Speaking the Nervous System's Language

Two directions of communication

Your nervous system does not speak English. It predates language, and it communicates through sensation. Learning to work with it involves two skills: listening to what it is saying, and speaking back in a way it can understand.

Listening

Its messages arrive as sensations: a pinch in the stomach, heat in the face, a vice around the head, a tightness in the chest. Each person has their own version, and putting it into specific sensory words can help. Where is it, what is its temperature, which way does it move?

Stories come after the sensation. The nervous system fires, then the mind assigns an explanation. It is like the telephone game, because the story may or may not match what is going on. The closer you get to the original message, the better you can respond to the root of what is happening.

Speaking

Words alone seldom reach a nervous system, and trying to talk it down can backfire. What it picks up from us is closer to signals:

• Breath, such as a slower, longer exhale
• Touch and stroking
• Tensing and releasing muscles
• Orienting, which means looking around and letting the eyes take in the room
• Grounding through the senses or the feet on the floor
• Sound and vibration, like humming or singing
• Rhythmic tapping

Many of these resemble how we calm a frightened animal or a young child. That is not a coincidence, since this part of our physiology is very old.

A sequence to try

• Notice the activation and where it sits in your body
• Say to yourself in simple terms what you are feeling, such as "tight chest" or "heat in my face"
• Choose a signal and send it, such as a longer exhale, feeling your feet, or looking around the room
• Give it a few minutes, and notice what changes

In moments with other people

Activation often arrives when someone says something in a meeting, at church, or at the dinner table. It is tempting to treat it as the other person's fault, and to give your nervous system a pep talk. Treating it as a signal inside your own body gives you something you can work with. After the wave passes, many people find empathy shows up. They can wonder what the other person might have been feeling in their own body, and sometimes the whole situation looks different.

Our own activation can also touch off someone else's. Noticing that your body reacted to something, such as a worry about security or approval, can help you reach for understanding and repair afterward. The reactions themselves will keep coming. The skill is in reading them and responding with more wisdom.