Sympathetic Nervous System

By: Terry McGraw & Dr. Suzanne LaCombe, June 25, 2006.

Remember your last counseling session? You were talking about a difficult subject. And as you did so, you probably felt your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) in action.

It's your SNS that's responsible for the tightness in your chest, the butterflies in your stomach, your shoulders pushed up by your ears and the tightness in your gut. These visceral reactions to what you were talking about characterizes the arousal pattern of the SNS.

The sympathetic nervous system is part of our survival armour.

Recall the last time you were on a roller coaster...the car chugs up the hill and slows to a crawl as it approaches the crest--the point of no return. Your sense of safety is pitched against a feeling of panic. Your heart is beating, your body braced, your breath is rapid and shallow.

These body sensations are your sympathetic nervous system in operation. It's preparing you for fight or flight. (Your higher thinking brain (i.e. the cortex) knows better and thankfully keeps you in the car.)

The sympathetic nervous system is part of the Autonomic Nervous System, that part of our nervous system we have little control over. It works automatically.

Arousal of the sympathetic nervous system results in increased blood flow, muscle tension and heart rate as adrenaline floods the body.

We will experience this response when we are excited or fearful. It is in fact the physiological mainifestation of the flight fight response and thus is crucial for survival.

What's important for you to understand is that the nervous system doesn't respond any differently to excitement and fear. They are essentially the same to our nervous system. They are only different in the way we interpret the sensations.

If you experience somatic therapy you would learn this first hand. Of course, it's always a much more pleasant experience to feel excitement!

Here's what one of our sponsors, Native Remedies, would like to add:

When the nervous system is on high alert or in "sympathetic mode" for prolonged periods of time it can place extra stress on our adrenal glands. The adrenal glands provide the hormonal charge necessary for the fight flight response. When the adrenals glands are depleted we have less energy and tire easily.

If your naturopath determines that your adrenals are depleted consider this option from our line of natural products:

Related Topics

Parasympathetic Nervous System

Discharge

Regulation

Scared to Death

Don't lose track! Add to your FAV bookmarks:

Help