Hello, my loves. Today, we are going to be talking about why your nervous system is actually fucking up your relationships, and why nervous system regulation is so fucking important. Because y’all, we need to have a conversation.

When I first started running The Connected Woman, I was doing shadow work, but I didn’t know that it was shadow work. But once I had language for that, I started understanding, things like ego, projections, karmic relationships, shadows and golden shadows, etcetera.  

And after working with hundreds of women on their love lives and their relationship with themselves, I noticed something: if they couldn’t get ahold of their nervous system,  if they couldn’t master nervous system regulation,. they would just keep looping the same patterns over and over again.

So I understood shadow work…but then I needed to learn about the nervous system and nervous system regulation. 

I now have a pretty good understanding of the nervous system now, and I’m learning even more about it through the certification that I’m doing right now in sexological body work.

Now, I’m not going to give you a fucking anatomy lesson. I’m going to keep it simple.  We do have a module inside the Connected Woman about nervous system regulation, but for this, I just want to give you the foundation of the concept and show you how not being able to go through nervous system regulation and not being able to regulate your emotions can fuck up your relationships.

A Brief Overview

So to just give you a brief overview, there are two main branches of your nervous system: the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system.  Your sympathetic nervous system what controls your response to threats (fight, flight, freeze, fawn), and your parasympathetic nervous system is what is commonly known as “rest and digest” or “calm and connected.”

When you’re in your parasympathetic nervous system, you’re chill, relaxed, and cruisy, whereas if your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you’re like, “Ooh, a bear is coming. I’m about to get attacked. There’s a threat nearby.”

Yeah, not so fun.

Manifestation of Nervous System Dysregulation

Let me give you an example of how not being able to achieve nervous system regulation played out in my life:

I used to get panic attacks a lot. There was a period of maybe two years where I would get them every month. Sometimes it would happen two weeks in a row, or I’d have two panic attacks in a week, and then I wouldn’t have any for a couple of months. I haven’t had a panic attack in a year and a half now, which is pretty amazing, but when they would happen, my body would respond with my digestion going completely crazy.

This happens when you’re in the extreme of the sympathetic nervous system—you cannot digest when you’re in that state. All of the functions you’re used to not thinking about, they grind to a halt to address the life-threatening thing in the room…even if there is none.

When you are in the parasympathetic state, that rest-and-digest state, everything runs smoothly. Your food gets absorbed, your bowel movements are good, you’re not bloated all the time…you’re good to go!

But my panic attacks would disrupt all of that. I would get worked up with anxiety, have a panic attack, and I would end up vomiting. Obviously not cute, right?

For me, relationships would cause this to manifest as my anxiety going, “Oh my god, he’s breaking up with me,” or “We’re having a fight,” or “I haven’t heard from him,” then I would have a panic attack, and then I would barf.

Which is fucking gross. Acknowledged. But at least you didn’t have to live it, yeah?

It’s gross, but it also gives you a clue into how my nervous system works. So maybe yours doesn’t manifest like that (I hope it doesn’t!), but that chronic state of anxiety and hypervigilance is still present. Maybe you’re on a constant loop in your head of, “What’s he doing? He hasn’t texted me back. It’s been three hours. I wonder who he’s looking at on Instagram. I should check his ex’s page. Do I need to go through his phone?”

Yeah, that whole vibe is not you being calm and connected. That is not a sign of successful nervous system regulation.

Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn

That’s what you need to know for now about the nervous system before we go into nervous system regulation and dysregulation. (If you want to learn more, we do go deeper inside the Connected Woman—it’s fucking fascinating stuff, I won’t lie.)

But all of that to say, if you’re in a constant state of being in your sympathetic nervous system—whether that manifests as fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—if you’re in that constant state and can’t manage nervous system regulation, then you are constantly going to be hyper-vigilant to threats. Your brain and nervous system will not know the difference between a fucking bear coming at you and your partner not responding to a text.

It sounds ridiculous, right? But I’m so serious. You’ll respond with the same kind of panic.

For example, if you’re more avoidant, then your partner wanting more closeness is going to feel like a threat.

When you sense a threat, you’ll go into one of four states: fight, where you go, “I need to get this person away from me.  I’m going to cause some shit so they get away”; flight, where you’re the one who runs away instead of trying to get the other one to run; freeze, which is when you shut down, retreat into yourself, and possibly even stop talking entirely no matter how hard they try to engage you; or fawn, which is essentially people-pleasing.

Most people will consistently fall into one state, or maybe go between two depending on the situation. I usually fall into fight or freeze.

People get stuck in these patterns, and they end up thinking that they’re bad at relationships.

Listen to me: you’re not bad at relationships. It’s just that your nervous system is in survival mode, which is fucking cooking your body and your brain.

You actually can’t have a calm and connected relationship with another person—or with yourself, FYI—if you are constantly in your sympathetic nervous system.

If you’re stuck there, then what you want to do is nervous system regulation. I know sometimes people get pissed off at me saying “Regulate, regulate, regulate” constantly, but I say it because it’s fucking true. That’s what you need to do.

Signs of Dysregulation…and Methods of Nervous System Regulation

So,  how do you know if you have a dysregulated nervous system…and how do you get started on nervous system regulation?

One way dysregulation might show up for you, particularly if you’re avoidant, is at the first sign of someone getting close to you, you want to fucking run.

You immediately go, “Oh, I just don’t feel like this is the right relationship for me. It’s just not feeling aligned anymore. Our values are different,” when they’re actually not. This is just a pattern for you. The second that real intimacy is presented, you bail.

Another sign of a dysregulated nervous system that’s more common with anxiously attached people is needing constant validation from people.

Now, needing validation from others isn’t necessarily a thing you need to squash entirely.  There are a lot of new-age relationship coaches or mentors who really overemphasize never needing external validation, and they push you being able to meet every single one of your needs on your own.

And while you absolutely need to be able to meet your own needs, we are also creatures of connection. We are meant to connect with other people.

So personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting validation from your partner…but if that is your only source of validation, and you cannot validate yourself or reassure yourself, that’s a problem.

For example, because of your hypervigilance when you’re anxiously attached, you’re very sensitive to any shift in dynamic. You are unconsciously picking up on your partner’s body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, how close they’re sitting to you, etcetera.

Any tiny shift or change in their demeanor is going to set off alarm bells for you. So when something shifts, your nervous system is going to go, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Something’s wrong. Oh, my God. They’re going to leave. We’re being abandoned. A bear is coming. We’re about to be attacked. What do we do? Do we fight? Do we run? Do we freeze? Do we people-please? What do we do so they don’t leave us?”

The urge to relieve the tension gets so severe that if you can’t do nervous system regulation yourself, you might have an outburst or seek validation verbally. And hey, asking for a compliment or asking for reassurance of someone’s feelings isn’t outside the norm…but you need to ask yourself where it’s coming from. Is it coming from a state of calm? Or is it coming from a place of trying to relieve yourself of tension in your own body because you can’t manage nervous system regulation yourself?

Another sign of a dysregulated nervous system is you withdrawing when you’re stressed.

Your partner should be a source of comfort and support. And I’m not saying that you need to go dump all your stuff on your partner. I really don’t think that you should do that. And it’s okay to take space. But notice when you want to completely check out of the relationship. Notice when your impulse is, “I need to be alone. I need to go lock myself in a fucking cabin and just be with my thoughts for the next three months.”

Because here’s the thing: if you do not have the ability to calm yourself down when you’re dysregulated, you can’t connect. Your inability to practice nervous system regulation is literally blocking you from the love that you are craving. 

Let that land. Your nervous system is blocking you from the love that you are craving. Because if you can’t do nervous system regulation, if you cannot calm yourself down, you cannot connect. And if you can’t connect, you don’t have a relationship, because you don’t have intimacy.

You need the ability to engage in nervous system regulation. You need to be able to calm yourself down.  And people make this such a big deal, but it’s really not. Fucking breathe. Put your fucking legs up on the wall. Learn to meditate.  You don’t even have to learn to meditate. Just fucking sit there and be with yourself.

Join the Connected Woman!

This stuff is the foundation of work that we do in the Connected Woman. We do plenty of nervous system work to understand nervous system regulation, because I’m not going to send you on this quite deep shadow work journey where you’re looking at all your shit, looking at your relationship blueprint, connecting with your inner child,  healing your relationship to men, looking at projections, looking at karmic relationships, looking at reactivity, looking at your patterns and your triggers, etcetera without you knowing how to fucking regulate your nervous system and do it in a way that is helpful and not harmful. 

So the first module is about setting the foundations for the course and the shadow work anchors that you’re going to need to know, and then the second module is the nervous system healing, because this shit is important, y’all.  Nervous system regulation is absolutely necessary to be successful in your shadow work journey.

So if you want to be part of The Connected Woman…I mean, it’s really a fucking no-brainer. It’s all about mastering relationships by mastering yourself first,  because that really is the vibe. If you do not have a relationship with yourself, you cannot have a relationship with another person.

You can only meet another as far as you are willing to meet yourself. You can only have as much intimacy with another as much as you are willing to have intimacy with yourself.  And that’s what The Connected Woman is all about: connecting to yourself so you can have fucking excellent relationships.

So if/when you do The Connected Woman, you’ll get to the end and be like, “Huh, I can now see that the relationship is the cherry on top,  because the relationship I have with myself  is something that no one could ever take away from me.”

That is what I want for you. I want you to be regulated. I want you to be grounded. I want you to be able to feel. I want you to be able to express. I want you to act like an adult and not a toddler.  I want you to do these things without shaming yourself if you do act like a toddler, because we all do sometimes.

I love you. I can’t wait to see you inside The Connected Woman. XOXO.

WORK WITH MICHELLE: 

Join THE CONNECTED WOMAN, a shadow-work course for women who want to go from feeling anxious AF about their love lives to feeling confident, secure and having unfuckwithable self-worth: https://michellepanning.com/the-connected-woman

Join The EXPERIENCE, a year-long mentorship for the woman who wants to play in the frequency of big love, epic sex and mind-blowing relationships with men…and herself: https://michellepanning.com/the-experience 

CONNECT WITH MICHELLE:

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/michellepanning

Website: http://www.michellepanning.com.com