One thing we are passionate about, here at Texarkana Counseling Collective, is providing our clients with the information they need to understand their experiences. Let us begin by saying you’re not crazy. Your nervous system is simply working overtime to protect you from danger. Allow us a simplified version of how this happens: Our brain works extremely fast, and every piece of sensory information we take in is quickly sent to our amygdala, our “danger detector.”
Our danger detector determines if the sensory information coming in is safe or not. If it is deemed unsafe, it will kick our entire system into survival mode. When we’re in survival mode, the doorways to the parts of our brain responsible for logic, critical thinking, curiosity, and connection are slammed shut. Our brain’s only job now is to keep us alive. Which is great, unless the danger it is detecting isn’t actually dangerous at all.
Our Brain: Expert Pattern Detector
When we experience something really difficult, our nervous system does not label a single aspect of the event as dangerous. Instead, it takes in every bit of sensory information related to that event and logs it as potentially dangerous. In this way, our brain ensures we don’t miss a single cue for this threat again.
Let’s say, for instance, you are walking down the street on a sunny day. One house you pass is having a barbecue in the back yard. I’m walking on sunshine, oooooh is playing over the speakers. A yellow school bus full of children drives by followed by a black car. A guy in a red and blue plaid shirt is walking his large brown dog and you are approaching each other. Something happens. The dog startles and starts barking ferociously. It gets off the leash and starts to chase you. You jump and start running down the sidewalk but get nipped as you go. Your sweet little stroll around the block suddenly turns into a pretty jarring situation.
Your nervous system doesn’t code that threat in isolation. It quickly becomes more than getting nipped at by a large dog. Your system encodes everything. The smell. The dog. The bus. The plaid shirt. The music. All of it stored in a capsule, if you will, to represent that “threat.” All of this information is kept together to assure that the brain and body do everything they can to keep you safe from that threat in the future.
Our Body: Keeper of the Score
Two months later, you’re in Walmart humming along to whatever songs are playing over the loudspeaker. Suddenly you feel panicky. Your heart rate is up. Your breathing is quickening. You feel like you have to get out of there, and fast. You were fine two minutes ago, but now you’re not. “What’s wrong with me?” you ask yourself. Nothing’s happened. You were simply in the frozen aisle, alone. You leave your buggy and make a beeline to the exit. As you hurry out the doors, I’m walking on sunshine, oooooh is playing over the speakers. And you don’t even realize it.
Because what does that song even have to do with anything? It seems inconsequential. You may not even remember the song playing the day you got bit by the dog. But your body did and you were suddenly triggered. Unlike our brain, our body doesn’t have the ability to time stamp an event. On the contrary, a trigger for an unprocessed event causes our body to react as if the event were happening again all in real time. So, in an effort to protect you, when a “threat” was spotted, (the song, the smell of barbecue, a large dog…) your danger detector sounded the alarm and your nervous system went straight back into survival mode: panicked feeling, increased heart rate, quick breath. Your body was preparing you to move, to get away fast. It was prepping to keep you safe. It didn’t ask your permission. It just got to work. And here you are left wondering how in the world you are ever going to step foot into Walmart again.
Even under the best of circumstances, none of us gets through life unscathed. When we live through multiple adverse and overwhelming experiences, our threat detector gets to be a bit faulty. It begins to detect danger even where there is none, and we simply can’t logic our body out of it. When a nervous system is constantly responding to threats that aren’t actually there, the world feels less and less safe, and a person will navigate it as such. This impacts our relationships, our jobs, our sense of peace, and our ability to relax.
The Great Comeback
The good news is that we can retrain our nervous systems. We can help the body put down the threat associations it no longer needs to carry. We can help our “danger detector” find balance again. We can help restore regulation in what may have been a chronically dysregulated nervous system.
You don’t have to stay stuck. You can recover from the exhaustion of being in survival mode for months, years, or decades. At Texarkana Counseling Collective, this is the heart of our work: helping you to restore balance, peace, and joy to your life. The past has stolen enough from you, but it doesn’t have to take any more of your future.
Hope is here.
Healing is possible.
Check out the videos on our resources page for more information.