Why regulating your nervous system and “let them” are harmful...and what to do instead.
Anywhere you look on social media nowadays there are a plethora of hacks on how to “regulate” your nervous system. “Do these 5 things”, or “try this amazing hack” or any other combination of quick fixes that will solve all your life’s problems in 30 seconds or even worse just “let them”.
With the NeuroFascia Approach we work to expand the nervous systems capacity and fluidity. So that we can respond appropriately, without becoming overwhelmed and also return to rest again.
The idea being promoted is that a regulated nervous system is one that is calm, unflappable, always steady, never lose your cool, ad nauseam. This is harmful. This idea that we should be in a steady state all the time in order to live happy, healthy lives, is simply not true.
A healthy nervous system is flexible, fluid and responsive. A healthy nervous system has access to anger, joy, boundaries, it has access to fight and flight and freeze and also to restful readiness. We need to be able to get angry, to be scared, to speak up for ourselves or others, we need to have access to our fight response, and our flight response to get away from danger. We need to have access to freeze when the threat is overwhelming or inescapable. And then afterwards we need to fluidity within our nervous system to return to a state of relaxed readiness. That is how a healthy nervous system operates.
The recently popularized “Let them” theory also feeds into this idea of passivity, of being cool, calm and collected. I wholeheartedly disagree.
If someone is being rude to us, not respecting our boundaries, being harmful, then we absolutely should have activation in our nervous system to appropriately defend ourselves against this and when it is over we return to relaxed readiness.
The challenge many of us face is that our systems presently lack the fluidity and flexibility to move into states of activation and back out of them again. We need to be able to move into activation just as much as we need to be able to move out of it again. If we don’t have access to the activation, our sympathetic activation, then we don’t have access to our life force. The energy which both defends us and also allows for joy, motivation, direction and vitality in our lives.
Beware the “regulated nervous system hacks” and don’t just “let them”.
Work to expand your capacity to access your healthy fight and flight and joy motivation and vitality. To learn more on how to access your healthy activation you can check out this free guide to moving out of functional freeze.