NERVOUS SYSTEM DYSREGULATION CHECKLIST
What Is Nervous System Dysregulation?
"Nervous system dysregulation occurs when the body's autonomic nervous system (ANS), responsible for regulating involuntary bodily function like heart rate and digestion, is imbalanced. This can result from chronic stress, trauma, or other factors that overstimulate the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight response) and/or inhibit the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest response). Symptoms can include anxiety, digestive issues, fatigue and emotional instability. It can also result in rashes, rosacea, eczema, IBS, pancreatitis, chest tightness, ongoing sense of dread, exhaustion, burnout..."
Health Mastery Institute
How Does Nervous System Dysregulation Affect Me?
Most women today struggle with mild to severe nervous system dysregulation and are in a state of functional freeze either daily or periodically, leading to exhaustion and burnout. While men also experience NSD, the stats are higher for women.
Nervous system dysregulation derails you and makes life that much more challenging, like swimming upstream, and it makes goals appear unattainable or too difficult to achieve.
Why is it that your life seems to be falling apart when you want to have it all together? Nine times out of ten when this is the case, you can guarantee that nervous system dysregulation is at work.
NERVOUS SYSTEM DYSREGULATION CHECKLIST
You might have nervous system dysregulation if you experience the following scenarios and symptoms.
1. You function well under pressure in a fast paced environment. You're calm yet alert during stressful situations, but you're too exhausted to do anything outside of this environment.
2. People who know you come to you for emotional support. You are fully present with them when they do, but you can't seem to get anything done or finish a task when you're alone.
3. You are easily triggered by certain situations and interactions involving others. Your reaction to the trigger is either disproportionate and made known, or you keep it to yourself and it affects your mental health for a period of time and you feel physically unwell afterwards.
4. You don't digest food well. You get irritable digestion from nowhere and a bloated stomach. You suffer with stomach cramps and symptoms like IBS, but it isn't that condition.
5. You have eczema, rosacea, psoriasis, acne, or cyclical skin issues. You periodically have hair, skin, lymphatic and hormonal problems. Skin rashes flare up when you're stressed.
6. You experience chest tightness and shortness of breath when you're triggered. You find it hard to regulate your breathing pattern when you're stressed.
7. You find it hard to make decisions on minor and major situations when you are stressed, like something is causing you to freeze up about the decision.
8. You habitually feel numb and can't connect to your feelings. You don't feel bad, but you can't say you feel good either. Your range of emotions seems to be minimal.
9. Your brain is overactive but you habitually numb out every day with things like watching TV, scrolling on social media, doing for others, or needing to zone-out.
10. You run through worst case scenarios or worry about the future, rather than take present action now.
11. You beat youself up about past mistakes and you ruminate about certain events that are out of your control.
12. You have an ongoing sense of dread, worry, or anxiety, while habitially going though bouts of exhaustion and burnout.
13. You feel like life is passing you by and things seem unreal. You aren't connecting deeply to others, or to yourself. You are surviving day to day in functional freeze mode.
What Is Functional Freeze?
"Functional freeze is a specific response to severe stress or trauma where you become immobile or unresponsive. This is part of the body's survival mechanism, governed by the dorsal vagal complex of the parasympathetic nervous system. In this state you may feel numb, disconnected or unable to take action, as if you are "frozen".
Health Mastery Institute
Healing Nervous System Dysregulation
Once you heal NSD, you will likely still be triggered, but how you move through that trigger will be entirely different than when you were dysregulated. The aim is to heal the dysregulation and you will naturally respond differently to life.
Just like a deepening meditation practice will teach you, the mind chatter during meditation may not stop, but you get better at observing it without becoming involved in it. From that quiet space everything changes. Your body and mind start to reflect one another and you reach homeostasis.
The Mind-Body Detox
The aim of healing NSD is to catch it early before a trigger blows up into a derailment through a physical symptom, burnout phase, or an avoidable argument.
It's worth noting that desiring to be perfect contributes to NSD. You can heal from it, but that requires understanding your perfection already, NSD and all.
We cover how to heal from this and more in the Mind-Body Detox Program.
