Dreading those nervous thoughts.

Recently, I saw a documentary showing Monks in Nepal with only their thin robes to keep warm while high up a mountain sleeping overnight in the snow with a light snow fall overnight. The next morning up they got and went down the mountain. How did they live through the night? Most of us probably would have died of exposure. What was going on? Maybe they conserved energy to keep warm and how was that enough and yet also they were in trance, in control of their nervous systems. Wondering how foreign is this experience to myself and experiences of dentist drills and aircraft takeoffs came into my mind.

My usual dental experience was the dread while waiting outside triggered by the smells and noises. Then in the dental chair anticipating a needle with sharp pain and multiple shots of this, while still dreading the drill, waiting for the drill and being hypersensitive, usually actually feeling when the nerve was touched. When the work was done there was the after effects of swollen face, feeling groggy and sometimes biting my cheek. Generally I felt out of control. A young man recently told me the dread starts weeks before he goes to the dentist.

Another related experience is the anxiety that I felt during take off of aircraft. I knew this was the most dangerous time so some anxiety surfaced and over time it had built up to an annoying degree. I decided to feel only the physical sensations for a sensational experience rather than an emotional experience. By relaxing and keeping my emotional excitement in check during taking off I really enjoy the physical sensation n my nervous system.

So the trick is to separate the emotional anticipation response of dread from the physical response of reality. The as if frame is useful, relaxing as if there is no danger, as if the sensation is just a sensation. And for most things in life that are really straightforward to tackle where there is emotional resistance, acting now as if confidence was always there, acting now as if now as if freedom was always there, acting now as if motivation was always there, acting now as if now all emotional energetic imprints had fallen away into the past.

And how does this work in a more real sense. The sympathetic nervous system for flight or fight is activated by danger and perceived danger, an example is the jump when there is a loud noise. The parasympathetic system for calming the body is activated by the vagus nerve connected to the brain with connections at the forehead and passing through the neck. So neck massages, head massages, yawning and putting your head in your hands stimulate the nerve and produce a calming effect. The reality is that every moment of every day there is a balance (an energetic imprint) being played out based on background thoughts and conscious thoughts. There are many patterns we have learned and associate with certain words. The key is that thoughts and particularly judgment of perceived danger and risk control the balance between the two nervous systems. The value of conscious thoughts is for decision making about the danger and making conscious common sense judgments about how to respond. We can be highly excited yet happy in party mode or quiet and frightened with tight muscles. Using the language of NLP and Neurosemantics we can alter these patterns for more effectiveness in the our world. The choice is ours as we develop our own techniques to negotiate with our nervous systems.

Peter Price - Trainer and Coach