I felt stuck in November and December. Lost. That familiar feeling of apathy and “depression” seemingly returned overnight. I kept trying to logically understand why. I now understand. My nervous system was in a dorsal vagal state of shutdown.
I could not make sense of how a person can go from so balanced and content for nearly 2 years, to feeling so depressed and despondent in the span of a month.
I had just had the most rejuvenating and inspiring 2 weeks in Bali.
I had recently begun a Masters in Social Work program at one of the most prestigious univerisity in the US. *Disclaimer, that only lasted a month before I withdrew.
Things should have felt so positive, but I was falling apart.
I needed a logical explanation for the drop in my mood and it took me 2 months to find one.
My nervous system was dysregulated and in a dorsal vagal shutdown state.
The more I have learned about nervous system regulation and how to expand my window of tolerance; the more my life has transformed for the better.
80% of communication is bottom-up (body→mind) and only 20% is top-down (mind→body)
We cannot talk or think our way into safety, because our autonomic nervous system is millions of years old. It is pre-verbal and does not respond to language. It responds to sensations.
Our nervous system responds to internal sensations that are triggered by various sensory stimuli in the environment.
Our bodies scan our historical database of all of our previous experiences and communicate to our mind what response is appropriate in response to any particular situation.
Many healing modalities are free and accessible to all. They are the same practices that our ancestors utilized to live healthy, vibrant lives.
In early September, shortly after returning from Bali, I was feeling so empowered, balanced.
Free.
Content.
Joyful.
An abundance of positive emotions.
Shortly after my return from 2 soulful weeks in Indonesia; I returned to a university campus as a student for the first time in almost 2 decades.
The nerve-wracking 30-minute highway commute amongst terrible drivers, would bring me to my new campus. The start of a new chapter as a graduate student, embarking on a 2-year graduate program to get my Masters of Social Work.
My body slowly began feeling dysregulated during the week of orientation, before class even began.
As the weeks moved on; I stopped sleeping through the night. This was one of my bodies first signals to me, that I listened to.
I only had issues with sleep when I first moved back to Chicago from Taos 2 years ago, when I began to fully unravel from my relationship with a new neighbor who was a narcissist.
My stomach was in knots regularly, there was tightness and tension in my neck and shoulders, and in one of my classes, my voice shook when I spoke.
The fear of being in the presence of this professor started kicking in when I was doing my weekly writings the weekend before our Monday class. I would be dysregulated during class Monday, and it would typically take me 24 hours post class to recalibrate. I was not alone in having a physical response to this professor who triggered me.
Administrative disorganization was rampant, the curriculum was underwhelming, field placements were a joke and non-existent for most students the 1 month I was in school. Though there is an expected number of hours required in field to become licensed as a social worker.
I was one of the few that did have a placement, at a state hospital in Chicago on one of their psychiatric wards. I attended 2 days of that field placement before I became one of the few students to have an exception made and have my field placement modified quickly to a new placement.
I knew I would not only not learn in the hospital environment I was originally assigned to, but more importantly, I could sense my new supervisor had a lot of those same personality qualities that trigger me.
My nervous system was slowly becoming activated and moving outside of my window of tolerance. I was moving into a sympathetic state where I was preparing for “fight or flight”.
I could feel my eyes become hollow, lifeless, lightless, when I rode the hospital elevator up to report to my field placement. I was witnessing myself dissociate in real time.
Having a boss with a superiority complex who was mistreating patients and treated me in a demeaning manner is not something I tolerate.
The price tag for university admission was exorbitant and I quickly saw there would be no return on investment just to have letters behind my name.
The price of admission would cost me my well-being and health.
Maintaining my health has become my number 1 priority this last decade.
I listened to my bodily sensations increasing over the weeks.
In my near decade of doing healing work, it is only more recently I have really leaned into understanding the impact our nervous system, our bodies, have in communicating warning signs to us, when it innately knows something is not appropriately aligned.
After reviewing financial policies, I realized it was time to withdraw from school to receive a prorated refund on my first quarter of tuition. It was one of the wisest decisions I ever made, and I am so proud of listening to my intuition and what my body was telling me.
I attended the one elective class I thoroughly enjoyed, the day after I withdrew from the program. I wanted to share my decision to withdraw with those students and that professor. The only course that was an elective and mine to chose. A course on self-awareness that had an inspirational, interactive approach to teaching and learning.
At the end of my final class a month in as a graduate student, there was a bald eagle in the tree outside of our classroom. Several of us admired the bald eagle and this beautiful interplay it had with a squirrel in the tree, for several minutes.
Bald eagles are a sign of vision, power and freedom. They represent a strong spiritual sense and connection to the divine. That was a beautiful way to end my stint at graduate school.
The week following withdrawal from my MSW program was not easy. I felt a slew of negative emotions; feelings of discomfort, self-doubt, ambiguity.
I wondered if my inability to commit to and see things through reflected my lack of worth.
I had anger that even universities operate like well-oiled corporations.
There was fear of what to do next with my life, now that my plan for the next 2 years was no more.
After a week of sitting in all of the discomfort and painful emotions, I began to recalibrate. I felt more balanced. The tightness in my jaw and neck were gone. I was sleeping through the night again.
A week later was election day in the US.
The new fear of America’s future reality was visceral.
The world felt unsafe.
Divisive.
Angry.
I realized later, that as I would leash my foster fail pup for a walk that first week after the election, I would literally tell my dog, “the world is not safe right now, we have to go on a quick walk”.
People did not make eye contact with one another that first week in my neighborhood.
It was like everyone existed in their own silo as a form of self-protection.
As the weeks moved forward, my mood tanked. I isolated more than I typically do. I felt like I moved, thought, and talked slower. I lost curiosity and interest in things. I could not cultivate joy, no matter how hard I tried.
I was cognitively trying to make sense of this spiraling space I was in.
As someone who has a very robust toolbox, I could not understand how I could possibly be falling into what would be considered my 3rd depressive episode in a decade. There was no clear trigger that I could make sense of, like there had been the 2 times previous.
How I could go from this beautifully empowered, uplifted, radiant space to total despair in just a few months time?
And now I know how.
My nervous system had fallen into a state of dorsal vagal shutdown in early November.
During school in October, I had left my ventral vagal (balanced state) and moved into a sympathetic activated state of fight/flight.
I was more activated, more on guard, more anxious, muscles were tight and restricted, and my back pain returned. My mood was fluctuating and unbalanced.
I began to recalibrate and move out of a sympathetic mode after an intentional week of slowing down and processing, but then the election happened.
The visceral fear and concerns of societal safety reinforced my nervous systems historical data base and activated survival fear in my body. This knocked me straight into a dorsal vagal shutdown also known as a freeze state.
During freeze or immobilization; many symptoms mimic depression.
Apathy. Hopelessness. Immobility.
My societal fear is not gone, it is now enhanced, but I have learned new tools that have opened my eyes to how much we must learn about healing.
Breathwork. Meditation. Yoga. Bilateral movement. Vagal nerve toning. Time immersed in nature. Soaking up sunlight to help set a circadian rhythm.
Nervous system regulation and learning how to expand our window of tolerance is vital in understanding our health.
The only intention for our nervous system, is our survival. Its job is to keep us safe. It cannot discern from real or perceived threat.
Every millisecond, our nervous system is scanning for danger, assessing risk factors, and responding as it deems appropriate – to keep us alive! Which if you think about it, is beautiful.
We all have varying windows of tolerance within our nervous system. We have the capacity to expand this window of tolerance through intentional somatic practices and having more repeated exposure to fluctuating through our different nervous system states and returning to a balanced, ventral state. The more we live in a ventral state; the more safety is integrated into our nervous system as our baseline.
The best part – these healing modalities that are vital to maintaining our health, are free and accessible to everyone ✨
