Why Do They Call The Nervous System The Nervous System?
A few weeks ago, my friend and I were having a conversation and she asked me: why do they call the nervous system the nervous system? And there I was, wishing The StoryBots would just do an episode on this and clear up any confusion I might have. By the way, if you haven’t had the pleasure yet, please find your way to this Netflix series, it is amazing and my toddler loves it. Stinky Bart has become the tooth brushing motivator (IYKYK) and I think I probably owe him hours of my life saved from wrestling my kiddo to brush her teeth.
I digress. Through a quick google search, Wikipedia let me know that the answer actually is pretty simple, the nervous system is called such because it is a system that pertains to nerves. I’m sure I would’ve had a more certain time answering this question had I taken Latin in high school. But that’s neither here nor there.
I think a couple of great follow ups to this question are, what is the nervous system comprised of and how does a psychotherapist find herself talking about the nervous system as much as I do? Let’s take the first part, according to The National Institute of Health, the nervous system is made up of two branches: the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous system (the nerves that branch off of the spinal cord and reach all of the other parts of the body). The peripheral nervous system also has two parts, the autonomic and the somatic (For a great article on this please check out Peripheral Nervous System Article). Then the autonomic nervous system also has two parts (are we seeing a theme here?), the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). And no, neither have anything to do with sympathy as we know it.
The PNS is often thought of as the “rest and digest” system while the SNS can often be thought of as the “fight/flight” system. This, of course, is an oversimplication, but then again, I am not a trained neurologist, so you’ll have to forgive me here.
As a psychotherapist, I often find myself educating my clients on the PNS and the SNS when talking to them about sensing, tracking, noticing, and experiencing their emotions and reactions. I often find it helps to normalize our experiences as humans and depathologizes our reactions and our emotions. When we can look through the lens of normal body responses, I think we can begin to disconnect our own judgments about our emotions from the actual emotions themselves. It also allows us to disassociate fear from many of our responses.
For example, this morning I woke up before my alarm went off and thought I overslept. Boom! My SNS is online and I’m already thinking that I’m running late- heart rate increased, thoughts starting to kick in. Then I look at my phone and I realize its much earlier than I assumed and my PNS sets in, helping me to come down from the initial anxious response. When I can begin to track these simple body responses, I can begin to feel a sense of curiosity, which is the antidote to fear. My heart beat just increased because I thought I was running late- not because I was in actual danger.
Now to complicate things a step further, had I had a history of running late and/or having difficult experiences that were associated with a racing heart, I might not have been able to access my PNS as easily. My heart rate could have continued to escalate and it might have turned into a panic attack. Or I might have picked a fight with my partner. Now either of these reactions could have caused me to experience self-judgment and criticism. But looking at the racing heart through a lens of “that’s just what the body does to stimuli” (i.e. waking up before the alarm and misinterpreting this as oversleeping) can begin to disassociate these responses.
Sometimes this is much easier said than done and takes much practice. Be on the lookout for my next post on how to engage your PNS more readily. And @Ask The StoryBots, if you want to pick this nervous system question up for your next season, I would give my highest blessing, give me a call.
With warmth + gratitude,
Tesa
