Ep. 74 Beyond fight, flight, or freeze

Hello, I'm Mary Wandlis welcoming you to podcast number 74 in our series for the summer of 2025. I want to talk here about the nervous system, which I have done in podcasts back I believe in 2023, maybe before then, but it's a long time since we visited this, and I've been alluding to some of its ramifications in the last few podcasts. In 1994, a researcher called Stephen Porges, who seems a wonderful guy, I've listened to a number of his podcasts, seen him on the Internet. He started writing papers about polyvagal theory. And this theory is now really meeting the mainstream and has changed our understanding of the autonomic nervous system and how it works. Somebody centuries ago made a mistake and we had this too simple system of fight, flight or freeze. And Stephen's work has put the record straight. His discovery was that the vagus nerve, which we talked about in our last podcast in relation to the solar plexus, has two branches and each branch affects the body differently. So overall, our autonomic nervous system has the job of keeping us safe and alive at all costs. It is subconsciously assessing situations for safety or threat and for threats that might be life threatening. And it decides this through a process known as neuroception, comparing the outer world to experiences in its database. And it doesn't need an identical match, it only needs what we might call a flavouring. When it's always scanning for threat, it becomes hypervigilance. And in that hyper vigilance tends to miss cues of safety. And you could be on a horse, maybe one you know, maybe one you don't consciously thinking you're okay. But below the level of consciousness, your ANS has decided that actually you're not as okay as you think you are. And you're there going, why am I feeling nervous? Surely this should be okay, what's going on here in other areas of life as well. It's like our autonomic nervous system. The ANS stands in front of us, blocking us, acting as our biggest defense force. So we might think that we are, as it were, driving the car of our life, but actually we're sitting in the back seat while the ANS is driving, unconsciously shaping your behaviours, your thoughts, your emotions, what you do, what you don't do, and shaping your perception of yourself and others. So psychological safety is the belief that we can speak up, make mistakes and take risks without the threat of humiliation or punishment. That certainly was not true in my childhood, which is a very long Time ago now. And it's very often not been true in the riding lessons and training sessions of my past. And I think within the course world today, it is still very often not true. Past trauma leads to us perceiving heightened levels of threat and danger and being hypervigilant. There's this stage where one horse in a herd hears or sees something, puts its head up. The other horses put their head up because more eyes and ears can scan the horizon more easily. And that's a hypervigilant stage, which will either be followed by the horses going into everything's okay and going back to grazing or deciding it's time to flee. In fact, I know people who think their horse has attention deficit disorder. And I tell them, no, no, no, he's got lots of attention. It's just not where you want it. And maybe that's one of the horses in the herd that would really be one to scan for danger. So we've all experienced some big traumas in our lives. It could be illness, surgery, bereavements, getting jobs, losing jobs, moving, divorce. Anything that happens in childhood has particularly potency. And then we're including neglect and abuse. And there are also the small T everyday traumas, again, especially from childhood, of not feeling seen, heard, understood, or worthy. Now, safety from our definition a minute or two ago is clearly bigger than the removal of threat. But the removal of fret is intensely helpful. Last year, I talked a little about some training that I did with Missy Bunch, and I really recommend her Facebook page and her website. Missy Bunch of in applied neuroscience and simple exercises you can do to reduce the way your system is perceiving and coding threat. So Missy talks about your threat bucket. And if you thought of a bucket like a watering can with a spout about halfway up, but that spout points down, that would be your threat bucket. And your threat bucket has a number of stones in it put in there by those big T trauma experiences and smaller trauma experiences. And those stones obviously make the water level higher. And some people have got a big threat bucket with a good distance between the water level and where the spout is. So lots of room to play, as it were. And some people have a rather small threat bucket. And what can happen as the water gets really close to the level of the spout is you just do one thing that you would think would be no problem, like reaching around in your car to get something off the back seat, picking up a water bucket. And behold, your threat bucket overflows. And let's say your back goes out and suddenly you're in trouble through an experience that was really like the straw that broke the camel's back. Now, your vagus nerve is Cranial Nerve 10. And your vagus nerve is so involved in this that working with some of the other cranial nerves that are very near to it, they're all in your brain stem, can really help. So here's an exercise. If you link your fingers together, put your hands behind your head, press your head back a little bit against your fingers and your fingers against your head, and move your eyes to one side, and sometime fairly soon, you are likely to feel the urge to yawn or sigh. So let that happen. That's a great sign. And then move your eyes to the other side and stay there until you feel the desire to yawn or sigh. Another simple exercise that involves cranial nerve 9 would be moving your tongue in your mouth. Can you move your tongue all around your mouth to touch all of your teeth? Can you make circles with your tongue in your mouth? And can you make figure eights? And quite a lot of people have some distortion of these nerves. They're not working great. And I was amazed to find how difficult a lot of people find that. But some of these simple cranial nerve exercises can take some of the threat out of your threat bucket and reduce the level of the water. These exercises are simple and powerful, and we can also go a lot further than that. So I heard recently a couple of podcasts where Kelly Noonan Gorse, who has the podcast series Heal with Kelly, interviewed Sarah Baldwin. And Sarah Baldwin, I think, has a wonderful take on this polyvagal system. So I've drawn on that in this podcast. And if this piques your interest, I would really recommend you going both to Missy Bunch's website and to those podcasts or Sarah Baldwin. So the autonomic nervous system is really the foundation of all healing, leading a full and happy life, being a good learner. It will determine how easily you become a skilled rider, or whether it actually is that riding is really helping you overcome the obstacles that would be in the way of that. Now, your autonomic nervous system at any point in time is in one of six states, three states of regulation and three states of dysregulation. So the state of dysregulation you'd be most familiar with would be fight or flight, which is really sympathetic activation. So the sympathetic branch of your nervous system is the nerves that come out of your spine going to your muscles. And when your muscles get mobilized in fight or flight, energy gets taken from your organs, the nerve endings around your organs constrict and they all give up some of their energy to mobilise you in fight or flight. There's more. Blood goes to your heart. Your heart will race. You're likely to have fear, worry, anxiety, terror, rage. A sense of not enough time. Your brain in overdrive. Go, go, go. Racing thoughts. You're being run by cortisol and adrenaline, and we all know that's not good. And it can't go on for that long before things start to break down. If the situation can't be helped by fight or flight, it gets to be deemed probably life threatening. And now we get to another of the states, which is the dorsal vagal state. This is the oldest branch of the vagal nerve. It's there as well in reptiles. And it will cover up feelings that could engulf you. If your needs really aren't being met and you're in perpetual pain, this dorsal vagal system will step in. And as far as it's concerned, it's saving your life. And when that happens, you might in practice, get in a bit of a funk. Find yourself going through the motions. Feel that simple tasks are overwhelming, that it's all too much, that nothing will change. Your autonomic nervous system has kind of cloaked you to cover up the fight or flight. That won't work. You'll go into your head, out of your body, into your head, and potentially actually leave your body. So you're dissociated now, I would say I spent most of my childhood dissociated and needed to, as it were, come back to my senses. And that over the years riding and horses really helped me to do this. What happens with the body is a shutdown, rather like hibernation. As your breathing rate slows, your heart rate slows, you will have less muscle tone in the extreme of the last breaths of the dying zebra in the jaws of the hungry tiger. That zebra will not be in pain. And the person in a dorsal vagal state gets to have adrenal burnout, possibly even chronic fatigue. And horses and humans could be considered as being shut down. I remember hearing a while ago on the radio the phrase of people within a population having a. A pervasive sense of powerlessness. If you can't fight or flee, you end up in collapse and submit. And in enough times, your body kind of takes on that low tone way of being just as a way of life. And if you grew up wanting to fade into the wallpaper with no sense of urgency, you'll Find it hard to set boundaries and find authority in the way a skilled rider needs to. The third state of dysregulation is freeze, the deer in the headlights. This is where you're scared stiff, rather than the dying zebra who's scared to death. We could say the lights are on, but no one's at home. And this is made of equal parts of the sympathetic system and the dorsal vagal system. And it's kind of where you've got one foot in and one foot out. It's a stuck state. I have to, but I can't. I need to do this. I can't find the energy. It can be a state for us humans of shame because we feel we ought to be performing, but we're not. And it can take a lot of energy to keep yourself in freeze. What's really interesting is the state that we're in determines the story we tell ourselves. I've talked before about the voice inside your head which is not God, you know, and so many riders think that critical voice that yatters onto them when they're riding is God and is the truth. But you will think yourself into a more dysregulated state. So the flighty or fighty one might be going, we got to do this. I'm going to make it happen. It's got to happen. It's got to happen. Got to make this horse do it. Or maybe it's the flighty wobbly of, oh, my God, I'm worried about this. What the heck is going to happen when you're in a more dorsal vagal state, you might be going, oh, this is all too much. I don't think I'm up for it. I don't have what it takes. And you'll be feeling really quite defeated. And when you're in freeze, you're in that kind of dilemma. I ought to be able to do this, but I can't. I should be able to do it. What's wrong with me? I ought to be able to do this, but I'm not doing it. Why am I stuck? What can I do? But I'm stuck. So here's another really interesting when you're well regulated, you can't have anxiety or any of those racing thoughts, and your nervous system is malleable. So if you are somebody who's been in one of those dysregulated states a lot in your life, you don't have to stay stuck here. And if you were well regulated, the story you might tell yourself about your horse might be something like well, he's not been the easiest and this has not been the easiest, but my gosh, I've learnt so much with this horse and we've done so much together. That might be a very different story you'd say about your horse if you were in fight or flight, or if you were in the kind of freeze where perhaps you're. I think I ought to sell him, but I can't bring myself to sell him. I love him too much, but I think I need to sell him, but I can't bring myself to sell him. Now, when you're more regulated and you have that very different story, you don't get there by thinking yourself there. You become more joyous and easy going, really through nervous system kind of exercises, some of which are like dancing, singing, chanting, praying and meditation. Breathing well, being in nature, being with trusted friends, swaying in a hammock, maybe the swaying of a horse in walk riding can help to regulate you, but no experience will regulate you until you're present within that experience in that regulated state, you're more likely to feel awe, connectedness, curiosity, to be more present. It can actually be a really quite spiritual state. Now, it has two variations within being regulated. If you add just a little bit of that slower dorsal vagal state, that could slow you down into the kind of state you might get if you watch your kids sleeping, watching a sunrise in intimacy and with your most dear and trusted friends. And the other regulated state adds a little bit of sympathetic activation. So a little bit more spice and play is a big state there. Although add too much of that sympathetic system and play can spill over into fighting. That happened a lot in my childhood, that play would spill over to fighting. Somebody gets hurt, it's always the little one that was me. And some horses seem to be more playful, almost like they have a sense of humour. They're slightly tricksters, some are more Zen, some are really more dysregulated. Interestingly, being in the zone, which is a real state of flow, is a state of regulation that brings in a lot of sympathetic energy. It's almost like if your body was a vehicle, it's become a Formula one car. Most of us are driving along in a rather normal car at 30, 40, 50 miles an hour, not the kind of Formula One speeds. And for that to work well, you need a lot more sympathetic energy. But it mustn't overwhelm that regulated state. A good cross country rider and cross country horse have that and actually any good competitive pairing will have that. So it really pays to understand this There is so much more to this that really determines the script of our life as the ANS is driving the car we're in and we're in the backseat. Stepping into being the driver only really happens when you're regulated. So as you're around your horses this week, have fun with them. Notice your state, their state. Can you get the pair of you more regulated? Just doing head lowering on a horse helps him become more regulated and a few deep breaths with an emphasized out breath help you become more regulated. Have fun with your horses, enjoy riding. I'll be back with you soon.