5 Strategies to Free Your Hijacked Nervous System

The human organism — the combination of body and mind that comprises your being — is a miraculous feat of nature that scientists are still trying to understand.

No single part works in isolation. Instead, it’s a complex system of systems that are interrelated.

One of the central systems that runs the show is the nervous system, whose tentacles reach to every part of you. The nervous system reaches into your brain and into your physical functions.

What Happens When Your Nervous System Perceives Threat

The nervous system’s primary function is to keep you safe. When it perceives itself to be under attack or detects a looming threat, it mobilizes all resources to fight or flee.

Alternatively, it shuts down the system, in freeze or faint mode, the way a circuit breaker might shut down the power if an electrical system gets overloaded.

As part of its response to threat, the nervous system shuts down any non-essential functions. Non-essential functions in this realm include anything that isn’t immediately necessary for your immediate survival.

Within your brain, this includes the parts of your brain responsible for:

• executive function: decision-making and planning skills
• creativity
• language processing
• organization
• empathy
• the ability to find meaning and purpose

And a host of other functions and skills that often get lumped under labels like “ADHD” or “burnout.”

If you think about it, the nervous system is just doing its job. It’s shutting down what’s not necessary in the moment in order to keep you safe.

If you’re running from a bear in the woods you don’t really need the ability to come up with content ideas, write coherently, or plan your future.

You’re just trying to stay alive.

How the Nervous System Gets Hijacked

The problem is that the nervous system responds to many modern day “assaults” as if they were a bear in the woods.

It’s also an antiquated system that can be slow to learn what is truly a threat and what isn’t. For example:

• It may perceive threats that aren’t real.
• It may react to stimuli that once were threats but are no longer threats.
• It may stay on heightened alert, constantly scanning for threats, based on past experiences.

I call this nervous system hijack, because in my system it feels like a terrorist takes over, keeping me from doing the things I want to do.

How to Work With Your Hijacked Nervous System

When the nervous system perceives that it is under attack and goes into shut-down mode, trying to “push through” actually perpetuates the signals that led to the shut down.

It reinforces the perception that the system is under attack. Because, in a sense, it is. You can’t try to override a hijacked nervous system by force. You must cultivate a physical sense of safety.

The best way to handle the system shut down is to:

• recognize what is happening
• hold yourself with love and compassion
• not try to push through it

Instead, do your best to create a sense of safety for yourself.

5 Strategies to Create Safety in Your Nervous System

Here are 5 strategies that can help you bring your nervous system back online:

• Sit or lay on the floor if possible. This helps your system find grounding.
• Breathe with long exhales: Let your exhales be longer than your inhales.
• Humming Breath: Inhale through the nose and hum on the exhale.
• Touch: Place your hands on your body, if it feels safe for you to do so.
• Warmth: Cover yourself with a blanket, or even a weighted gravity blanket.

Give yourself the gift of time and space to be with what is happening. Eventually, the nervous system will recognize that there is no threat, and it will come back online.