Dr. Tabatha Barber says nervous system dysregulation, which shows up as anxiety or numbness, is a bigger health crisis than cancer or heart disease. She argues medication alone won't fix it. Instead, she pairs neuroscience with scripture, offering practices like meditation and deep breathing to regulate your nervous system and heal your whole self.
It's very similar in the UK and throughout the Western world and very likely beyond that is I think the great epidemic isn't cancer, heart disease, obesity. All of those things are very real, but it's a dysregulated nervous system is that we are so totally and utterly dysregulated and how that impacts us spirit, soul, and body. Whereas actually, the story that we tell ourselves is usually very is usually just indicative of the state that we're in. That we're in a state of hyperarousal where we're anxious, we're overwhelmed, we're in the sympathetic nervous system, or we're in dorsal vagal shutdown, which is, um, I'm numb, I'm depressed. And often this is the narrative we have, don't we? We go and see our doctor and we say, I'm anxious, and they'll say, okay, here's the medication. Or go to the doctor— and I'm absolutely not knocking medication at all, I think it can be a really powerful tool, but it's not the centerpiece of the puzzle. Jesus is the centerpiece of the puzzle. It can be part of it. when we say we're depressed, but there's no wider narrative of, okay, if you're depressed, that's hypoarousal, and that means you're in your dorsal vagal, which means you shut down. Why are you shut down? How are you numbing? How are you, um, keeping yourself distracted and why? And I, I think again, there's an intersection here between science and scripture because neuroscience will say, or, you know, the understanding of a nervous system, what do we need in order to feel regulated? We need to feel grounded. Safe, loved, reassured. And then I go straight into the Gospel of Matthew and Jesus saying, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden. Now that word weary, the root is a soul word. It's not talking about physically tired. It's like— Yeah. And could very easily be put without, without too much of a stretch, could be very easily paraphrased as, come to me all who are dysregulated and I will help regulate you. Just the presence, the gentleness. He, in that scripture, he goes on to talk about how I'm gentle, I'm humble, all of the things that we need to be able to regulate us. Meditating on scripture like we read in Psalm 1 regulates us. It thickens the prefrontal cortex. It gets— it helps calm down the amygdala. That kind— the amygdala is like the fear center of the brain, like the internal smoke alarm that's going off all the time because there's so much input around us. And so... This going to Jesus, reading scripture, breathing deeply, leaning into gratitude, lifting your eyes in the short term— all ways that we can help regulate ourselves.
