brief summary. 

So we have three primary states and three mixed states. Our primary states are regulation, activation and shutdown, and our mixed states are play stillness and freeze. And there's obviously a spectrum within all of these and within those six states, we have three states of survival mode or dysregulation, and three states of healing mode or regulation. So we have regulation stillness and play, which are states that are often healing and rejuvenating on your healing journey, what does it look like to opt into experiences and situations and relationships that make regulation stillness and play more possible, and then we have our protective states of activation shut down and freeze on your healing journey. What can you do to better understand your unique experience of those states and what contributes to your nervous system of feeling the need to stay in any of those states for a prolonged period of time? And what is it that you can do about some of those things. And I just want to reiterate, reiterate, reiterate, that we need all of these states. All of these states are part of the human experience, and none of them are good or bad. It's more a matter of how flexibly and appropriately we move through these states and how much awareness we have over how long we're spending in states of protection versus regulation. 

Now, as a final wrap up, here are your three takeaways. 

Number one, your state determines your story. Whether your body is sending signals of safety, activation or overwhelm, up to your brain, changes the way that you think and perceive yourself, your life, the world around you. 

Number two, understanding the different states and building awareness around how you uniquely experience them is foundational to nervous system regulation and healing anxiety and depression in this way. 

And number three is an invitation. I want to invite you to map your own nervous system to move through your daily life with more awareness of how you're experiencing these states. Or maybe you want to choose to sit down and write out okay, when I'm in the green zone, what are the sensations, emotions, thoughts, behaviors and situations? What about the yellow zone? And do a more formal mapping of this. And if this is something that you would like support in. This is something we do with each and every one of our clients. 

The final thing that I'll give is, I think, a really simple, tangible place to start, if you're like Amanda, just tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do. Here's what I want to invite you to do, is to take a piece of paper. Yeah, and on it right what state Am I in right now? And how do I know? And I want you to take that piece of paper, and I want you to tape it to the back of your bathroom door, to a mirror, any place that you were going to see at least a couple times a day when you see this. What this is going to do is it's going to invite you to check in, to check in with your body. What state Am I in right now? Where do I think I am on that nervous system ladder? And then, how do I know try to source for at least one element, one sensation, one emotion, one thought or one behavior that tells you that that's where you are. And if you do this enough times over time, you are going to map out your unique nervous system to build more awareness and to invite yourself into more mind body connection. 

The number one reason we become dysregulated is because we disconnect from our body we stop engaging in that conversation. So one of the most important steps in regulating your nervous system is just re initiating that mind body conversation. 

All right, friends, thank you for being here. As always. I'm sending so much hope and healing your way.

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 Rise, my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space, or apply for our one on one anxiety and 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 I'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai