Take fear for example: Your conscious mind which resides in the forebrain knows you are frightened but your lizard brain – the area near your brainstem, that houses the hypothalamus, can’t tell the difference between an abstract fear thought and a real life, survival threat.

Your Lizard brain thinks you’re about to die and this stimulates the stress response setting off the fight or flight mechanism. Activating the HPA AXIS, turning on the sympathetic nervous system. In turn this shuts down your immune system, getting you ready to run away from danger.

Stress responses are healthy and normal but are supposed to be short lived as our bodies then move back into a a relaxed state of physiological rest. Sometimes we are unable to go back to this relaxed state and we stay stuck in an dysregulated state; this is a difficult place to be and can have a profound impact on most of the functions in our body, including heart rate, breathing and digestion. It’s no wonder we can feel so awful and alone with this.

The stressors can be past and present,

• Unhappy relationships
• Loneliness
• Work stress
• Financial stress
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Trauma

These can all result in forebrain thoughts and feelings that repetitively trigger the hypothalmus to elicit stress responses. The mind may know it’s just a feeling but the lizard brain thinks you are under attack. When your body is in the middle of a stress response your body’s self -maintenance and self-repair function come to a halt. When your sympathetic nervous system is activated it causes the adrenal glands to release hormones which can increase your blood pressure and lead to a variety of metabolic changes all over the body.

With the help of a trained therapist, your nervous system can relearn to relax and return to base, using both Co-regulation and self regulation.

Your emotions are normal and powerful.