The Compassion of Neurobiology
The foundation of my work (and, it seems, the lens through which I have come to see the world) is an applied understanding of the ways that our human brains and nervous systems operate. Our ability to respond skillfully to life’s challenges, the quality of our relationships with others, our capacity for learning and reflection, are all directly influenced by our biology and the state of our nervous system at any given moment.
As a leader, educator, parent, partner, or anyone who interacts with other humans on a regular basis (i.e., all of us), an understanding of the ways that our nervous systems are shaped by stress, trauma, and relationships and how they directly influence our behaviors can help us shift from a stance of judgment and blame to one of compassion and curiosity. When we move from interpreting unskillful behaviors as character flaws to seeing them as symptoms of dysregulation and unmet needs, the way we interact with others (and ourselves!) can change.
A deeper and more nuanced understanding of the ways our biology influences our experience, and the ways that we can intentionally create experiences that influence our own (and others!) biology, allows us to step into a place of empowerment. It frees us to enter into a more skillful relationship with our own and others’ behaviors and ways of being in the world that seem baffling, undesirable, or just plain unhelpful.
Rather than banging our heads against the walls of reality with the story that we should be able to think ourselves into acting differently or incentivize others into “better behavior” (by force or by plea), this lens offers an alternate way of perceiving and understanding the human experience. Without this awareness, we often attempt to will ourselves or others into more convenient or preferable or pleasant states. We stumble around in the fog of our reactivity, taking it all so personally, believing our struggles to be pathological or indicators of some innate moral deficiency.
You, my friend, are an animal. A mammal, to be more specific. So am I. Inside that body of yours is a marvelous, complex nervous system that is the apex of literally billions of years of evolution. Within your human body are layers of evolutionary wisdom that have developed in response to the biological realities of being alive on this planet. It is no small thing.
The primary job of your nervous system and mine is to keep us safe and to keep us alive. First and foremost. Survival.
Beneath our conscious awareness, the embodied brain* operates as an inner watcher, a surveillance system of sorts, scanning our inner and outer world for potential sources of threat. When my system “reads” the environment as safe enough, it engages what folks in polyvagal theory call the social engagement system. In this state I may experience highs and lows, but in general my energy is relatively balanced, and I am able to meet the demands of the moment with a calm but alert presence.
When a threat is perceived, the alarm is activated and the stress response system kicks into gear. What counts as “threat” for me or for you is not an objective measure, but rather a unique complex of cues that develops differently for each of us based on our early experiences. While some cues of danger are universal, most have an element of subjectivity. You and I will likely react in similar ways if we encounter an angry bear while out on a stroll in the forest, but even then, we may have different sets of past experiences that influence how our system responds (maybe you work as an animal trainer and are unfazed by an eight-foot-tall animal with terrifying teeth and claws? Who knows!).
Another example of this subjectivity of threat: as a woman, if I hear the heavy footsteps of a man approaching me from behind at night on an empty street, my nervous system may have a different response than a man’s. If someone (regardless of gender) in the same situation had a past experience of being attacked from behind, their system will likely ramp up or shut down in a much more extreme way than my own. Our experiences write the programming for our nervous system, and each of us has a wholly unique set of experiences, even if there are places where we overlap.
The body can initiate various protective responses depending on its assessment (again, unconscious) of the situation. The most familiar reactions, of which most of us have at least a basic awareness, are fight, flight, or freeze. To these have been added fawn, flock, tend and befriend, and others. All of these labels, while helpful for understanding the range of reactions to threat (ideally with alliteration or rhyming, natch), belie the intricate complexity of responses that any of us may experience in any given moment, depending on the context, our past experiences or social conditioning, the degree of perceived threat, and other factors.
For our purposes, we can simplify the stress response into two general categories: that which mobilizes us for action (a function of the sympathetic nervous system, what we commonly call fight or flight) and that which immobilizes (the activation of a branch of the parasympathetic nervous system).
When our sympathetic, mobilizing response is activated, we commonly experience emotions like anger or anxiety, and the impulse in our bodies is to move toward the threat to defend ourselves (fight!) or to move away to get the hell out of there (flee!). Either way, there is a surge of energy in the system, an urge toward movement. I think about this state as the “high zone” because we are ramped up, activated, our body flooding with energy to move us toward safety.
If a threat is interpreted as one in which a mobilizing strategy is unlikely to be successful, the body shifts into an immobilization response, into the “low zone”. This response is an activation of the dorsal branch of the long vagal nerve that runs from our head and wanders through and around organs down to the gut, a function of the parasympathetic system. We often experience this state as a depletion of energy in our bodies and the impulse to shut down, withdraw, “go dark.” Some people equate this with the freeze response, and in its most extreme form, it can include dissociation or fainting. I often experience it as a case of the fuck-its. In this state, numbness, apathy, or hopelessness moves in, and even when we’re able to summon the energy to keep going, it can feel like we’re detached from reality or just going through the motions.
And when we experience either of these states of activation or shut-down, it of course influences what we do (or don’t do, can or can’t do, as the case may be). Dr. Bruce Perry refers to the connection between our nervous system state and our impulses or behaviors as “state-dependent function”: that is, our capacity for functioning at any given level is a direct result of the state we are in. Our state directly influences our functional IQ (decreases with dysregulation), our sense of time (becomes foreshortened as we move further into dysregulation), and our capacity to access higher cognitive functions such as planning, empathy, impulse control, language, and consideration of cause and effect.
The activation of the stress response toward either the high or low response is more like a dimmer than an on-off switch; more of a nuanced, three-dimensional spectrum than a linear or binary process. A way that I’ve heard this explained that I find helpful is that the high zone, sympathetic branch acts like the accelerator in our system, while the low zone, parasympathetic response functions as the brake.
A healthy and resilient nervous system fluctuates between highs and lows many times throughout a day: the level of activation meets the demands of whatever moment we are in. Just like when we’re driving, we naturally move back and forth between engaging each of these functions. It’s a dance of sorts, a fluid and rhythmic oscillation. However, if we get stuck in either accelerator or brake mode, that's when we get, well, stuck. When these states persist over time, they can show up as chronic anxiety or depression. And sometimes our own acute, extreme reactions can surprise ourselves and others because they seem so out of proportion to the stimulus that evoked them. At the extremes of dysregulation we may experience blind rage or panic (high zone), or dissociation or fainting (low zone).
When we are in states of high dysregulation, we are functioning from the lower, more reactive and evolutionarily older parts of our brain. We literally don’t have access to the slow and contemplative decision-making capacity of the more recently evolved cortex. This makes sense in a truly life-threatening situation where reactive, reflexive action might mean the difference between survival and death, but can be severely inconvenient in most of the contexts in which we find ourselves in our modern lives.
This shift to the lower regions taking the metaphorical wheel means that our capacity to think things through from a place of logic and reason is impaired. Of course, I know (intellectually, logically, reasonably) that my stepson turning his nose up at the meal I just spent an hour at the end of a long day preparing (the meal that he loved the last time I made it, ugh) is an age-appropriate response and not an attack. But when my body floods with rage, my vision narrows, and my chest starts to churn, my cortex is no longer running the show.
But here’s the thing: when we can recognize these kinds of reactions as symptoms of activation, it doesn’t matter whether the reaction itself makes logical sense. It just is, whether I know where it comes from or not. And if I can become more aware of my state and recognize it for what it is, I am much more likely to be able to choose to respond in a skillful way rather than reacting automatically (and often unskillfully).
This is much different than judging and shaming myself when that swell of anger moves through me: what the hell is wrong with me? Not only is this response unhelpful, but it adds emotional fuel to the for-real fire inside of me and sends me deeper into dysregulation. Recognizing and understanding my reaction as a biological reflex, not as evidence that I am actually a terrible person under the surface, allows more room to be kind to myself in that moment. And no matter what I do from there, it will have a different tone and energy, one that is much more likely to soothe my system and lead to a kinder behavior.
This applies just as much to how we explain and respond to others. In some ways this can be much more challenging because we only see others’ actions, not the inner flow or ebb of energy and emotion that is happening inside of their bodies. But the same principle is present: when I recognize unskillful behaviors as symptoms of activation it opens more space for curiosity and responsiveness. What the hell is wrong with you? recedes into a stance of what is happening inside of you? and no matter what we do from there, it will have a different tone and energy, one that is much more likely to foster connection rather than disconnection, compassion rather than criticism.
*a term used by Dan Siegel and in Interpersonal Neurobiology that encompasses the entirety of the nervous system and recognizes that our cognition is influenced by more than just the brain in our heads