13 - Why is it so hard to manage our nervous systems?
episode 13 - Why is it so hard to manage our nervous systems?
After nearly three decades of actively attempting to think my way out of anxiety and other nervous system concerns, I am here to report that it is hard! And it is especially hard to manage our nervous systems in a world where there's never enough time to do it, and we all believe that we'll feel better ONCE the work is done. This episode is about going body first to support our scholarship - because sometimes, our brains can't do it all.
Resources mentioned:
How to complete the stress cycle
Burnout book
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Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. We'll talk about why some of these things are so hard, and how that difficulty is showing up for you. Each episode has practical strategies to experiment with -- just because it's hard now doesn't mean it always has to be.
You can get my free working more intentionally toolkit@thrive-phd.com or the link in the show notes. If you want to go even deeper with the work.
In this week's episode, we're going to talk about something that I consider one of the secrets of scholarly work, at least sustainable scholarly work. And it's not your task manager. It's not your citation manager. It's not even the way that you outline your work. It's how you take care of your nervous system. The reason that this is so important is because it's one of those things that we're just not really encouraged to take a look at much less take care of throughout The day
and when those days the scholars could be filled with literally more work than you could ever complete in a lifetime, it makes sense that it doesn't always shoot to the top of our to-do list to check in with our nervous system, see how we're feeling and see if we could be feeling better.
Another reason that this can be really difficult is because so many of us have been conditioned to think that if we just finish our to-do list, if we just finished writing that chapter, if we just get that draft off our desk, If we just finish we'll feel better. And so I don't need to deal with my anxiety or the fact that I feel really shut down or lethargic because if I just work harder, I'll feel better.
But working through nervous system events often leads us to working less effectively. And most importantly it can cause some pretty serious short and long-term consequences. When I start working with a new client, one of the immediate first things that I do with them is I ask them to check in, okay.
How are you feeling? Not just today, but over time. And I am going to take you through the questions that I asked them and the experiments that I try with them. These are all things that I've used myself as a person. There are things I use with my clients, and I think that they're a really good set of tools and questions to help us get at what's happening with our bodies. When our brains are doing so much important work.
So let's hop right into those questions to consider. Number one. What does your body feel like when you're working? Do you have a protocol for monitoring how your body feels when you're working? It could be an app or a journal, or maybe it's just a little bit of a check-in before you stop or start a work session.
But what is your body doing while you're working? Do you even know. And it's okay if you don't. I hardly ever do. It's something I have to physically. Will myself to check in on. So. Question number two. Do you notice any trends in how your body feels. Maybe before or after work. The beginning or the end of the week, different points in the year.
Not just, how is your body feeling right now? Although that's a great place to start, but how does it change?
And lastly. The third question. If you have a list of activities that make you feel better. Exercise sleep walks meditation, a breathwork practice journaling. All sorts of things can be on this list, but do you consider those activities to be contingent on work? Do you put them in the category of great. If I get to it, it's a bonus.
Are they part of your literal workflow? how do these categories, the ways that you think about things like exercise or sleep or taking care of your mental health? How do the ways that you categorize them as things that you do at the end of the day, things that you do, if you get to them, make it easier or harder to do those things.
I've left a lot of time this week for the experiments to try, because there's a little bit of explanation needed, but I really hopeful that there'll be just as powerful for you as they have been for the people that I work with. And for me too. So the first experiment is called tracking your window of tolerance.
The window of tolerance is an idea that was coined by UCLA. Researchers early in the 2010s. I believe I'll have the exact dates of facts and figures in the show notes for you. But there's this idea that we all have a window, an optimal window that inside of it, when our nervous system is in this window, when our bodies are in this window, we're able to feel centered.
We feel grounded, things are easier. We're AB able to function to regulate. Great to self-regulate and be present. And what I mean. Our nervous system. I'm talking about that system in your body, that controls basically your response to external stimuli. So I have lots of resources in the show notes to help you get to know your nervous system a little bit better, but it's the.
The adrenaline part, the brain part, the anxiety part, the calm part, that whole. What is my body doing in response to the external sometimes internal stimuli. But if we all have this window where we're at our best, this optimal window. There's also nervous. System states above and below it. So if you're above it,
That's what we would call hyper arousal. And the waste that this can look and feel are high energy, anxiety overwhelm. It can feel a little bit chaotic for me in my body. This often feels like I'm bouncing between 15 tabs. I don't know what I'm working on. I can't stay focused. I'm really fidgety. I'm pulling on my thumbs. I'm not hungry. I haven't eaten in days. You know, hyper arousal is just like, everything is at an 11.
And obviously when everything's at an 11, we're not in that window of optimal function. But you can also be below the window. And this is a state that we would call hype. Oh, arousal. This can feel like being shut down or frozen or withdrawn. This is all a sort of feeling of, I just can't get myself to do the things I want to for me this often feels like I'm moving through quicksand or through mud.
Or I often describe it as like working on 10 X difficulty. That normally, if it's only one X difficult for me to get out of bed, if I'm hypo aroused, it can feel like 10 X it's just like, everything takes more out of me. So in this experiment, I would love for you to track your window of tolerance and how you feel above it, below it, write in it, moving closer to one edge or the other throughout the day.
I'm obviously not a medical doctor and nothing that I'm giving here is medical advice, but I found that if you can kind of dial into and collect some data, you know, my favorite about how you're feeling in regards to that window of tolerance, it can give you some really useful insight. Into what kind of conditions you're asking yourself to work through.
So everyone's window looks and feels a little bit different. There are a lot of reasons why some people have a little bit more resilience and are able to bounce. Within that window a little bit more effectively, there are lots of. KA neurophysical reasons and chemical reasons and history reasons why you might jump more easily than somebody else into hyper or hypo arousal, or why you might even get stuck in one of those spaces. But the first step, like any good thrive PhD experiment is to just notice it.
Okay. The second experiment is to, if you notice that you're outside of that window of tolerance to bring yourself or invite yourself back into it. Going through the motion, not as something that you'll do when you finish, but literally is part of the work. This is something that I often refer to as dealing with your nervous system body first, rather than brain first.
I know that when I first started paying attention to my nervous system, I would try very hard to think my way into a better zone. Right. I'd be like, okay, I'm going to set my timer. I'm going to think to myself, it's time to get focused now. And my body would keep doing whatever it was already doing because my brain wasn't powerful enough.
No one's is to completely interrupt the complex system of chemicals and hormones that anxiety or hyper arousal can feel like in the body. So in this experiment, I would love to invite you. To think about some of these techniques as something that you can do. As part of the work, it counts as part of your writing time or part of your teaching time.
But paying attention to which of these actually help you get back into a place where your work is more effective and it feels more supportive. So if you tend to be on the hype arousal side of the window this can look again like anxiety or overwhelm or just sort of that feeling of being amped up. Here's some things that can be really helpful.
First square breathing. So deep breaths that involve the diaphragm. I will put a link in the show notes about how to do this kind of breathing, but any kind of deep breathing can work, but hopefully one that is a little bit slower than your normal breath pattern. Brisk walking can be really great for this any exercise, but especially anything that uses both sides of your body.
Like jumping jacks or yoga poses or warm water can be really, really helpful. So, including any of those things, when you notice. That you're a little bit above, a little bit hyper aroused to try and bring yourself back down. If you find it that you're hypo aroused, you're underneath a little bit, shut down a little bit, slow a little bit quick, Sandy.
Here's some things to try smaller movements turning into bigger ones. So wiggling your toes and maybe moving that into a slightly bigger gesture where you shake your legs or kind of bounce them up and down on the floor. Anything that stimulates the senses can be really good for this. So lighting a candle, smelling it.
A strongly scented thing. Chewy or crunchy food can be really effective. Cold water can be really effective and anything that sort of like bounces your body. So if you're hyper aroused, it's a lot more vigorous because you're trying to let out some of that extra arousal and hypoarousal is sort of introducing a little bit into the system to kind of warm you back off.
So one is going down and one is warming up. But. Experiment with it and see what happened. What helps maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but it's worth a try. And most importantly, thinking about this as something that you are fully permissioned and allowed to do as part of your workflow. A lot of these things are things that I do throughout the Workday. So I include them as part of the poms. I think about my time when I go for a walk around the park, that's near my house, or get up and get a glass of water or do a couple of jumping jacks as part of my work and not something that I have to wait to do until I hit a certain point.
And that should do list. It's that integration into the workflow. That's really the magic here.
And last but not least. The final experiment is something that a couple of researchers who I'll talk about more in a minute call completing the stress cycle. So this is an experiment that's been derived from a book that I really enjoyed called burnout.
Dr. Emily Nagoski and Dr. Amelia Nagoski they're twins. They wrote this book about a variety of research and compelling studies around how modern people deal with stress. And why so many of us. Find ourselves in a state of chronic stress, sometimes even burnout. As the book title suggests. So the way they describe it is thus.
If a lion was chasing you. You would have an immediate reaction in your body. Your nervous system would kick in. You'd get a huge burst of adrenaline and you'd feel a lot of stress because a lion is chasing you. But you would also use that nervous system response to respond to the fact that the line is chasing you. So you might run away from the lion. You might freeze, you might hide, but.
Either way your whole body is getting involved in responding to the stressor that created a body event for you. So once the threat of that lion is resolved, you ran away from it, you hid from it, it left, you would feel a huge sort of burst of release. And this is something that we see in. In all sorts of mammals. If you see a zebra that's been chasing and it manages to get away.
It will literally kind of like shake on the ground to sort of release all of that extra stress. So that's the way that physiologically the stress cycle has evolved to work. However, if you're an academic and you submit a manuscript, which to our bodies can feel exactly the same. I have this thing it's so important. I have to get it done. It's due at five, but when you submit it, when you're done.
With it, you, you click the button. You really don't have that same sense of, wow. I survived a lion. Because you don't have a lot of sensory reinforcement that the threat is gone. It was just a couple of clicks and an email. And then all of a sudden, your body's just supposed to know that this thing you've been working on for months, or maybe years is completed.
So you really have to go out of your way to complete the stress cycle because we're not getting enough sensory inputs to know that it's done on our own. So some ways to complete the stress cycle.
Physical activity is one of the most effective and time efficient ones. So anything that raises your heart rate, but you can also use laughter. Deep breathing patterns can do it positive social interactions with friends, or even with strangers. Affection of all types, crying can be an effective release of the stress cycle and creativity.
So all of these things will help your body be like, okay, there was a wave of adrenaline and now I can release it. It completes that stress cycle. Instead of leaving you at that aroused state, even if the threat or the accomplishment has been completed. So in this experiment, think about building in some of those things to your natural workflow, whether that's daily or weekly, maybe it's twice daily, depending on how things are going.
But to regularly build in a release valve for this kind of stress cycle that we're all in, just because of what we do. And who we are and the world that we live in.
So in this experiment, you add one in, you see if anything changes, if it helps to kind of bring you back down into a place where you're closer to, if not in that optimum window, that window of tolerance.
I know this is a little bit different than some of the other. More scholarly focused episodes, but I thought it was really important to bring up because I've had just so many different clients come to me in the last couple of weeks saying, you know, I really wanted to feel more rested after break. I thought I was going to feel so much better. My anxiety is back. I am so shut down. It's I'm avoiding everything. And sometimes we can't think or use our, our scholarly tools out of that. We kind of have to go body first.
So I am right there with you incorporating a bunch of things to help support my nervous system. As I work through this bananas thing that we all call life, and I'm hoping that this week feels just a tiny bit more supportive. See you soon.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. And if you're liking what you're hearing, please subscribe, rate, and review to help other people find the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!