Why is a Regulated Nervous System so Important? ​

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When we talk about being authentic what do we mean exactly? How do we even become authentic? Authenticity simply means responding to our internal and external experiences in the most appropriate and natural way for who we are. Our own individuated configuration of Light into cells and bodies and minds that makes us who we are.

 

But being in a human body means we are vulnerable and the body's main goal is to feel safe, or as safe as we can. When we do not  'feel' within our body that our most authentic self is unconditionally accepted within our environments, we feel unsafe and thus will distort/condition ourselves, subconsciously, to become more acceptable in the hope to gain or retain a sense of safety in the body. This level of safety can be completely unsafe, but it still feels better than the alternative which is feeling unaccepted. Ultimately we want to belong. This occurs within the nervous system. These experiences are traumas to our nervous system and often occur in our childhood when our nervous system was young and undeveloped. They can result from major events or abuse, but can also be a result of neglect or simply misatunement to our needs by our earliest caregivers, too much stimulation or not enough that was right for our specific needs for example, leaving a baby to cry it out, or the disregulation of the caregiver's own nervous system. This can happen from the period within the womb so we may be completely unaware of or unable to  access with words what lies at the root of our conditioning. We can also bring these traumas through our DNA. 

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​Peter Levine, creator of  Somatic Experiencing, speaks to this process as: 

"... what happens to a person/nervous system when there is too much too soon, too much for too long or not enough for too long. "

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This conditioning is coded with an energetic charge as a result of the strong emotion that was experienced at the time. The nervous system holds this energy in two ways, firstly it will create a new neural pathway which tells the brain what to do in a specific situation, these are our beliefs about ourself and our position in the world. Secondly, the energy behind the emotion, the charge, will remain within the body unprocessed because the nervous system was unable to process it at the time because it was just too much. It will wait for a time that feels safe to release it. While it remains it will subconsciously keep reinforcing the belief making it difficult to change it. That is why even if your conscious mind wants something, if your subconscious mind is not in agreement, i.e. holds the neural pathway and unresolved stress energy that opposes that action, it will feel impossible to do. The subconscious mind is the program. It runs the show - YOU. 

 

There is nothing wrong with this process of conditioning/distortion,  it was needed at the time but what results is a conditioned way of being, an inauthentic self. We want to be with our experience not strategize how to get away from it. Then we can truly be who we are. No protective masks needed. ​​​