Welcome to Steady from the Inside
Your nervous system is always reading your surroundings and the people in them. Mostly below awareness, it decides whether things are safe enough to stay open or whether your body needs to get ready to respond to a threat.
That includes the things that matter most to us: faith, family, community, and a sense of who we are. When any of these is in motion, the nervous system tends to notice before the mind does.
Gus's collar is a useful picture. While he stays inside the perimeter, he's relaxed. When he crosses it, an alarm sounds and he knows to come back. Each of us has an invisible perimeter too. Our history shaped it, and when we cross it, the body sounds its own alarm. That alarm is what we mean by nervous system activation.
The safe, open state
Inside the perimeter, the nervous system is in what's often called the ventral vagal state. It's where connection comes more easily, with other people, with ourselves, and with the divine. Compassion, patience, curiosity, and our gifts and talents are available there.
On the 1 to 10 chart, the low numbers (1 to 3) feel open, calm, and warm. The higher numbers bring anxiety, panic, anger, and rage. Moving up the scale isn't a failure. It's information from a system that's doing its job.
Many people have spent so much time with some level of activation that a calm, open state is hard to recognize. If you notice it at some point, it's worth pausing to feel what it's like.
What can cross the perimeter
Activation can come from different kinds of threat. A few examples of each:
Physical
- A near miss while driving
- Walking into a hospital or a doctor's office
- A loud, sudden noise
- Standing near an edge on a hiking trail
- A person who has been unkind or intimidating to you in the past
Financial and security
- An unexpected bill or repair
- News of a layoff or reorganization at work
- A change to a plan that costs more than you expected
- Wondering how a change in faith might affect a job, a business, or a community that has supported you
Social and relational
- A text from a family member you've had tension with
- A comment from a boss, a friend, or a spouse that could be read two ways
- Walking into a room where you aren't sure you belong
- A conversation that moves toward a topic you've learned to be careful about
Faith and meaning
- Sitting in a meeting when a phrase or a topic lands differently than it used to
- A hymn, a prayer, or a scripture that once brought comfort and now brings tension, grief, or both
- Being asked to pray, speak, or share a testimony when you aren't sure what you want to say
- A family member asking whether you're still attending
- Hearing someone talk about people who have stepped away, or about people who have stayed, in a way that doesn't match your experience
- Reading or hearing something that raises a question you've been avoiding
- Deciding whether to tell someone what you've been thinking
- A spouse, parent, or child making a different choice about faith than you have
- A holiday, a baptism, a farewell, or a family gathering where you know faith will come up
- A private moment of doubt, or a sudden wave of certainty you didn't expect
Faith transitions often touch all four categories at once. A single moment, like a family dinner where someone asks about church, can involve a sense of physical tension, a worry about the relationship, a worry about belonging, and a larger question about meaning. That's one reason these seasons can feel so intense.
None of these are the same for everyone. Two people can sit in the same pew, at the same activation level, for completely different reasons. One may feel the pull of a belief they're questioning. Another may feel the pull of a loved one who's questioning. What crosses your perimeter depends on what your system has learned.
How activation shows up
In the video, Tucker noticed fluttering in his stomach and energy in his shoulders, and Stan noticed small bubbles of tension in his gut. Other people notice:
- A tight or heavy chest
- Shallow or held breath
- A pounding heart
- Heat in the face or neck
- A clenched jaw
- Restlessness in the legs, a pull to leave
- A rush of thoughts or ideas
- Numbness, or a sense of going blank
Responses vary as well. Some people want to get small and quiet. Some want to leave. Some feel pushed to argue or defend. Some freeze, and some move toward pleasing the other person to settle things down. Tucker described getting smaller in the face of a physical threat. Many people have more than one pattern, depending on the situation.
There isn't a right way for activation to feel. The aim at this stage is to notice where it shows up for you.
Stories keep activation going
Misty was nudged away from her bin, sighed, and went to another one. Within a minute she was eating calmly. Tucker stayed in the paddock for much longer, telling a story about the bully horse, and his activation stayed high.
Having a prefrontal cortex lets us hold stories, replay old offenses, and imagine future ones. That ability serves us in many ways. It also means the alarm can keep sounding after the situation has passed.
Stories in a faith transition tend to be especially strong, because they connect to identity, family, and what we think is true about the world. A few that people commonly carry:
- "They think I've lost my way."
- "If I stay, I'm not being honest."
- "If I leave, I'm letting down the people who sacrificed for this."
- "I wasted years of my life."
- "What if I'm wrong, in either direction?"
- "My family will never see me the same way."
- "Everyone else seems to have this figured out."
Stories can run in every direction. A person who stays may carry stories about those who left, and a person who left may carry stories about those who stayed. Some of these may hold truth, and some may not. Noticing a story at work isn't about deciding whether it's right. It's about seeing that part of the activation is coming from the story and not from the moment.
Nervous systems also affect each other. Tucker mentioned that when Stan said he didn't want to look silly, he felt his own system respond. We can calm each other down, and we can activate each other. In families and congregations, this happens all the time.
Why start with reading
Most of us weren't taught to notice our nervous systems. When we don't, activation tends to run things, and we end up reacting, acting on stories, or saying things we later regret.
Stan described feeling the tightness that came with an unexpected expense, thanking his body for the information, and letting the wave pass before deciding what to do. Tucker described asking someone for a minute in the middle of a hard conversation, breathing, and returning to it from a steadier place. Neither of them was avoiding the activation. They noticed it, and that gave them a choice about what to do next.
The same applies to conversations about faith. Learning to notice activation doesn't settle any question about belief. It makes more room to hold those questions with compassion for yourself and for the people you love, and to make decisions from a steadier place.
Recognizing activation comes first. The practices for coming back down will build on it, and you can take as long as you need here.
Reflection
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