Welcome to Team Sympathetic!

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 sympathetic nervous system. You may know this better as fight or flight. This basically means that your nervous system doesn’t feel safe and is getting you ready for action. It is picking up on danger cues in your external environment, internal environment or between you and other people, and it is mobilising you to either fight or run away from the danger. You will experience this as having lots of energy in your system, your body may feel tight or tense, your breath will be shallow and fast, your mind will be racing and you will be feeling anything from a little irritated, annoyed or angry, to full on rage, or a little worried, nervous or anxious to full on panic or terror. This state is all about doing, and doing it now!

Having your homebase in the dysregulated state of sympathetic, or fight or flight, means that your health is not optimised. You may have difficulty sleeping, you may be unable to slow down, switch off or rest, you may have digestive, hormone or immune system issues, you may feel like you don’t have the time to look after yourself because you always have something to do or somewhere to go. Or you may do things to excess, even things that are usually healthy such as exercising.

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 turn off the alarms, 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 sympathetic to experiencing more regulation.