Me, My Parasympathetic Nervous System, and I

Some people imagine they have the devil one shoulder and an angel on the other, giving competing advice.  For me, I have my sympathetic nervous system shouting in one ear and my parasympathetic nervous system whispering in the other.  One is unreliable but sometimes right. The other gives very good advice that I just don’t quite want to take. The first has a megaphone and a Chicken Little complex; the other is like an elusive oracle from some ancient myth.  You know it said something of earth-shattering importance that will change everything. The problem is you can’t process the information because the horrible voice screaming that the sky is falling drowns everything out.

How do I know this?  The first time I became aware of this disturbing imbalance in my life was in relating a particularly painful experience to a friend who happened to be a psychologist.  I began to feel the emotions roiling up to the surface and in response, I held my breath.  I wasn’t even aware I was doing it. I felt my emotions calm and then went on to relate the rest of the story.  My friend cocked her head to one side and said, “Wow. You tell your story like it happened to someone else.  You should try it without holding your breath sometime.”

She went on to explain that the pain of the event had triggered my sympathetic nervous system, or the fight or flight response.  And by the way, my sympathetic nervous system is a coward.  I never get the fight impulse.  I usually freeze like a little bunny on the interstate.    My sympathetic nervous system wants to keep me alive, probably for its own self-serving reasons, because as soon as I go, it goes.  But somehow it got the idea that my sadness, anger, or frustration was actually dangerous. 

I  unconsciously stopped breathing, distracting my brain long enough to steer right around all those pesky feels. I was drowning my own emotions. Breathing then resumes because my parasympathetic nervous system says I need oxygen and I go merrily along, having successfully repressed my emotions for another day.

If I avoid my emotions, ignore my heart, and allow my sympathetic nervous system to continue the path of anxiety, I am headed for all sorts of trouble.

And I can activate my SNS with just my vivid imagination as can every mother alive. Our parasympathetic nervous system is the quiet engine that controls our bodily systems and tells us to relax.  Deep breathing and mindfulness activate our PNS, as does imaginative prayer. Self-awareness only comes when we examine our hearts and let our emotions tell us what we need to know about ourselves. 

Our heads, in turn, help us fine tune the broad interpretations of the heart. In the buttoned-down church denomination I was a part of as a young girl as well as in my family, emotions were treated like wild beast. They were to be subdued, imprisoned, or outright killed. They were unsafe, and I soon got the message that my emotions were not only dangerous to myself but to others.  Being numb was not only safer, it was righteous!

So I learned to use my parasympathetic nervous system as a tool to shut down that loudmouth sympathetic one.  The trauma in my life taught me to see everything as a potential danger.  And while I lived in an abusive relationship, everything was dangerous.  But once free, I had to literally reteach myself how to feel safe, relaxed, loved.  I also had to teach myself that negative emotions are safe, too.

Feelings don’t need to be hidden, repaired, or squashed into something they are not.  They merely need to be felt. 

Once I learned to feel my emotions, even the worst ones, in safety, the behaviors I developed to feel better were no longer needed.  Retail therapy, sweets, and other escape alleys become less necessary when you can feel sad and hold on to a sense of well-being at the same time. The sympathetic nervous system leads me astray every time. My parasympathetic nervous system is the voice of quiet reason. My parasympathetic nervous system tends to my real needs, not my imagined ones.

“Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child,“ says the psalmist.  I thought of this concept often after I realized that just as my imagination could activate my anxiety, so too could it be used to calm it.  The way I first learned to feel in safety was to create a spot in my imagination where I could meet with Jesus.  Long practice has helped clear the thoughts that would often try to intrude as well as asking the Lord to sanctify my imagination.

In the process of renewing our minds like Romans 12 tells us, our imaginations need cleansing so that they can be used for the process of connecting with Him clearly. In fact, the word, dianoia, which is used in that particular scripture refers to the imagination as well as other parts of the mind. And the imagination uses both sides of the brain, so emotions are engaged just as intellect is.

One of the spots I often meet with Him is in an oceanfront room at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay (in my imagination, mind you).  You have your favorite spots; I have mine.  And I sit with Him, listen to the waves, and feel my feelings.  Sometimes I tell Him what they are, but the important part for me is just to feel and listen.

What I have found is that Jesus never tells me not to feel sad or angry.  He never tells me that other people have more reason to feel sad or angry.  He never shames me for emotions. Often He feels with me because He loves me and my heart.  And slowly but surely, even when I am not staying at the Ritz Carlton when an emotion hits me from nowhere, I feel it without threat but instead, extending the helping hand of my parasympathetic nervous system and the presence of the Holy Spirit, experience myself truly and without fear.

This is worth a read if you want to learn how to calm your anxiety and identify your parasympathetic nervous system versus your sympathetic one:

This is literally the best book on transformation. It started my whole journey.

Jumping in the River; Prayer and Your Imagination