Welcome to Team Dorsal!

The answers you provided tell me that you spend most of your time in one of your dysregulated autonomic nervous system states, known as the Dorsal Vagal Complex or the collapse or shutdown system. This basically means that your nervous system is feeling overwhelmed, it can’t see a way to overcome the challenges you are facing and so it starts to conserve your resources by slowing down everything. It is picking up on danger cues in your external environment, internal environment or between you and other people, it doesn’t think you are going to be able to fight or flee them, and so it is immobilising you. You will experience this as having very little energy in your system, feeling lethargic most of the time, your body may feel numb or you may feel totally disconnected from it, your breath will be slow and laboured, your mind will be heavy or quiet, and you will be feeling anything from a little meh or discouraged, to unmotivated, wanting to give up, or feeling helpless or hopeless.

Having your homebase in the dysregulated state of dorsal, or collapse or shutdown, means that your health is not optimised. You may have difficulty sleeping or want to sleep all the time, you may be only able to move really slowly, you may have digestive, hormone or immune system issues, you may feel like what’s the point in many areas of your life and you may disconnect from people and cancel plans. Or you try to mask your experience through food, tv, scrolling or staying in bed.

If this sounds like you, please know that you are not broken. Your autonomic nervous system is doing a wonderful job of protecting you because it is sensing a lot of danger around you, whether that is real or perceived danger, something that is actually happening or something that is reminding it of something that is unresolved from your past. It is now time to let it know that you are safe, so that you can experience more regulation.

I have created a personalised worksheet so that you can shift from spending most of your time in dorsal to experiencing more regulation.