Support

We need support. We need resource. Staunch individualism is not a sustainable way of being for anyone, certainly not for a whole culture. We cannot function in isolation for any extended time. We are biologically formed and conditioned to be social creatures, all the way down to the way the brain’s structure and function. Recent neurological research has provided enough evidence such that the nervous system we used to think of in two major categories (Sympathetic and Parasympathetic), has added a third major aspect: the Social Nervous System. Incidentally, this system is deeply connected to the function of the gut, the gastrointestinal system. It is little wonder that our culture is burgeoning with abdominal disorders, illness and disease.

In order to navigate our inner lives, we must have enough connection with others. This contact enables us to regulate our inner states of nervous system arousal and discharge emotions thereby preventing the hazardous effects of built up emotions/responses to experiences. Our nervous system can only handle so much before it becomes compromised. This is the basis for the debilitating symptoms of trauma on a large scale, and is also the basis for more small scale and pervasive challenges associated with stress. Prolonged stress, whether physical or emotional, puts intolerable demands on the physiology, at which point the intelligence of the body begins to create functional compromises to cope with the demands.

Contact with others who care about us and understand us, enables us to feel better and do better. Explosive people are often trying to get help with their inner states. Manipulative people are also often struggling to handle inner states of which they may have little awareness, and much less insight about how to settle this inner distress. Road rage, temper tantrums, general crankiness and edginess, as well as anxiety, panic and depression, are all examples of emotional build up that needs to have support and find resource.

TRY: Allow yourself to reach out to a friend instead of acting out your emotional distress on yourself or a family member.  Tell them all about the physical sensations and the thoughts that accompany your distress.