Who’s Really Driving Your Life? Understanding Your Nervous System and Patterns.
Why we repeat the same patterns in life
The YOU today is the creation of everything you have lived, learned and experienced. You are shaped by your body's intelligent and loving responses to keep you safe and this is stored in your amazing self-protective circuit called your Autonomic Nervous System.
Your nervous system is always trying to anchor you in a state of safety that supports connection to self, others and to the world and it uses your past experiences as predictive outcomes for the future. Therefore, your experience of the world, and of yourself, is a direct result of what's happening in your autonomic nervous system. It determines your thoughts, feelings, behaviours and perception of what you believe is possible for you. It also shapes how you show up in your relationships, your community and your daily life.
It does this all without your conscious awareness so when the inner workings of your biology are a mystery, you may feel at the mercy of the unknown, questioning to yourself - why am I reacting like this, why do I keep repeating the same behaviors, why can’t I take a risk and so on. But once you know bring awareness to what is happening inside of you, you can begin to work with it and transform it to support you going forward.
This means a self-guided life, one of conscious choice, isn't attainable if you're not aware of your nervous system's automatic wiring and open to changing the patterns you have learnt in the past so that your future can expand.
So you may be reading this because there is something in you that knows you are made for more, that wants to shift old patterns and expand your life’s purpose. Maybe you have tried mind set work like affirmations and journalling but find that you are still unable to make sustainable shifts or keep slipping back into old patterns.
The reason you’re experiencing this isn’t because you’re broken or you’re not trying hard enough. It’s simply because you don’t have the tools yet to change what actually needs to be changed.
How your nervous system works
The Autonomic Nervous System is incredibly good at its job and a big part of my work is based on appreciating that the body is so intelligent and everything it does is to protect you in search for the feeling of love, safety and belonging. This wiring in the nervous system is formed during our very early years, and the behaviours, responses and patterns stay with us into adulthood unless we consciously decide to change them.
Your Autonomic Nervous System is responsible for whether you stay on roads of familiarity or walk toward the life you desire.
Here's why.
We have a threat detector in our brainstem called neuroception that constantly scans your present environment and decides what actions you take based on past experiences. This threat detector is linked to your midbrain, where it has access to an internal database of your entire lived experience (and epigenetic research suggests our ancestors' experiences too).
It uses this database to decide if something in your present-day life is safe. But remember: safety to your nervous system isn't "will I be eaten by a lion?" It's about love, belonging, and the inner safety you learned to create when you were very young.
The present day experience does not need to have an identical match to a past experience but just flavourings of it are enough to drive the automated learned behaviour as a response to it.
The Most Interesting Part
If your nervous system doesn't recognize that the life you desire is safe, because perhaps it's unfamiliar or contains echoes of a past experience that didn't feel safe, it will not make it easy for you to claim that desire.
Therefore the first part of the process is to show your nervous system that it is safe for you to expand into more through somatic healing tools and guided communication with it.
Why mindset work alone often doesn't create lasting change
80% of information travels from our bodies to our brains and only 20% travels from our brain to our body. That's why when we change what's happening in our bodies, it changes what's happening in our brains too. Thoughts and perception shift, beliefs change, and behaviours and actions reflect this.
Our body and nervous system are subcortical which means they can't understand spoken or cognitive language, which is why we can't simply think or talk our way out of how we're feeling. To make real shifts that last, we must learn to speak the embodied language of the nervous system, which is somatic in nature. This is why the Body-Mind-Action method is so effective, because change does not happen from insight alone. It happens when the body feels safe enough to shift.
Learning to speak the language of your nervous system
To rewire your nervous system, you have to learn to speak its language.
The Autonomic Nervous System is connected to your felt sense, in others words - Show, don't tell. This is why affirmations miss a key piece (though mindset work helps, it's much easier and faster to work from the body first).
This is the language it understands:
Breath
Sound + Vibrational tones
Movement + Shaking
Expression + Embodiment
Somatics. Show, don’t tell.
The first part of the process is to show your nervous system that it is safe for you to expand into more through somatic healing tools and guided communication with it.
In my 1-1 sessions, we first connect to your body and then we start to speak the language of the nervous system through tapping into your felt sense and then using the tools above in order to rewire and release old protective patterns.
You're Not Stuck. Your System Just Hasn't Been Shown a New Way Yet.
If you're ready for this deeper work, if you want change that's embodied, sustainable, and aligned with who you're becoming then reach out for a 1-1 session.
Let's explore what becomes possible when your body and your desires are finally on the same page.
