Dr. Jay Wiles

It's all kind of under autonomic or automatic control.

So what does the autonomic nervous system even do?

Like what do we need it?

It's a threat detection signaling mechanism that we have built in from an evolutionary perspective.

The great way to think about it is that it's constantly scanning our environments, receiving internal cues, external cues, and making adjustments to our physiology so that we can maintain balance, maintain homeostasis throughout the body.

Because we don't want things dysregulated in one way or another because that can cause pretty significant dysfunction from a mind-body perspective.

So it's all intended to say, hey, let me zone in on which way I need to adjust.

Do I need to move blood pressure up?

Do I need to move it down?

Do I need to increase heart rate up and down?

And it's kind of like this back and forth communication highway that we have.

When people think about the nervous system, they think about it being either like the stress response or the relaxation response.

And it's actually a bit more nuanced than that even.

Because when we think about the autonomic nervous system, it consists of two different branches, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system is what most people see as the fight or flight or freeze response.

And I actually think that that's a bit of a bastardization or overgeneralization as to what the sympathetic response is.

I actually think that to conceptualize the sympathetic response, it's much more of a way that we mobilize energy.

So...

If we think about mobilizing energy, why would we need to do that?

We would need to mobilize energy in an effort to evade perceived threat or even potential viable threat.