# The autonomic nervous system ##### Untangling Pain ---  --- ## tl;dr **Autonomic nervous system** - Autonomic nervous system is divided into 1. sympathetic nervous system 2. parasympathetic nervous system **Sympathetic nervous system** - Fight or flight system - vital to survival - Designed as an on off system, quickly activated and returns to normal - Releases adrenaline to help us fight or flee - Chronic pain and stress can lead to high adrenaline, magnifying the danger message - Brain can activate response from perceived threats - thoughts, emails, social media - It doesn’t need to be physical danger - can be emotional, identity-based **Parasympathetic nervous system** - Rest and digest system - protective and calming - Allows tissues to repair, body to adapt - When safe, body down regulates - removes extra fire alarms, reduces sensitivity - Less protection needed means less pain produced **Regulating nervous system balance** - Most people live in sympathetic mode with occasional parasympathetic breaks - Need to reverse that - live mostly in rest and digest - Occasional stress responses should be brief, like responding to an emergency - Helps prevent burnout and overstimulation --- ## Transcript We've been talking about the nervous system a lot. And focusing on the Central nervous system, so the brain and the spinal cord. But there is another area of the nervous system that I want to talk about. And this is the autonomic nervous system. So the autonomic nervous system is divided into two. The sympathetic nervous system. And the parasympathetic nervous system. Firstly, the sympathetic nervous system. This is, what we refer to as our fight or flight system. This part of the system is vital to our survival. We need this fight or flight. So, we need this to help us when we are in danger. It's designed as an on off system, and it's quickly activated. But it also quickly returns to normal. Think about, if we came face to face with a tiger. We want our body to respond quickly to get us out of the situation, and it does this by releasing adrenaline. Which then causes us to fight or run away. Probably more run in the way in this situation. After we have gotten away from the tiger, our body quickly returns to normal. Problem is, firstly, that we're probably not going to have tigers jumping out at us. We've just got email notifications and social media and everything else coming up. But anyway. The problem is, is that chronic pain and stress can lead to higher levels of adrenaline. And although adrenaline itself doesn't cause pain itself, it does magnify the danger message. So remember when I said before about the sensors, those fire alarms being activated by hormones? This is what I'm talking about. This is great when we need it, but it's not so good when it becomes persistent. So the other thing to note is that this response, this fight or flight response, it doesn't need to have a real life reason. It doesn't need to have a tiger standing in front of us for us to have this response. This response can also get activated when we perceive something scary or dangerous. Including all those anxious thoughts about events that haven't happened yet. Or conversations that we are having in our head. Or a notification from an email or we see something on social media. Remember again that the fire alarm can be set off by something the brain perceives as dangerous to us. So it's not us perceiving it. It's our brain that perceives it to be dangerous. Another thing to remember is that this anxiety, or stress, or this perceived danger, it doesn't have to be related to the pain either, or a danger to our physical body. Even if we're going through a tough time in general, this can also cause this response. So this sympathetic, this fight or flight response can be set off, if our brain perceives it as being a danger to us as a person. As who we are. If we come across something that may change how people perceive us, or, it may be that something happens and our brain goes, "Oh my God, that means that we can't work ever again". It doesn't mean that it's just danger to the muscles or the tissues. It's to us. It's a danger to us as a person. That's what can happen too. The second part of the autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system. And we can think of this as our rest and digest system. So this is the part of our system that is protective and calming. This system gives our tissues and our body a chance to repair. And a chance for our body to adapt to positive changes. So going back to the analogies about the fire alarms. Sometimes a body can become maladaptive. In that it can add more of those fire alarms, or increase the volume of the alarm, or generally just become more sensitive. But when the body is in parasympathetic response, when it feels calm and regulated, and it knows it's safe, and it doesn't need all that protection, it knows it can create positive changes. Remember those sensors don't last very long. And it changed, so when it doesn't need it, if you can spend time making your body feel safe, it knows it doesn't need all these fire alarms again, so it's not going to keep adding them. It will start to take them away, because it doesn't need all this protection. It can maybe get rid of some of these fire alarms, and reduce the amplification, and become less sensitive. So basically, it just down regulates, because it doesn't need to panic as much. And if the body feels safe, it knows that it doesn't need to produce as much pain because you don't need protecting like you did before. In a nutshell, we want to spend more of our time with the body in the parasympathetic, in this rest and digest system. The problem is, as, it was actually Jenny Burrell I heard it from, who heard it from Jessica Drummond, she said, or they both said, that most people live in sympathetic, in this fight or flight response, with the occasional trip, to the parasympathetic. So basically, they spend most of their time, stressed, living this life of busyness, burning the candle at both ends, and they think it's okay because they're going to a sound bath or a yoga retreat now and again. Really, we need to be spending the majority of our time living our lives in the parasympathetic, in this rest and regulated state. This is how we want our lives to be. In this state most of the time. With the occasional trip, maybe, to the sympathetic, when something goes wrong, when your dad falls off a roof, for example, as I've experienced before. Or you take a trip to New York, which is what is happening for me. And I will be more in this fight or flight response, in this sympathetic nervous system will be coming into play, and I'll be able to cope more with it. Like a tiger jumping out at you, your body responds the way it's supposed to, this quick on and off response, instead of being burned out from being on all of the time. --- Next lesson → [[Untangling Pain – Module 1 Lesson 09|next lesson]] %% - [[Autonomic Nervous System Overview]] - [[Sympathetic Nervous System – Fight or Flight]] - [[Chronic Stress and Adrenaline]] - [[Emotional Stress and Personal Danger]] - [[Parasympathetic Nervous System – Rest and Digest]] - [[Living in Parasympathetic More Often]]