Nervous system care is collective care

My approach to Nervous System Care emerges from the need to move beyond individual wellness, self-regulation, and self-management.

The ethics of care must be cultivated, nurtured, shaped. Care is both value and practice.​

(Virginia Held)

My aim is to explore multiple practices to reclaim diverse dimensions of care, putting our interdependent nature, our neurobiology, and our natural rhythms at the center.

Interdependent Nature

Nourishing relationships, awareness of our attachment stances, and having collective support are key aspects for trauma prevention, and from a relational-cultural therapy perspective (which is a gender perspective in itself), they are crucial to our sense of vitality and expansion.

Because we are naturally social beings –

To be cared for, seen, and recognized are experiences with evolutionary importance. They have shaped our brain, our emotional biology, and our capacity to bond and love. The idea of the biologist and philosopher Humberto Maturana comes to mind about the legitimate otherness, a concept that emerged from the biology of love, a field that he addressed through reflections on our mutual caring actions and ethical concerns as humans. The legitimate otherness foundational idea is that harmonious coexistence is a form of intelligence which emerged from love as an emotion that enables us to recognize and accept others as distinct and valid beings. Thanks to this interdependence, we have thrived as a species: differentiation and acceptance.

What interpersonal neurobiology remembered us –

Dr. Daniel Siegel has largely contributed to showing how identity and belonging are woven over our lifespan, sustaining essential elements for our well-being. The tendency to divide and atomize structures is also present in the outdated value of individuality and emotional self-sufficiency. Internally and biologically, we need the same as at the social level: differentiation and integration, and this has been especially clear thanks to the understanding of mind and brain functioning through the neurosciences of attachment and biologically-based human relationships over the past half-century.

The brain works and develops like an orchestra, simultaneously in networks of harmonic wiring involving processes of survival, emotional, and regulatory (inhibitory) superior functions. The sense of belonging is a product of perceived safety, the action of that witnessing other that is available to provide us touch, presence, and regulation during our development. The outcome of having enough safety and co-regulation experiences is that our brain works in a dynamic balance of differentiation and integration between its inner networks and predictive processes, as well as related to the proper body informing the brain via afferent sensory-somatic signals, which is technically called neuroception and interoception.

All this happens as we live and grow, and relate to others, to ourselves, and to the wider world through sensing, acting, and connecting.

Rhythms

I see and I feel life patterns as a tendency toward greater homeostasis. The dynamism of life, the constant changes in time and space, are responsive to a whole ongoing phenomenon. Think about the seasons of the year and their impact on culture. Societies have relied on ecological and cyclic activity for their existence, and the relationship with the social dynamics for subsistence is still accessible at the core of indigenous wisdom. And inwards, in our body-mind ecosystems, the recognition of rhythmic pulsations is a wellness compass.

The stress response rhythm-

Our nervous systems are designed to face stress as an evolutionary imprint of life on this planet. Adrenaline, cortisol, and all the biochemical body-brain releases are necessary for creating energy in our habitual doing. But if the rhythm of the stress cycle is persistent or incomplete, the stress response is loud and gets stuck. Chronic stress is a disease interfering systemically with our internal and external capacities.

Other hormonal cycles-

Biorhythms have a language of their own, and we learn to hear them as we realize we are thirsty, hungry, digesting, or tired and in need of rest. When I think that all across our life cycle we have an increasing tone of the autonomic nervous system, like a full life tendency, from parasympathetic to sympathetic, I see a reflection of the volition in the roles from childhood to adulthood. As children, we need to rest in the trust of the relationship with our caregivers; we need to be taken care of, and as adults, we care for others (relationships with other adults, children, with beings in general) and for ourselves.

The menstruation/ovulation cycle is another rhythm that matters a lot for nervous system care. It not only prepares the body to give birth to life, but also makes us prone to act in very differentiated manners. Acknowledging the levels of estrogen, or progesterone, and our different phases through the reproductive cycle is an ongoing path of self-knowledge and acceptance of our chemical and energetic availability at the level of emotional, relational, and (even) executive functioning. And this is relevant to neurodivergent folks as much as to neurotypical ones.

I feel that reclaiming our cyclic nature is a powerful anti-capitalistic action because the logic of capitalism is continued growth through extraction of the objectified nature as a mere resource. Taking care of our nervous systems needs to be rhythmical, active and responsive, relational and reciprocal. We cannot be constantly growing, healing, doing in the same way, either through our inner cycles or through the seasonal outer ones. Nothing naturally alive is capable of such without getting damaged.

Final thoughts

On a decontextualized and ableist approach to nervous system healing, the focus is mainly on self-regulation, performance, quick reset, and fixing, and often our full spectrum of needs, emotions, and capacities outside of what is considered healthy or productive is invalidated. When we incorporate interdependence, life rhythms, and cultural context, we are responding in a deeper and more present way to the nuances of our nervous system design.

By sensing the mutual impact of human and non-human fields in our interactions and in our bodies, we can recognize our need for receiving and giving care, for enjoyment, ease, and connection as something natural all across our lifespan.

Nervous System Care involves co-regulation, restoration, and preventive care as practices that support us somatically and relationally. This approach expands into ecologies that recognize our bodies as present, connected, and co-regulating with both the human and more-than-human world.

It addresses our transpersonal neurobiology at the levels of emotions (affects), thoughts (cognition), and the body, combining practices and experiences to be habitually integrated into our daily lives from a salutogenic perspective (focused on what is well, not on the illness or the symptoms).

Finally, this approach aims to be shared and shaped with the input of different practitioners and disciplines, embracing the biodiversity from which situated knowledge emerges to nourish our actions to build more resilient communities.

Artwork of Raija Jokinen