High Activation

By: Dr. Suzanne LaCombe, Sept. 4/06
Updated: July 15, 2009.

"It's just too much. I can't take one more thing." How many of us have had a moment in our lives where we felt like this?

Each of us has a threshold for what we can tolerate after which we start using "coping" strategies such as anger, emotional outbursts, addictions etc. to get us through the day.

Activation is a way to measure that threshold. It's a term that's often used in body psychotherapy and refers to the level of arousal in the nervous system. You're experiencing high activation when you're feeling "wound up" inside.

Common signs of high activation

After attunement, "activation" is probably the most important concept on this site. Your understanding of activation can give you an appreciation for how change occurs in the brain, and how you can use it to your advantage in your counseling.

Activation is the body-felt sense of arousal or body-felt experience of your nervous system in action. You generally feel activation through the wide range of sensations associated with the muscles and the fascia.

Since you're reading this text, then technically, by definition, your nervous system is activated. It's operating automatically and naturally, ideally using just enough energy to keep you going.

But most of us use the term to describe the times when we're feeling more activated than normal for instance, "I was so activated after the party, I couldn't sleep" or "Man, that guy was activated. He couldn't sit still."

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The Autonomic Nervous System

As I have mentioned elsewhere on this site, your sense of well-being is a reflection of the health of your nervous system. And your activation level is a measure of the condition of the nervous system as it presently operates.

Here's one way to look at it:

Imagine for a moment that your body is a container. When your nervous system is maxed-out we say your level of activation is high, that the container is overflowing. When you are relaxed and have enough energy to take on the day, we say your level of activation is low, that the container is below capacity.

I can also picture my activation level as the intensity with which my body is "buzzing". Some of us are buzzing continually. We're wired. We're so wired that it's exhausting for people to be around us, except for those who are buzzing at the same level - they feel right at home in our company!

What you need to understand

For the purposes of counseling, we can think of activation as the physical effect of the nervous energy that gets triggered above a baseline level. By the way, that baseline level is unique to every indivdual, although it can be lowered using the right counseling.

Technically speaking, activation is the normal state of the autonomic nervous system. Activation means energy is flowing throughout your body. But problems arise when that triggered energy is excessive, chronic, unnecessary, or out of proportion to a situation.

Activation and the right brain

Our culture places a high value on left brain functioning, "being in our head", especially the ability to think, to solve problems and to verbalize thoughts.

It is believed that a balance of both the right and left brain creates a sense of well-being.

But it is the right brain that largely determines a "fine-tuned" quality of life. You're "in your right brain" whenever you look at a work of art, or take in the beauty of nature, or enjoy the first sensations of a hot bath. You're also "in your right brain" when you're closely connected with someone and feeling 'good vibrations'

Many problems that surface in psychotherapy are right brain-based. Ironically, people try to change right brain-based behaviours with left brain reasoning, or will power. (The diet industry is sustained by this fallacy, which is why I believe most diets are doomed to fail...but I digress!).

Body sensations are an indication of activation.

One of the surest ways to be in right brain is to be consciously aware of your bodily sensations.

Many people don't understand what it means to feel their normal body sensations from moment to moment. They notice them only when symptoms or sensations break into awareness (e.g. "I feel achy when I have the flu" or "I love the feeling when I first get into the bath").

In fact, some people will be freaked out by any sensation that they haven't felt before. In general, the higher the activation level the more uncomfortable we will be with unfamiliar body sensations.

This reality is even more ironic when you consider how body-obsessed our culture has become. We think a lot about our bodies, but we rarely take the time to feel their sensations.

Activation is automatic, and natural

Activation can be understood as the energetic state of the nervous system that sustains us automatically, like breathing or blood flow. It operates by itself (that's what "autonomic" implies) and it's a good thing that it does. Because a nervous system that automatically takes care of indispensable body functions frees us up to pursue more important things in our lives (Like...where did I leave those keys?).

As I mentioned above, we become aware of activation only when it reaches a certain intensity. That is, only when it breaks through the normal chatter in our heads. "Oh, (I just noticed that) my shoulders are tense."

Let's illustrate this concept with an example.

Charlie was explaining what happened to him last night…

I'm in a sales presentation that I've done a hundred times before.

But I was so activated that my mind was going blank."

"What a day! Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I'm so activated I don't think I can take on another thing."

"I met this really nice woman, but when she agreed to go out with me I started stammering like a shmuck. I was so activated."

Familiar signs of high activation

We'll notice activation when we feel "keyed up" inside. It's as if our nervous system is as tight as a coil. Here are other signs:

• Muscle tightness is the most common way we identify activation. We often feel it in our neck or when our shoulders are pulled up.
• Flushed face.
• Alterations in respiration - breathing becomes shallow or irregular
• Differences in temperature throughout the body.
• Heart racing or steadily pounding.
• Tingling sensations.
• Numbness in parts or all of the body.
• Foggy brain or strange sensations in the head.
• Feeling shaky.....

and many more sensations too numerous to cite. Notice that if taken to the extreme these symptoms are characteristic of anxiety. And indeed they are related. Anxiety is basically a chonic state of high activation!

Keep in mind that other systems in the body (e.g. endocrine system, immune system) can cause the same sensations and actions. I can have a foggy mind as a result of dehydration, for instance. Medications which can act in ways similar to body systems can also affect your state of activation.

Your activation at any given moment depends on:

1. The capacity of your nervous system to process and discharge stimulation (in other words, how regulated it is). This depends on several factors such as your trauma and developmental history; and
2. What's happening with you right now in relation to the contents of your "container" (i.e. how much stimulation has accumulated in your nervous system up to this moment in time). Are you alone? With others? Stressed? Chilled out? End of day? Beginning? Full day? Relaxed day?

High activation and feeling tired

Have you ever been in a car that's revving too high? The engine is not burning gasoline optimally. Think of high activation as a nervous system that's revving too high. A smooth running engine is a way of assessing the health of your car and in the case of the human body, the state of your activation reflects the health of your nervous system. It reflects how you manage energy.

And like the car that's revving too high, a nervous system that's too activated is using up way too much energy. The nervous system is in a state of readiness for fight flight and using up stores of hormonal energy from the viscera. This means you have less energy to live your life as you wish to do.

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Prolonged high activation can exhaust the adrenal glands. The reason is that high activation is associated with the fight flight response and the adrenal glands provide the hormonal charge for this survival mechanism.

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Related Reading

High Activation and Reading

High Activation Means You're Flooded

Reference

Levine, Peter, A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books.

Interesting Link

Somatics

Includes several articles that illustrate how to use Seishindo practices to understand your somatic / body language. Explains how the work of somatic practitioners heightens your intuition, compassion, and empathy, and improves your professional and personal relationships.

Are you taking the Science of Psychotherapy Tour ?

Click on the Implicit Memory link below:

Introduction
What's with the Reptile?
The Right Brain
Activation
Implicit Memory
Procedural Memory
Joy

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